Knowledge Base > OBS Studio > Plugins Guide

Plugins Guide

Plugins

OBS Studio supports a variety of plugins that provide new kinds of sources, filters, and features. Some plugins also allow OBS Studio to communicate with certain kinds of hardware, such as the Elgato Stream Deck.

The OBS Project maintains a list of community-made plugins on the forums.

Some plugins are also made available to Linux users via Flathub.

Compatibility

Most plugins are developed to be usable on all platforms where OBS Studio is available. However, there are certain cases where a plugin might not be compatible with your copy of OBS Studio:

  • the plugin is only available on one platform (i.e. Windows, not macOS)
  • the plugin is not available for the same architecture (i.e. x86_64, not ARM64)
  • the plugin has not been updated for the version of OBS Studio that you are using

To see what plugins are available for what platforms on OBS Studio 28.0, see the OBS Studio 28 Plugin Compatibility list.

Install or remove plugins

Many of OBS Studio's most popular plugins come with installers. In general, they install plugins to the locations listed below.

If you need to install a plugin manually, the relevant files likely need to go in one these folders. Please check the plugin's documentation first.

Windows (all users)

C:\Program Files\obs-studio\obs-plugins\64bit
or
C:\ProgramData\obs-studio\plugins


Note: plugins installed to the ProgramData folder require a specific directory structure. A folder named with the plugins name must contain a bin and data folder. Within the bin folder, a 64bit folder is needed which contains the plugin .dll. Within the data folder, a locale folder is needed which contains the locale .ini files. This is the preferred location for manual installs.

Windows
(legacy 32-bit plugins; OBS Studio 27.2.4 and prior only)

C:\Program Files\obs-studio\obs-plugins\32bit

macOS

~/Library/Application Support/obs-studio/plugins

Within this folder, there should be separate bundles for each plugin ending with .plugin. If you view these in Finder, they look like white plastic toy bricks.

Linux

~/.config/obs-studio/plugins

Linux
(Flatpak)

Install plugins using Flatpak

If you install OBS Studio to a custom location or use portable mode, you will need to change the installer's target folder to your custom location's data/plugins folder.

If you wish to use a custom plugin directory, you can set the environment variables OBS_PLUGINS_PATH and OBS_PLUGINS_DATA_PATH to a directory of your choice.