OBS Studio

This is the snap of OBS Studio

Published for with 💝 by Snapcrafters

Install

sudo snap install obs-studio
sudo snap connect obs-studio:avahi-control
sudo snap connect obs-studio:kernel-module-observe
sudo snap connect obs-studio:screencast-legacy

Recover settings after an upgrade

Recent versions of this snap store OBS settings in a location that persists across snap refreshes. After the first upgrade to this layout, OBS may start with its default settings.

To recover your existing profiles, scenes, and settings, first close OBS and list the available snap revisions:

ls "$HOME/snap/obs-studio"

Choose the numeric revision containing your previous configuration, then run the following commands. Replace 1322 with that revision number:

OLD_REVISION=1322

SOURCE="$HOME/snap/obs-studio/$OLD_REVISION/.config/obs-studio"
TARGET="$HOME/snap/obs-studio/common/.config/obs-studio"
CONFIG_ROOT="$HOME/snap/obs-studio/common/.config"

# Preserve any configuration created since the upgrade
if [ -d "$TARGET" ]; then
  mv "$TARGET" "$TARGET.backup-$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S)"
fi

# Copy the previous configuration into persistent storage
mkdir -p "$TARGET"
cp -a "$SOURCE/." "$TARGET/"

# Replace any revision-specific storage locations
sed -i \
  -e "s|^Configuration=.*$|Configuration=$CONFIG_ROOT|" \
  -e "s|^SceneCollections=.*$|SceneCollections=$CONFIG_ROOT|" \
  -e "s|^Profiles=.*$|Profiles=$CONFIG_ROOT|" \
  -e "s|^PluginManagerSettings=.*$|PluginManagerSettings=$CONFIG_ROOT|" \
  "$TARGET/global.ini"

Start OBS again and verify that your profiles and scene collections have been restored. The recovered configuration will be used for subsequent snap refreshes.

Camera

To access camera, manually connect to the camera plug:

snap connect obs-studio:camera

Sound

To record sound, manually connect the pulseaudio plug:

snap connect obs-studio:pulseaudio

Wayland

Screen and Window capture in a Wayland session is supported in OBS 27.0.0 or newer.

Removable Storage

To access content on external storage, manually connect to the removable-media plug:

snap connect obs-studio:removable-media

OBS Virtual Camera

Starting with OBS Studio 26.1, Virtual Camera support is integrated. The Start Virtual Camera button is located in the Controls pane, just below Start Recording.

Here's how to install and configure v4l2loopback which OBS uses:

sudo snap connect obs-studio:kernel-module-observe
sudo apt -y install v4l2loopback-dkms v4l2loopback-utils
echo 'options v4l2loopback devices=1 video_nr=13 card_label="OBS Virtual Camera" exclusive_caps=1' | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/v4l2loopback.conf
echo "v4l2loopback" | sudo tee /etc/modules-load.d/v4l2loopback.conf
sudo modprobe -r v4l2loopback
sudo modprobe v4l2loopback devices=1 video_nr=13 card_label="OBS Virtual Camera" exclusive_caps=1

NOTE! Using video_nr greater than 64 will not work.

NDI

If you want to use the NDI plugin you'll need to connect the Avahi Control interface.

snap connect obs-studio:avahi-control

Browser

Optional interfaces can be connected that integrate with Browser Sources and Custom Browser Socks.

Process Control

The OBS Browser does attempt to adjust the scheduler priority, you can enable this capability by optionally connecting the process-control interface.

snap connect obs-studio:process-control

Passwords and Keys

The browser in OBS can obtain user credentials from applications such as GNOME Passwords and Keys (seahorse) or Kwallet, should you want it to.

snap connect obs-studio:password-manager-service