The awkward part of a Starting Soon screen is not putting it up — it is taking it down. You are mid-sentence, the countdown hit zero a minute ago, and the screen is still there. A chain fixes that: the screen hands the stream to the next one by itself.
Give it a countdown and set what happens at zero — switch to another screen, or hide. The screen does it itself, so you are not reaching for the panel in the first thirty seconds of the show.
You set it up here
It lands here — the real overlay
At zero the pre-show card hands the stream to the next screen by itself.
What you’ll build
A pre-show screen that clears at zero without you touching it, and a second card that greets the people who waited.
One browser source carries every screen you make. You will not add another.
A heading, a subtitle and a countdown of however long you usually wait. This is the one people see before you go live.
A short "we are live" card is enough. It is what replaces the countdown the moment it runs out.
On the pre-show screen, choose to switch to the second one when the clock reaches zero. Give the second one a short countdown and tell it to hide at zero.
If you would rather it simply vanish, choose hide instead — a chain of one is still a chain.
One key before you go live. The rest plays itself.
One key each carries the show’s arc — Starting Soon before you go live, BRB at the break, Ending at the close. Here’s the loop, and what each side sees.
Press the Starting Soon key before you hit Go Live in OBS. The scene covers the whole canvas — your title, subtitle, and an optional countdown — so early arrivals see a show warming up, not your desktop or a frozen game menu.
When you’re ready, the same key clears the screen. It fades out to reveal whatever OBS was already showing — game, cam, everything. You never built a second OBS scene and you never switched one.
Door, food, bathroom: one tap (your phone deck works from the kitchen) and the BRB scene covers the entire canvas in one press — game, cam, and all. Set a countdown and it can even clear itself when you’re due back.
The thanks-for-watching scene holds the screen while you say goodbyes, plug the socials, and send the raid. Screens are one-at-a-time, so firing Ending swaps out anything else — then you end the stream on a produced note.
Every stream has moments the camera shouldn’t carry alone. These are the ones a screen covers:
When: You go live a few minutes before you’re actually ready — and viewers arrive early.
Why it works: A countdown screen turns dead air into anticipation. Notifications land, the room fills, and you finish your setup behind a scene that looks deliberate.
When: Bathroom, door, food delivery — the two-minute step-away every stream has.
Why it works: One tap covers the room: game, cam, and desktop all at once. Nothing awkward stays on screen, and the countdown tells viewers exactly when to drift back.
When: The game crashes, audio drops, or a capture card picks tonight to die.
Why it works: A calm, branded “hang tight” screen beats a frozen frame. Viewers stay seated while you fix it, instead of assuming the stream is over.
When: End of stream — you’re saying goodbyes, plugging socials, sending or landing a raid.
Why it works: An ending scene keeps a produced frame on screen through the whole wind-down, so the last thing anyone sees is your brand, not a hard cut to offline.
Starting Soon, Be Right Back, Stream Ending — every preview below is the real full-screen renderer with its countdown ticking, scaled down, not a mockup.
The countdown that turns early arrivals into an audience.
Fire it, go live, and finish your coffee. The purple sweep, your title, and a live 05:00 countdown hold the screen while notifications bring people in — by zero you have a room, not an empty chat.
One key up before you go liveOne tap covers everything — game, cam, desktop — instantly.
“Back in five” with a ticking timer reads as a promise, not an absence. Set the countdown to auto-hide at 00:00 and the stream uncovers itself the moment you’re due back.
Can auto-hide itself at 00:00A produced close that holds the room through the wind-down.
“Thanks for watching” stays up while you wrap, plug tomorrow’s stream, and send the raid. Retext the subtitle to your schedule once and it’s one press at the end of every show.
One key closes the showYour Kloot source sits on top of your OBS scene, so a screen hides the whole canvas in one press — and one more press reveals the game that was under it all along. No scene collection, no switching.
Turn overtime on and the clock keeps counting past zero in red instead of handing off, so the room can see you are late rather than staring at a dead countdown.
Yes. Each screen chooses what happens at its own zero, so you can run a sequence as long as you like — a pre-show card, an intro, then the stream.
No. Everything happens inside the one browser source, so OBS never switches anything.
Chaining is part of Creator ($15/mo). Free runs two screens with a countdown.
One browser source. Every screen, every clock, one deck.
Free forever · Creator $99/yr or $15/mo · Pro $149/yr or $25/mo · Event Pass $9 for 3 days