When you first start streaming on Twitch, trying to understand the settings in your account is a bit like learning a new language. Here is a short introduction to what these settings might mean and what will be the best choices for you right now.
To get started, go to Twitch, select your profile in the top right corner and go to your Creator Dashboard. Go to your Settings, select Stream. Here, you can change most of your settings.
Disconnect protection
The first setting that you’ll want to change is Disconnect Protection. This will make sure that your stream shows a graphic for 90 seconds whenever your stream loses connection or your PC crashes. If you were to reboot your PC and go live again, that graphic will fill the space of when your stream went down and your VOD will only be one continuous VOD. This way your stream doesn’t have to refresh.
Latency mode
Latency mode is a setting that affects the delay between the live stream and viewer interactions. The purpose of latency mode is to reduce the delay between when you perform an action during your stream and when viewers see it, as well as when viewers send messages in the chat and when you can respond to them in real-time. Basically, if you have good bandwidth and prefer real-time interaction with your viewers, you should set it to low latency mode. If you don’t have very good bandwidth and care more about smooth playback and a buffer-free experience, normal latency is the best choice for you.
Store past broadcasts
This feature allows you to save previous streams as videos on your live channel. Under VOD settings, toggle on Store past broadcasts if it isn’t already. By default, the broadcasts will be saved for 14 days, or 60 days if you have Amazon Prime and it's linked to your account, or with Twitch Turbo.
Followers-only mode
Followers-only mode is a chat setting on platforms like Twitch that allows only followers of a channel to participate in the chat during a live stream, helping to reduce spam and encourage genuine engagement. It can be useful especially for marginalized groups or people that receive a lot of hate messages, as it can make it harder for the haters to target their stream. You can change these settings in your Creator Dashboard under Settings > Moderation. You can either select ‘Any followers’ or a time limit. We’d recommend a time limit of 10 minutes, as it might be too much of a barrier for people to keep watching if they have to follow you or wait for a long time before they can start participating, and it can prevent you from growing your stream.
AutoMod
With AutoMod, you can make sure that specific words will be filtered out, and you can set the level to which you want AutoMod to help you out. You can also select which terms and phrases you want to have blocked from your chat in your AutoMod Controls. You can find all of these settings under Creator Dashboard under Settings > Moderation and then going to AutoMod Controls.
Block hyperlinks
In your Settings > Moderation, under Chat Options, you have the option to block hyperlinks. If anyone tries to post a link of whatever it may be, it will show as asterisks. This can be super helpful if you don’t want any spam. If you want to block only a certain type of links, you’ll need something like Nightbot to help you set more specific rules.
Still not sure which settings to use? You can look at the settings that other streamers use by selecting the settings gear at the bottom of their stream, select Advanced and then toggling on Video Stats. Now you can see which resolution they stream at, the FPS, buffer size and bitrate, among other things.
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