Question / Help OBS Title in windows taskbar

1blacknail

New Member
Hi!

I've looked up everywhere for this feature and I can't find it, but I do know it's possible.

How can I change the OBS name in the taskbar?

I'm using 3 and considering to use 4 OBS portable instances at the same time. They all say "OBS 24.0.3 (64bit, windows) - profile: untitled - scene: untitled)".

It's inconvenient when you want to raise a certain OBS from taskbar, I have to click on each one until I find the one I'm looking for.

Now, I've seen online that it's possible, it was something like: "[YOUTUBE] OBS 24.0.3 etc" and "[VIMEO] OBS 24.0.3 etc".

How did he do that? How did he insert the streaming service (or custom words) there? I cannot ask the guy I saw the name changed.

I repeat, the windows taskbar name , probably the obs window title.

It would help a lot. Hope someone can help. Thank you!
 

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koala

Active Member
You can use autohotkey to set arbitrary window titles to any window.
Example:
Code:
#Warn
#SingleInstance, Force
#NoEnv

GroupAdd prog, ahk_exe obs64.exe

WinSetTitle, ahk_group prog, , OBS [custom title]

exit
Results in:
1576719661003.png

1576720009819.png

To manage the titles of 4 different OBS instances is a bit more scripting work, of course. The relevant autohotkey command for changing the window title is WinSetTitle. If you google for "autohotkey set windows title", you get a bunch of Q&A with code snippets how other people handle this.
 
Last edited:

1blacknail

New Member
Thank you so much! So it can be done only via a script. I thought it might be a OBS feature but I looked everywhere, in the options, in the files I could open.

I'll give it a try, even though I'm not a programmer. Hope I can manage and hope it works.

Instead of obs64.exe can I use the whole target address? (c:/program files/etc etc etc/obs64.exe)
 

koala

Active Member
There are several methods to select the window whose title should change. I used one, there are several others: https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/misc/WinTitle.htm
And yes, giving the full path instead of only obs64.exe also works. But I will not look up everything up for you in the docs - you have to create autohotkey scripts yourself.
There might be an easier method for OBS than using an external title changer: You notice the "untitled" parts of the title. If you rename your profile and scene collection from "untitled" to some meaningful names, you get perhaps already what you want. However, you don't get rid of the version stuff.
 

1blacknail

New Member
Well, it works! :D
Took some understanding and tweaking, had to also do some batch files for the full customisation, but it's done.

One quick add about the code: I had to use the full address for all instances, even for the installed OBS.

Batch file opens OBS1, waits 10 seconds, then starts AHK1 and changes name. Batch file opens OBS2, then waits 30 seconds, then starts AHK2. And so on. Had to add a 10 sec wait time so that OBS actually starts and to the others 30 sec wait to make sure I click on OBS's "launch anyway".

I do think every step could have been done completely with AHK and avoid bat files, but it would have taken a lot of time to learn about other AHK commands like running programs or delay between instructions.

Also easier would have been to have a customisation line inside the OBS options. Dreamy would have been multiple streams, same feed to several servers and only one OBS instance.

Thank you again, koala!
 

carlmmii

Active Member
If you've already gone that far with fiddling with AHK, I highly recommend playing around with it some more. The documentation is good enough, and there are plenty of other people asking questions that are probably loosely related to anything you would want to do with it.

Btw, the approach I would take for fully AHK'ing your process would be to run a loop which searches for the window title of your "launch anyway" popup, and sends the appropriate key combination to confirm that dialogue box.

Loop, sleep, and send commands, with some window checks... basically the bread and butter of AHK.
 
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