How to Go Live to Facebook on a Mac

Whether you're a new streamer, small business owner, musician, or artist, Facebook is a great platform to start building your audience. Chances are, you already have a built-in community of friends, family, or followers ready to support your content.

The best part? You don’t need a high-end gaming rig to get started. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to broadcast your first Facebook live stream directly from your Mac using Streamlabs Desktop.

Jump Ahead:

• Choosing Live Streaming Software
• Setting Up Streamlabs Desktop on Mac
• Adding a Stream Overlay
• Adding Sources to Live Stream
• Adding an Alert Box
• Capturing Desktop Audio
• Going Live on Facebook from Mac

Choose Your Streaming Software

There are various software you can use when streaming for the first time. We recommend Streamlabs Desktop for the ease of use, low CPU usage, and abundance of free features and premium options whenever you’re ready to upgrade.

However, Talk Studio is a great alternative if you know your live stream will be focused on you and a guest. Talk Studio is a browser-based streaming studio. There is nothing to download, no complicated setup. You log in, click go live, and you’re done. You’ll lose out on features like the ability to add different scenes and transitions, but if your content is more focused on you talking into the screen, you may not need these bells and whistles anyway.

Setting Up Streamlabs Desktop

First, you’ll want to visit our website to download our free broadcasting and recording software, Streamlabs Desktop. While you are there, it is a good idea to log in to the dashboard. The

Streamlabs dashboard is your command center. From here, you customize your alerts, browse thousands of stream overlays, customize your widgets, add chatbot commands, and much more.

After you have downloaded Streamlabs Desktop, the onboarding process will provide you with the essential components you’ll need to start streaming right away.  Visiting our Getting Started with Streamlabs Desktop article for a step by step walkthrough

Add an Overlay Theme

Once you’re finished downloading and setting up Streamlabs Desktop, we recommend adding a theme to add a professional look and feel to your stream.

There are hundreds of beautifully hand-crafted overlay themes available for free. You can choose a theme directly from your Streamlabs Desktop application or by browsing the Streamlabs Library from your browser.

When you choose a theme — everything is populated for you. A theme will typically come with a stream starting soon, a live scene, a be right back scene, and a stream ending scene. Use your live scene when you are ready for your audience to see and hear you.

To unlock unrestricted access to  hundreds of professionally designed themes from top designers in the industry, you can subscribe to Streamlabs Ultra.

To learn about all of the features that Streamlabs Ultra offers, you can read our blog post. 

Add Your Sources

Add a source by clicking on the +plus sign next to Sources in the editing window and choosing the source you’d like to add.

A source is something that outputs to the stream. For example, a webcam is a source. One of the many widgets, such as a donation goal, can be a source. Capturing what’s on your screen is also a source.

If you selected a webcam during the onboarding process, you should see it automatically captured in your “live scene.” You will then need to add a source to capture your desktop screen or anything else you want to output to the stream.

Add an Alert Box

We highly recommend adding an Alert Box source. An Alert Box will display an alert on-screen whenever somebody follows you, subscribes, or donates.

Customize these alerts by visiting the Alert Box Dashboard on Streamlabs.com. From this page, you can change the image and sound for the different alert types. Learn more about everything you need to know about setting up live stream alerts in our guide.

Adding alerts is a perfect opportunity to acknowledge and thank your viewers for contributing to the stream. Seeing their name on the screen makes your supporter feel great because you recognize them and encourages others to support you.

Capturing Desktop Audio in Streamlabs Desktop for Mac

By default, macOS doesn’t allow apps like Streamlabs Desktop to record internal audio (like game sound, music, or browser tabs). To work around this, you’ll need to install a virtual audio driver such as BlackHole and set up a Multi-Output device through your Mac’s Audio MIDI Setup.

To capture desktop audio on macOS with Streamlabs Desktop, you’ll need to:

• Install BlackHole – A free virtual audio driver for macOS.
• Open Audio MIDI Setup – Create a Multi-Output Device.
• Select Built-in Output + BlackHole – Make sure Built-in Output is listed above BlackHole.
• Set the Multi-Output Device as your default output – This sends audio to both your speakers and BlackHole.
• In Streamlabs Desktop, select BlackHole as a Mic/Aux device – This lets Streamlabs capture your system audio.
  

For the full walkthrough, check out this guide.

How to Go Live on Facebook

Now that you’ve set up your live stream with alerts and sources, you can press the Go Live button in the bottom right corner of Streamlabs Desktop. After you click on that, the following screen will appear.

From here, you can update the title of the live stream, the description, and the destination.

Choose your destination

Thanks to a recent integration between Facebook and Streamlabs, streamers can now go live to their Facebook page, or timeline.

Facebook has removed the ability to stream directly to groups via third-party applications. To bypass this limitation and stream to a Facebook group, you can use a custom RTMP. You can find more information on this change implemented by Facebook here. 

And just like that, you’re ready to go live on Facebook from your MacBook using Streamlabs Desktop.