Display Twitch, Facebook, YouTube, Trovo and X chat on your stream!

Today we’ll be taking a look at the Streamlabs Chat Box widget, the benefits of adding a chat box overlay, and how to add it to your streaming software of choice.

What is the Chat Box?

The Chat Box is a widget from Streamlabs designed to help improve the viewing experience for your audience. It is an overlay that displays your stream’s chat directly on the screen, increasing viewer engagement. 

It also includes a chat notifications feature, which allows you to hear a customized sound notification when you receive a new chat message. 

What are the benefits of Chat Box?

If you are creating a highlight video from your past streams, the chat box overlay is a great way to ensure that anyone watching your video later can see which chat messages you’re interacting with. Additionally, some viewers prefer to watch Twitch streams in full-screen mode, which hides the normal chat layout viewers are supposed to see. Lastly, it’s a fun way to potentially increase audience engagement as some viewers like to see their names and messages appear on the screen.

The Chat Notifications feature ensures that you don't miss any new chats while you are focusing on your game or activity. It also enables you to focus on your game during quiet chat periods, without the worry of missing chatter engagement. 

How to Add a Chat Box to Streamlabs Desktop

Step 1: Visit our website and download Streamlabs Desktop

Step 2: Install and open Streamlabs Desktop

Step 3: Click the + to add a new source

Step 4: Navigate to the Widgets tab

Step 5: Select Chat Box

Tips and Tricks

Tip 1: we recommend unchecking the setting “Shutdown source when not visible” in the widget browser properties for Chat Box. This ensures that any timed settings are not interrupted when changing scenes, and the chat does not get cleared when changing scenes. 

Tip 2: If you are using Chat Notifications, we recommend adding the Chat Box source to all of your scenes to ensure that you always hear the chat notifications. If you do not have the Chat Box source on a scene, you will not hear the notifications when you are on that scene. You can always place the Chat Box below other sources like BRB or gaming scenes if you do not wish to show the chat on those scenes, but still want to receive the sound notifications. 

Tip 3: always add your widgets as existing sources instead of as new. This ensures that you do not hear any duplication of sounds.

Enable Chat Notifications 

1. To set up Chat Notifications, navigate to the Chat Box settings page on Streamlabs website.
2. Scroll down to the Chat Notifications section, and enable the feature with the toggle.
3. Select your desired notification sound from stock sounds, or upload your own. 
4. Set your Trigger Threshold setting:
   • This setting determines how long your chat must be quiet before a new sound notification will be triggered by an incoming message.
   • This ensures that you do not hear new sound notifications during an active conversation with a viewer, but you do hear a sound notification after breaks in chat activity. 
     • For example, if the trigger threshold is set to 30 seconds, you will only hear a sound notification when chat had been quiet for at least 30 seconds and a new message is received.
5. You can also turn off the Trigger Threshold. When trigger threshold is off, there is a default 5 second cooldown on Chat Notifications. This means that sound notifications will play on each new message received, but there is a basic 5 second cooldown time between sounds being triggered. 

Now your viewers will see your chat box overlay on stream and you will hear sound notifications when you receive new chats. 

How to Customize Your Chat Box

The Streamlabs chat box widget comes with various features you can customize to make your chat box your own. 

Step 1: Visit our website and log in to the dashboard. 

Step 2: Click on “Chat Box” on the left-hand side of the dashboard.

Changing The Look of Your Chat Box

On the settings page, you can customize various features to personalize the way the chat box looks.

• Platforms: Choose which of your connected platforms you would like to include in the Chat Box
• Badges: Will set what badges are shown in your chatbox widget, including Moderator badges, Subscribers badges, Twitch Prime badges, and more.
• Style: Adjust the look of your chat overlay using several premade styles
• Extra Emotes: Check this if you want to show BTTV or FFZ emoticons on your chat overlay.
  
• Font Color: Set the color of the chat messages in your chat overlay.
• Font Size: Sets the size of all text in the overlay.

Change Functionality of Your Chat Box

Lastly, you can change the functionality of your chat box using the following features:

• Hide Message After: Used to fade messages away after a set time.
• Always Show Messages: Disables messages in the chat box from fading
• Chat Delay: Sets how long it takes for messages to appear in your chat box 
• Hide Chatters: Use this to hide common chat bots and/or commands that start with “!”.
• Custom Bad Words: Add custom words that you do not want to see appear in your chat box. 

How to Add the Chat Box Widget using the Streamlabs Plugin for OBS

You can easily add widgets and overlays to your stream in OBS studio using the Streamlabs Plugin for OBS!

Step 1: Download and install OBS studio 

Step 2: Download and install the Streamlabs Plugin for OBS

Step 3: Sign in on the plugin

Step 4: Navigate to the widgets tab in the left panel of the plugin window, then click "add" on Chat Box 

To configure the widget, click the settings button on that widget within the plugin and the settings page will open in a new window. 

How to Add the Chat Box Widget to Other Streaming Softwares

If you aren’t streaming using Streamlabs Desktop, you can add widgets to other streaming software like OBS Studio

Step 1: visit the visit our website and log in to the dashboard.

Step 2: Click on “Chat Box" on the left-hand side of the dashboard.

Step 3: Click to copy the Widget URL

Step 5: Open your streaming software

Step 6: Add a browser source

Step 7: Paste the widget URL

And now your chat box overlay theme will appear in any software you use!

In conclusion, adding a Chat Box widget overlay is a nice quality of life feature that can make the viewing experience better for your audience. The Chat Notifications feature provides a simple way to ensure you are always aware of new incoming chat activity, without having to constantly scan the chat. There are many customization options and ways to make it your own, so play around with it and find out what works best for you.