# OBS Notification System [Feature Request]



## kodec (May 12, 2017)

OBS is great, when the program registers to start a recording.

I often find myself pressing my hotkey to start a recording and find that, after an hour or two of work, OBS never registered and started my recording. If anything this is a major bottleneck to a program that is meant to record.

Why does such a great program lack visual notifications about starting and stopping recordings?

I've read that when OBS fails OBS plays an error sound. That's good, but far from a solution to this problem.

I've recorded a screencast of an example of how OBS should be doing notifications.






Notification System needs:
Ability to either display an on-screen notification message (shown in the video above) or play a customizable sound on recording/streaming START and STOP.
Ability to show visual notification OR playback a customizable audio notification when switching between scenes (shown in the video above).

If anyone is interested in the AHK script i used for this, feel free to grab it here:
edit:: i cant post my link, the system thinks it's spam, i've contacted staff. (in the meantime, see the description of the youtube video for link to script).
I've included both the AHK script and the compiled version, make sure to read the info.txt first.

Older threads:
https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/taskbar-recording-notification.8761/
https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/notification-when-start-record.21415/


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## kodec (May 16, 2017)

So i thought i recorded again, and lost 3 hours of material because of the lack of notifications.

What are your guys methods to make sure that you are recording?
Constantly watching to make sure that OBS is recording detaches from my focus and is very distracting. Recording 'should just work', no?

Is it possible to have OBS AUTO-record on startup?
I'll be looking into a way to automate OBS on startup to do so if its not possible native.

@the bug tracker
https://obsproject.com/mantis/view.php?id=700


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## idg (Oct 11, 2017)

Sadly there is no native way to do, my work around for auto record currently is to create a shortcut in the start menu startup folder to start OBS on boot, then use Auto hotkey to create a script that runs on boot to press a hotkey, eg, I've set my OBS to start the record buffer when pressing F11, the script will then check to make sure OBS is running and if it is it will press F11. So far its been working fine. This is script ive been using: 

```
DetectHiddenWindows, on
WinWait,ahk_class Qt5QWindowIcon
controlSend,,{F11},ahk_class Qt5QWindowIcon
return
```


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## davesf (Feb 13, 2019)

I've run into this problem also.....  especially using "replay buffer" retroactive clip hotkey (rather than continuous recording). 

My workaround is to use a separate program to watch the OBS output folder, and show a desktop notification when a new file appears. This at least gives me some visual notification that my instant clip hotkey did something.

The program I'm using right now is "Watch 4 Folder 2.5"... it's visually very clunky looking, but it works, and it's free. 

http://leelusoft.blogspot.com/p/watch-4-folder-25.html


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## iSkilz (Sep 26, 2020)

Here's my solution to the problem. I make it beep (high) when I start recording, and beep (low) when I stop recording.
It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing!

```
;{█████████████████████ OBS ██████████████████████

    #if
        NumpadDiv::
            DetectHiddenWindows On
            if WinExist("ahk_class Qt5QWindowIcon") {
                soundbeep(800)
                sendpress("^{F6}", 40)
            } else send /
            return
        NumpadMult::
            DetectHiddenWindows On
            if WinExist("ahk_class Qt5QWindowIcon") {
                soundbeep(600)
            } else send *
            return

    ;}███████████████████████████████████████████████

    soundbeep(frequency:=523, volume:=35) {
        soundget current_volume
        soundset % volume
        soundbeep % frequency
        sleep 150
        soundset current_volume
    }
    sendpress(keys, duration:=40) {
        SendMode Event
        SetKeyDelay, , % duration
        send % keys
    }
```


_ps. in the example above, I'm using Ctrl+F6 as my OBS hotkey to start recording, but in AHK, I'm actually using the numpad-divide key to create a little beep before it then pushes the hotkey for OBS to start recording._


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## iSkilz (Oct 4, 2020)

_*yawn*_

Here's the final code that I use for OBS. It's a bit more complicated, but it might be worth a look.

```
;{█████████████████████ OBS ██████████████████████

    #if
        NumpadDiv::
            DetectHiddenWindows On
            if not WinActive("Calculator") AND WinExist("ahk_exe obs64.exe") {
                if not (started_recording) {
                    soundbeep(800)
                    sendpress("^{F6}", 40)
                    started_recording := A_TickCount
                }
            } else send /
            return
        NumpadMult::
            DetectHiddenWindows On
            if not WinActive("Calculator") AND WinExist("ahk_exe obs64.exe") {
                if (started_recording) {
                    elapsed_time_recording := A_TickCount - started_recording
                    if (elapsed_time_recording > 200) {
                        started_recording := 0
                        soundbeep(600)
                    }
                }
            } else send *
            return

    ;}███████████████████████████████████████████████

    soundbeep(frequency:=523, volume:=35) {
        soundget current_volume
        soundset % volume
        soundbeep % frequency
        sleep 150
        soundset current_volume
    }
    sendpress(keys, duration:=40) {
        SendMode Event
        SetKeyDelay, , % duration
        send % keys
    }
```



_changes include:_

_it now requires a 200ms delay to produce a notification for stopping after starting recording. This is because that is approximately how long it takes to stop recording after starting._
_the mult and div keys now always work in the windows calc app, regardless of whether OBS is running or not._
_the OBS title name has been changed to something that is less commonly used._


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## DimOkGamer (Jan 12, 2022)

If there are still those who are interested in notifications from OBS on Windows, then I can suggest you my OBS Notifier application.
It uses obs-websocket 4.9.1, and there is also a modified version of it with replay support.

Download: https://dmitriysalnikov.itch.io/obs-notifier


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