Using customized alerts is a crucial component of any live stream. These alerts should be modified to match your personality because they’re an extension of your brand. Adding your own flavor to the alerts will make them more engaging and encourage more interaction.
Because these on-screen alerts are used on a regular basis, they should be well thought out and impactful. We suggest making an effort to make them memorable. Today, we’ll show how to set up unique alerts for Twitch.
What Are Twitch Alerts?
Twitch alerts are notifications of notable events displayed during the course of a live stream. Some examples of notable events are donations or new subscriptions from the streamers community. Alerts are most commonly portrayed using animated visuals and audio sound bites. Each different type of alert should be distinguishable.
For special events such as a large donation, or a flurry of gifted subs, we recommended choosing visuals and audio that really reflect this level of hype. Getting your viewers excited is a great way to make a streaming moment memorable. Alerts are often set up on 3rd party services such as Streamlabs or Streamelements, however more recently Twitch have created their own alerts.
Why Should You Use Alerts for Twitch ?
If you’re a Twitch streamer, we’re going to outline all the benefits you can find once you start using alerts.
1. Identify New Subscribers and Followers
Notifying all of your viewers whenever someone new follows you or subscribes to your Twitch channel is one most obvious and popular use for a Twitch alert. Normally, you would just greet them to your channel by writing their name (or more likely, username) on the screen.
You can set up this simple type of interaction to automatically happen, so you won’t have to interrupt your broadcast. It promotes more engagement from your existing followers, who might join in welcoming the newcomers into the conversation, and helps a new follower feel valued.
You could even take it a step further by including a special welcome sound that plays whenever a new follower or subscriber signs up.
2. Engage With Your Viewers
Twitch Alerts are a great asset allowing more opportunity for Streamer-Viewer interactions. The viewers will appreciate having their names displayed on stream.
Along with displaying the alerts, we recommend also giving a shoutout to each community member that is showing support. As a small streamer you should also be giving shout outs for simple follow events.
3. Encourage People To Donate and Subscribe
Alerts during live streams can create very unique situations where people get caught up in the hype. If one viewer makes a sizable donation that leads to a huge reaction from streamers and viewers, it will encourage other members of the community to also send a donation.
You can see this excitement in some special streams like a sub-a-thon. The goal is to keep the streamer online and streaming until the timer runs out. Each new sub add’s more time onto the timer. As you can imagine, seeing a gifted subs alert show up will create a positive vibe amongst the viewers.
Benefits of Using Twitch Alerts For Streamers
There are numerous benefits of using Twitch alerts.
- Twitch alerts improve the complete look and aesthetic of your stream. They can be used for engaging more people in your Twitch stream.
- They can be utilized to communicate important events that you might not have enough time to discuss in your stream. This is important for streamers who have a large audience and simply can’t take the time to thank everyone who follows them or subs to them.
- Alerts give viewers reasons to interact with your stream. For some of your followers, having the chance to get to know you as a person rather than simply a person on their screen, allows them to develop a better connection with you. For some people, it’s about living a brief moment of online fame or getting their name on the big screen. Nevertheless, your visitors have very little reason to participate or contribute without alerts.
Additionally, you are not obliged to use the same notifications as everyone else. You can customize stream alerts with different text, pictures, and sounds to suit different situations. Along with the pop-up notification, many Twitch notifications also include an audio file. In fact, some streamers only use audio notifications to let viewers know when something has happened that will affect the stream.
Step-by-Step Guide To Set Up Alerts on Twitch
The specific way of adding alerts to your streams depends on the current streaming software that you use. Setting up alerts for your stream requires a platform that integrates with your Twitch account. These platforms will offer a lot of different tools, many of which include a way to set up alerts.
Let’s discuss the different platforms. If you’re already using one of these platforms, skip straight to it and see how you go about adding alerts to your stream.
Streamlabs
Streamlabs supports one-click installs for Widget themes which greatly simplifies the process of setting up alerts and also reduces the time needed to set it up.
Here is a step-by-step guide to setting up alerts on Twitch:
Press the + symbol in the Streamlabs Desktop Sources section to bring up a list of sources that can be added to your scene.
Choose Alert Box from the pop-up menu and select Add Source.
After you’ve finished adding the source, the default alert should show up when you test any alert.
Now it’s time to configure the alerts. Alerts can be fully customized from the Streamlabs dashboard.
- You’ll be able to change the settings for each individual alert. These settings include sound volume, audio file, image file and much more. If you’re looking for some high quality alerts but don’t have the time to configure everything then pre configured Twitch alerts are the way to go.
StreamElements
StreamElements’ is a cloud based approach to managing your live stream. It’s got an advanced overlay editor, containing the latest industry standard features. You can easily create, update, duplicate, and adjust your overlays within this overlay editor.
Each overlay is given a unique URL that needs to be added to your broadcasting software such as OBS. This allows you to store all of your overlays within StreamElements, allowing you to change devices without needing to set up all your overlays again.
Recently they’ve released a beta version of their new widget editors. Let’s take a look at how you can get involved.
- Head over to Streamelements and login
From the home page you will see a banner. Select Join the Beta
Now you’ll be able to Create New Alert or select an existing one
From a premade alert you can either use it as is, or you can customize it
Once you select Use Alert, you’ll be given a unique URL which you’ll need to add to a browser source
Sound Alerts Twitch
Here are the steps to set up Twitch from Sound Alerts
- Start by heading over to Sound Alerts and log in.
Go to your
Dashboard and select Overlays, then Add New Alert Design.- You can create an alert from a template, text only or with your own custom media.
Configure your alert as you like. Once that’s done you’ll need to add a browser source link to your broadcasting software. Go to
Settings -> Setup. Now choose the option relevant to you, and follow the instructions on screen.
Tipeeestream
Tipeeestream is a very popular way to set up your alert, especially amongst European streamers. It provides a bunch of settings, including basic alerts, goals and counters.
To set up your alerts follow the steps below.
- Go to Tipeestream and login
Navigate to your dashboard and select Alert Box V2 from the sidebar
Select all the alerts that you would like to add, then Create Box
When you’ve set up your alert and are ready to add to your stream select the Launch button
Now, to add the alert to your stream, copy the URL and paste it into a browser source in your broadcasting software
Donation Alerts
- Head over to Donation Alerts and sign in
From the main dashboard select Alerts
- To configure an alert, select the gear icon
- To add new alerts select Add New Variation
- Once you’re happy with the setup, select Show link for embedding
- Copy this link and paste it into a Browser Source within your broadcasting software
To test an alert, select the gear icon and Do a test alert
Where To Get Animated Alerts For Your Stream
If you want high quality and easy to set up animated alerts then check out the alerts we offer in our store. Our alerts are compatible with Streamlabs and Streamelements and include detailed setup instructions. In the case of Streamlabs we used quick install links to make the process even easier.
High quality and custom notifications are the way to go if you’re trying to stand out from the crowd.
Free Twitch Alerts
Here’s a list of free Twitch alerts compatible with top streaming platforms such as Streamlabs and Streamelements.
How To Customize Your Stream Alerts
You should tailor your alerts to match the look and feel of your streaming channel, regardless of the alert type you select, be it textual, graphical, or a Twitch sound alert. Don’t always stick with the default options for language and values. Instead, try different things and decide with your audience what actually works for your streaming style.
You can change the fonts, colors, sizes, text position on the screen, images, and even the audio file you use. This is true of many of the alerts that you download.
Most Popular Types of Alerts
There are different types of Twitch alerts that you can add to your stream, such as:
Follow Alert
This alert is triggered when a viewer follows the stream. You can configure these alerts so that when someone clicks the Follow button while you’re streaming, a message notifying everyone that the newcomer has joined the channel community appears on the screen. Keep in mind, as you grow in popularity this alert might need to be disabled to avoid spamming viewers with alerts.
Subscriber Alert
This alert is triggered when a viewer decides to support the streamer via paid subscription. This alert is similar to the one for new followers but highlights channel subscribers. People view Twitch subscriptions as having higher levels of support than following because they usually require some form of payment. Based on the type of subscription, these alerts may differ.
You also enable the text-to-speech feature, which reads aloud a message typed by the subscriber.
Donation Alert
A donation alert is triggered when a viewer sends a donation to the streamer. You can configure these alerts to acknowledge payments that users make on Twitch (when users spend bits on your channel). Here, you can also turn on text-to-speech functionality, which will read out any messages left by donors.
Host Alert
This alert is triggered when another streamer hosts your channel. When you go offline, you might occasionally decide to let someone else host your video. If you choose to do this, you can set up a Host Alert to inform your audience of this via an on-screen notification.
Raid Alert
A raid alert is activated when a streamer raids your channel with their viewers. When another streamer directs their viewers to your channel towards the end of their stream, it is known as a raid. Raiding is a great technique for streamers to collaborate and attract the same audience.
A “raider” will enter the chat thread of their channel followed by the name of the channel they want to raid close to the end of the stream. This starts a 10-second countdown in a pinned chat that displays an inactive Raid Now button. You have 10 seconds to click Raid Now to start the raid, but if you don’t stop it before 80 seconds have passed, it will start automatically. After that, a pinned chat message informing the raider’s viewers that they are joining a raid will appear.
Cheer Alert
A cheer alert is triggered when a viewer sends the streamer bits, which is a currency native to Twitch. It helps acknowledge donations on your live stream.
Conclusion
Alerts form an important part of a live stream. If you are a streamer who wants to get more followers and increase the engagement rate, make sure that you integrate unique alerts into your Twitch stream.