How to let your mods edit your stream overlay

What your mods actually need

Mods help with three different jobs. Most run the show while you stream: test an alert, skip one, bump a counter, pause a timer. Some design: move things, restyle them, build a new scene. A few run the team. Each job needs a different amount of access.

Layrs has one role per job, and each role can do everything the roles above it in this list can:

• Moderator: Runs things live: counters, timers, test alerts, panic button.
• Editor: Designs overlays: add, move and edit everything that isn’t locked.
• Manager: Manages the team, locks and versions.
• Owner: The streamer. Full control.

Moderators don’t move or restyle anything unless you set a widget’s Who can edit to Moderators and up, but on any widget not locked to Managers they can show or hide it, press its live buttons and change its live values (a text widget’s words, a goal, a timer or counter label), in Layrs. They can also add emotes, GIFs, clips and videos, text and drawings in Live mode, and change or remove anything added that way. Mods in your chat can also show, hide and set numbers with ; commands.

Give each person the smallest role that does their job. You can change it later on the Team page, and nobody but you can be the Owner.

StreamElements: an invite link with an access level

StreamElements calls this dashboard access for your mods. In your profile menu, open My Managers, pick an access level, Bot Supervisor, Editor or Full Control, create an invite link and send it to your mod. Each link works once and expires after 72 hours if nobody uses it (StreamElements help center).

Read what each level covers in that article before you pick one, and keep Full Control for someone you’d trust with your whole channel.

Streamlabs: Shared Access roles

In your Streamlabs dashboard, open your account settings, then Shared Access. Click Add User, choose a role and the permissions, then copy the invite link and send it. Your mod has 72 hours to accept it (Streamlabs). The roles:

• Moderator: the dashboard, skipping or repeating alerts, Media Share controls and Cloudbot.
• Administrator: complete access to your account, including platform access tokens and stream keys, but not your donation settings or Shared Access settings.
• Custom: only the options you tick.

Streamlabs says mods with shared access can’t see your settings page, whatever their role. The post doesn’t say whether a mod can edit your overlay’s layout or widgets.

OBS itself has no accounts for mods

OBS Studio has no way to invite a second person. To control it from somewhere else, tools use obs-websocket, built into OBS since 28.0.0 (obs-websocket). It gives “access to much of OBS’s feature set”: switching scenes, changing sources, starting and stopping your stream, even changing your stream settings (protocol). One password opens all of it, with no roles in between.

The obs-websocket project recommends a password “against unauthorized control”. Remote desktop is the other way in, and it hands over your whole PC. Keep both for people you’d lend your computer to.

Edit live, together, in Layrs

1. 1

   Open Team

   Sign in to Layrs with Twitch or Kick and open Team in the left rail.

2. 2

   Invite your mod with a role

   Type their Twitch or Kick name, or paste their profile link, pick Moderator, Editor or Manager next to it and click Invite. Or pick the role and click Create link: by default it works for 1 person and expires after 7 days. Send it in Discord or a whisper. Moderator is the default, and you can change it any time.

3. 3

   They sign in with their own account

   Your mod signs in to Layrs with their own Twitch or Kick, accepts your house rules if you wrote some, and your channel shows up in their Layrs. No password changes hands.

4. 4

   Edit together

   Open a scene at the same time and you see each other’s cursors with names. Press / on the canvas to talk right at your cursor.

Your OBS link stays the same the whole time. Changes reach the overlay in OBS while you work, so nobody has to touch OBS.

Stay in control of what mods can touch

Lock what matters. Select a widget and set Who can edit to Managers and up or Only the owner. The server checks every edit against it, so nobody below can move, restyle, reword, show or hide it, or press its live buttons (a counter’s +1, the subathon’s Pause), from Layrs, from chat or from a Stream Deck. Set it to Moderators and up instead and Moderators can edit that widget fully.

House rules first. Write guidelines on the Team page. Everyone on your Layrs team accepts them before they can edit or run anything in Layrs, and again each time you change them, and you can see when each person accepted.

Undo anyone. History shows every change with the name of who made it. A manager can undo everything one person did in Layrs since a point in time, and everyone else’s changes stay. Layrs keeps that history for 30 days (at most 2,000 changes per overlay), plus the last 100 automatic and 50 named versions you can restore.

Your accounts stay yours. Only the Owner can connect Twitch, choose where tips are paid, or add an AI or text to speech key.

Let mods run the show from chat, Controls or a Stream Deck

From chat. The mods of your Twitch or Kick channel can type ; commands, without a Layrs account:

They change only widgets that aren’t locked to managers, and each one shows in History under the mod’s name for 30 days. You can switch ; commands off on the Chat bot page. Every chat command.

Ask AI from chat. Once you add an AI key, mods on your Layrs team can ask @layrstv in chat to change the overlay. They act with their team role, at most Editor, and only after accepting your guidelines. Other mods in your chat just get “Only people on the Layrs team can ask me.”

Panic button. Moderators and up get a red Panic button in Controls. One click hides that overlay in OBS, and clicking it again brings it back.

Stream Deck. A manager can create a control token so an Elgato Stream Deck or Bitfocus Companion runs live actions like panic, skipping alerts, counters and sounds. It can’t edit anything. Set it up.

One mod, many channels. A mod who helps several streamers switches between their channels from the menu at the top of the left rail.

Fair questions before you let mods in

“I already use Streamer.bot.” Keep it. It runs on your streaming PC as a portable app (install guide), calls itself local first and has first-class support for OBS (Streamer.bot). It’s great for actions you build yourself and trigger from chat. Layrs does a different job: your mods change the overlay itself from their own browser, with roles and undo, and nothing new runs on your PC.

“I don’t want my mods touching my scenes.” Then make them Moderators. They can’t move or restyle your widgets unless you set one to Moderators and up. But on any widget not locked to Managers they can show or hide it, press its live buttons and change its live values (a text widget’s words, a goal, a timer or counter label), in Layrs, and they can add emotes, GIFs, clips and videos, text and drawings in Live mode. Mods in your chat can also show, hide and set numbers with ; commands, and with an AI key the ones on your team can ask @layrstv. Lock what must never change to Managers and up, switch Smart commands off on the Chat bot page, or remove the AI key (only the Owner can add or remove it). Want one designer? Make them an Editor.

“What if a mod’s account gets hacked?” In Layrs, whoever took it gets that mod’s role. For a Moderator that means the panic button, the live buttons, show or hide and the live values of any widget not locked to Managers, anything set to Moderators and up, and Live-mode emotes, GIFs, clips and videos, text and drawings. Remove them on the Team page and they lose access to your channel at once, @layrstv requests included. Unmod them on Twitch or Kick so their ; commands stop too (or switch Smart commands off). Then undo what they did from each scene’s History: Revert on one of their rows takes back their edits in Layrs, and on a row under their chat name, what they changed from chat. Counter and timer values aren’t in a Revert: set them back in Controls.

Mod access side by side

FAQ