Setting Up Your Streamlabs Alerts

Adding an Alert Box to your live stream lets you have on-screen alerts highlighting your new followers, tips, subscribers, and much more. Creating unique alerts is a fundamental aspect of any live stream. They represent you and your brand and can be completely customized to match your personality or aesthetic. Adding a personal touch to your alerts will help you stand out from the crowd, keep viewers coming back, and encourage others to participate in your live stream.

On-screen alerts are often your viewer’s first impression, so we recommend spending a little time on making them unforgettable. Today, we will show you how to create custom alerts using Streamlabs for Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, Trovo, Tipping, Merch, and more. We will also cover how to use Streamlabs alerts with OBS and other streaming software

Summary:

• Using Premade Alerts
• Switching Between Widget Themes
• Creating Custom Alerts
• General Alert Settings
• Global Editing
• How to Add Alert Variations
• Testing Alerts
• Adding an Alert Box Widget in Streamlabs Desktop
• Adding Streamlabs Alerts in OBS
• Adding Streamlabs Alerts to Other Streaming Software

Pre-Made Alerts and Widget Themes

Streamlabs offers thousands of polished, ready-to-use alert and widget themes. You can find both free and premium options created by some amazing designers, such as FragileGFX, Paper Crowns, and StreamSpell. You can visit our Alert Box themes page to browse our vast library. Our premium animated themes are included with Streamlabs Ultra.

Changing and Customizing Alert Widget Themes

You may want to switch between different widget themes depending on the type of content you’re streaming, the season, the platform you are streaming to, or even the game you are playing. All widget themes include an overlay for your Alert Box. Depending on which widget theme you choose, some will include themes for other widgets, including Goal, Event List, Tip Jar, and more.

Keep reading for a quick setup guide, or check out our full guide on widget themes and how to use them.

To switch between widget themes, click the dropdown next to Browse Themes (in the top right corner of the Alert Box page) and select one of your recently used widget themes. To choose from all of your widget themes, click on “View All Themes” to manage all your widget themes. 

You can also click “Add a Theme” to create a new widget theme from scratch or browse pre-made widget themes in our library. 

Creating Custom Alert Widget Themes

If you don’t want to use a pre-made theme, you can manually customize your alerts by navigating to the Alert Box from your Streamlabs Dashboard, clicking the dropdown next to Browse Themes (in the top right corner of the Alert Box page), click "Add a Theme," and then click on "Start From Scratch."

When you create a new widget theme from scratch, you can either use your currently active widget theme settings to get started, or you can start with Streamlabs default settings using the toggle.

General Alert Settings

From here, you can edit your General Settings, which impact every alert type. You have the ability to edit the alert delay, moderation approvals, profanity filters, and add custom bad words.

Global Editing

Think of Global Editing as a tool for updating all your alerts and variations simultaneously. This does not act as a global setting but rather a way to quickly update the settings on all of your alerts in a fraction of the time. You can still change these alert settings individually at any time. Below are some of the changes you can update in the Global Editing window.

General: Not to be confused with the general settings discussed in the previous section. Here, you can select the layout of the image and text, alert duration, and text delay. 

Font Settings: Make your text stand out by choosing the font style, size, weight, color, and highlight color.

Animations: Choose how your alerts and text appear on the screen when triggered. 

Text to Speech: Control the settings for text-to-speech (TTS) alerts on your live stream.

How to Customize Specific Alert Types

All of your linked platforms will show in the left navigation panel of the main Alert Box section of your Streamlabs Dashboard. When you click on a platform, the menu for that platform will expand and you can then select which alert type you would like to customize. 

On this page, you can customize the layout of the alert, image, or gif that’s played, as well as the sound, font, animation, duration, text-to-speech, and more, depending on the alert type.

How to Add Alert Variations

Alert Variations allow you to play customized alerts for specific types of events. For example, you can play a different alert for a $10 tip vs. $5 or $1. You can also create variations based on subscription length, level of subscription, cheer amounts, gift subscriptions, and much more.

To set up a variation, click the + Add Variation button under the alert type. Then, set the desired conditions for the variation to be triggered and customize

You can manage your variations for each alert type by clicking the “Manage Variations” button. 

Here, you can easily view all of your variations, enable/disable and delete variations, or jump to different variations to edit them. 

Check out our in-depth guide for setting up alert variations if you need more help. 

Previewing and Testing Alerts

If you’d like to double-check that your customized alerts are to your liking, you can test them before going live—there are two ways to do it. 

Previewing

Previewing your customized alerts as you are editing is a breeze. You can review unsaved changes in the preview window of any alert you’re currently updating. You can also use the preview window in General Settings, using the dropdown to select the alert type you would like to preview.

When you click "preview," your alerts will only appear in the preview window and will not appear in your launched browser source or your streaming software.

Previewing helps ensure you're happy with your settings before you’re ready to save or update your alerts while you are live. You can also mute the preview if you’d like to preview your visual settings without the repeated alert sound. Real events will not show up in the preview window.

Testing

There are a few options for testing your alerts in your streaming software depending on what you are using to stream. 

Testing in Streamlabs Destkop 

You can test your alerts in Streamlabs Desktop to see how they look in your streaming software. The test button in Streamlabs Desktop (located at the bottom of the software)  will only show saved changes. Testing here will also send a test to the preview window on the Alert Box page

Testing from the Web

You can also test alerts in the Alert Box page at the top right test dropdown:

To test your variations, use the "Test Variation" button at the bottom right of the screen, next to the save button.

Streamlabs OBS Plugin

In the Streamlabs OBS Plugin, you can test your alerts from the test menus on the bottom left or top right.

Adding Your Alert Box in Streamlabs Desktop 

First, add an Alert Box widget to your live stream in Streamlabs Desktop. Streamlabs Desktop allows you to add widgets to help you interact and engage with your community. While you can add many widgets to your live stream, an Alert Box is one of the top widgets we recommend adding. 

Step 1: To add an Alert Box, press the plus (+) sign in the Sources section of Streamlabs Desktop.

Step 2: Now, select Alert Box from the pop-up menu.

Viewers will now see the default alert appear when you get a new subscriber, bit donation, follow, host, etc. You can test it by clicking Test Widgets at the bottom of your screen (near the Go Live button).

How to Add Streamlabs Alerts to OBS

We have officially launched the Streamlabs Plugin for OBS Studio, allowing you to enjoy the combined power of Streamlabs' overlays, alerts, widgets, and more right from your OBS interface. All you have to do is install the Streamlabs Plugin for OBS to show your Streamlabs Alert Box (theme and settings) in OBS. Follow our guide to learn how to install and use the plugin.

After you have installed the plugin, select Streamlabs from the top navigation bar in OBS. This will take you to a screen where you can control your Streamlabs settings.

Select Widgets from the left navigation bar and find the Alert Box widget. Under the Alert Box widget, click the + Add button. An Alert Box widget will now appear in your selected scene. If you’d like to add an Alert Box to an additional scene, select that scene in OBS and repeat the above steps.

To learn more about setting up the Streamlabs Plugin for OBS plugin, check out our handy guide.

How to Add Streamlabs Alerts to Other Streaming Software

If you wish to use Streamlabs Alerts with other streaming software, we’re happy to report that you can do so in just a few clicks.

First, you must obtain the link to your Alert Box widget from your Streamlabs Dashboard.

After you copy the widget's link, paste it as a browser source in your preferred streaming software. Then, you can use the test function from your Streamlabs Dashboard to determine if it’s been added correctly. 

Filtering Events

If you want to create unique Alert Box widgets with specific alert types, you can click the 'filter events' dropdown and choose the alert types you wish to include in the widget URL from the dropdown.

**Note: filtering events will only copy and pasted Widget URLs. Filtering with the 'filter events' dropdown will not change your Streamlabs Desktop or Streamlabs OBS plugin Alert Box sources. You will need to manually copy and paste the newly filtered URL into a browser source in order to use the custom URL.

Only the alerts you select from the dropdown will appear in the Alert Box when you copy and paste the link.

Alternatively, you can enable/disable different alert types to create different widget themes for different occassions or for streaming to different platforms. Then, use our method for using multiple widget themes in order to use inactive widget themes in your streaming software. See guide

*Note this method will also require manual copy and pasting of the widget URL for each widget theme into a browser source. 

As you can see, there are many customizations you can do with your Alert Box and settings.  If you have any questions or comments, please let us know. Remember to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Download Streamlabs Desktop