Stream Alerts: Types, Setup and Best Practices

In short: alerts are notifications that appear and play a sound on your stream when someone does something (follows you, subscribes, raids you, sends bits or a donation). They don’t come built into OBS: you set them up with an alerts provider that connects to your account and show them with a Browser Source. This guide explains the types of alerts, how to add them to OBS step by step and how to configure them so they say thanks without interrupting.

What an alert is

An alert is an animation with sound and text that’s triggered by an event on your channel. Its job is to thank your community in the moment and make visible who supports you, so others want to join in too. As the OBS alerts guide sums it up, they’re an automatic way to say thanks to people who follow, donate or subscribe.

The most-used types of alerts

Alert	When it fires	What’s worth showing
Follower	Someone starts following you	Name and a short message
Subscription	New subscription or renewal (on YouTube, membership)	Name, tier and months if applicable
Gifted subscriptions	Someone gifts subscriptions	Name and amount
Bits or cheers	Someone sends bits on Twitch	Name and amount
Raid	Another channel sends you its community	Channel name and how many people are arriving
Donation or tip	Someone donates through the tool you use	Name, amount and message
Custom event	Point rewards, milestones, goals	Whatever you need to highlight

Keep in mind that each platform names its events differently and not all offer the same ones. For example, Twitch has subscriptions and bits, YouTube has memberships and Super Chat, and Kick has subscriptions and KICKs. Check which events your alerts provider supports for your platform before designing anything.

Besides the alerts themselves, the same kind of tool offers other widgets that OBS describes as common: an event list, a chat box, labels (for example “latest follower”) and the jar that fills up with event icons.

How to add alerts to OBS

The process is the same with any provider, according to the official OBS tutorial:

1. Pick an alerts provider and connect your platform account. That’s how it gets the follower, subscriber and other info.
2. Set up the alerts on its website: which events to show, the images, the sounds and the text.
3. Copy the widget URL. Each service calls it something different: overlay URL, widget URL or alert URL.
4. In OBS, pick the scene where the alert will go and, in the Sources list, add a Browser source.
5. Paste the URL in the URL field of the properties.
6. Adjust the width and height to the right size and click OK.

Two details from the Browser source documentation that save you headaches: the default size is 800x600 and you have to change it by hand, and the background is transparent by default, so you don’t need one of your own.

Treat your alert URL like a password: anyone who has it can see or tamper with your notifications. If you share it by accident, generate a new one in your provider.

How to configure them well

One alert per type, but not a different one for everything

Define a common base style and change only what’s necessary: an accent color per type, an icon, the text. If every alert looks like it’s from a different channel, the stream looks messy. Keep your channel’s palette and you’ll see how consistency improves with your overlay.

Sound

• It should be audible without covering your voice or the game. Test it with your music and your voice at real stream levels.
• Avoid very high-pitched or overly long sounds: they get annoying when several arrive in a row.
• Avoid copyrighted music that could cause you problems on the platforms or in your VODs.

Duration and frequency

There’s no official value; it’s a design call. As a practical rule, an alert should last just long enough for the name to be read and the message understood, and your setup has to handle several arriving in a row (for example, in a raid). Almost all providers have an alert queue and a delay between one and the next; use them so they don’t step on each other.

Position

Place it where it doesn’t cover what matters in the game: above or below center usually works, but decide by looking at your own game interface. In just-chatting scenes it can be larger.

Duplicates

If you copy the alerts source into several scenes and there’s another inside an overlay, it’ll sound twice. Keep just one and copy it into the scenes that need it.

TTS: reading messages aloud

TTS (text-to-speech) turns the message that comes with a donation or a reward into voice. It’s a fun way to give your community the spotlight, but it needs moderation:

• Turn on word filters and a character limit.
• Set a minimum amount or condition for it to be read, so you avoid spam.
• Decide whether anyone can trigger it or only certain events.
• Keep a mute button handy during the stream.

Common mistakes

• Leaving the tool’s default alerts unpersonalized: your channel looks like a thousand others.
• Turning on every alert type at once, even the ones that almost never fire: the screen fills up with notifications and they lose value.
• Not testing with the provider’s emulator before going live.
• Forgetting to check the volume in the OBS audio mixer.
• Not updating your alerts when you change visual identity.

If you want alerts made in your image

At Epik you can order alerts per piece ($6 each) and TTS access without a custom voice ($85). The Epik pack includes alerts and TTS along with a logo, overlays, frames, panels, banners, emotes, subscriber badges and multiplatform OBS setup. You pay in full through PayPal and we start with your brief.