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OBS and OBS-Studio: Portable Mode on Windows

Running OBS/OBS-Studio in Portable Mode means all settings (Profiles and Scene Collections) are saved within the OBS main folder. You can copy the whole folder to a second PC or USB-Stick and use it wherever you want.
Be aware, the File-Paths for image and other sources might be different on a different PC. In this case these sources have to be manually fixed.

OBS-Studio

First download the latest OBS-Studio Zip file and extract it. You can download it from Github. To run OBS-Studio in Portable Mode we also have two options. You can create a shortcut to the OBS32.exe and change the Target to include "--portable" or "-p" without the "".
  • For example: ["Z:\Program Files\obs-studio\bin\32bit\OBS32.exe" --portable]
Or you can create a file called "portable_mode.txt" in your main OBS-Studio folder.

Profiles, Scene Collections and Settings
For both OBS and OBS-Studio, if you already created several Scene Collections and Profiles and want to switch to the Portable mode now, make sure to copy over the existing Profiles and Scene Collections to your portable folder. First start OBS or OBS-Studio in the portable mode to create all necessary folders. You can then find the existing files in your %AppData% folder.
  • For OBS (classic) under %AppData%\OBS\profiles and sceneCollection, copy the folders directly into the portable \OBS folder. You can also copy over the global.ini for all general settings.
  • For OBS-Studio under %AppData%\obs-studio\basic\profiles and scenes, copy the folders into the portable obs-studio\config\obs-studio\basic folder. You can also copy over the global.ini for all general settings.
Sources on different PC's
A good way to keep your sources intact would be to copy them onto the USB stick if possible and give the USB-Stick the same drive letter on each PC. This can easily be done in the Disk Management of Windows.
Open the Disk Management, right-click the USB-Stick and select "Change Drive-Letter and Paths..". Then for example give your USB-Stick the drive Letter Z on each PC and all sources should work.

OBS (classic)
First download the latest OBS Zip file and extract it. You can download it from Github. To run OBS (classic) in Portable Mode you have two options. You can create a shortcut to the OBS.exe and change the "Target" to include "-portable" without the "".
  • For example: ["Z:\Program Files\OBS\OBS.exe" -portable]
Alternatively you can create an empty text-file in your main OBS folder. Make sure your file explorer shows you the file extensions like .avi/.jpg etc. Then rename the text file from "New Text Document.txt" to "obs_portable_mode". Make sure the .txt part is removed.
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