Change Your Twitch Title and Category With Each Video
Let a 24/7 Twitch stream switch its title, category and tags every time a new video starts, without restarting the stream or touching Twitch yourself.
What this does
A 24/7 Twitch channel that plays a mix of games has a problem: Twitch lists the channel under one category, and it only changes when you change it. If your playlist moves from Fortnite to Minecraft at 3 a.m., the channel keeps sitting in the Fortnite directory with a Fortnite title.
With Title and category turned on, playout.video changes the channel's title, category and (if you want) tags each time the next video starts. The stream itself does not restart or drop. Viewers stay, the stream stays live, and only the listing changes.
It runs on our servers, so your computer can be off, and it works on every plan.
Before you start
You need:
A stream with a playlist of videos.
A Twitch destination on that stream, using a connected Twitch channel. See Connecting Streaming Platforms if you have not added one yet.
Permission from Twitch to change the channel's title and category.
Channels connected before this feature need to be reconnected once. Twitch asks for a separate permission to edit stream info, and older connections did not ask for it. The settings dialog tells you when this is needed and links to the channel page. Click Reconnect, sign in to Twitch, and accept the new permission. Your destinations keep working as before.
Turn it on
Open your stream and click the Twitch icon in the right-hand panel. It appears once the stream has a Twitch destination.
Switch on Change with each video.
Click Settings to set a title (see below), and Set categories to pick a category for each video.
You can also reach the same settings from the Twitch destination's ⋯ menu, under Title and category....
The next time a new video starts, Twitch updates about five seconds later. If the stream is already live when you save, the current video's title and category are sent within half a minute.
Pick a category for each video
The dialog lists every video in the stream's playlist. Next to each one is a category picker that searches Twitch's own list, the same one you see under Edit Stream Info on Twitch. Type a few letters of the game ("fortn", "brawl", "left 4") and pick it.
A video's category saves the moment you pick it, and it belongs to the video, not the stream. If you use the same video in another stream, it already has its category there.
Category for videos without one is the fallback. Leave it empty and a video without a category leaves the channel's category as it is.
Write a title template
The Title field is a template. Two variables do most of the work:
Variable | Becomes |
|---|---|
| The video's title |
| The video's Twitch category |
Some examples:
{{title}}: just the video's title.24/7 | {{game}} | {{title}}: becomes "24/7 | Minecraft | Building a Castle".{{game}} all day, every day: {{title}}
The video's title comes from its metadata. For imported videos that is the original title; for uploads it is the file name without the extension. You can edit it on the video's page under Metadata. The other metadata variables work here too, including your own custom fields such as {{episode}}.
Each row in the video list shows the title that video will get on Twitch, so you can check the template before saving.
A few things happen automatically:
Empty parts are tidied up. If a video has no category,
24/7 | {{game}} | {{title}}becomes "24/7 | Building a Castle", not "24/7 | | Building a Castle".Long titles are shortened. Twitch allows 140 characters. Anything longer is cut and ends with "...".
A title is never empty. If the template renders to nothing, the video's own title is used.
Tags (optional)
Switch on Change tags too to replace the channel's tags as well. Each video can have its own tags; a video without any gets the default tags you enter in the dialog.
Twitch's rules for tags apply: up to 10, up to 25 characters each, letters and numbers only. We clean tags up to fit, so "Battle Royale" becomes "BattleRoyale".
Leave tags off and the channel keeps the tags it has.
The Twitch panel
The Twitch panel beside your stream shows how the channel looks on Twitch and what happens next:
On Twitch now is read from Twitch itself: the title, category and tags viewers see, whoever set them. Click Edit to change them by hand, the same as Edit Stream Info on Twitch. With the switch on, your edit stays until the next video starts.
Now playing and Up next show the video on air and the one after it, each with its category and the title it sends. Pick a category right there if one is missing. At the end of a shuffled playlist the next video is not known yet, because the order is shuffled again first.
Video categories counts how many videos have a category and opens the full list.
If the stream sends to more than one Twitch channel, pick the destination at the top of the panel.
You can also open your Twitch channel or dashboard and watch the title change as the playlist moves on.
When something goes wrong
A failed update never affects the stream. Video keeps going to Twitch whatever happens to the title.
The permission is missing or was revoked. You get a notification and the dialog asks you to reconnect the channel. Changes resume as soon as you do.
Twitch refuses the category or a tag. The title still changes, and the dialog says which part Twitch refused. The next video tries again with everything.
Twitch is having trouble. We retry, waiting a little longer each time, up to every ten minutes.
Good to know
Changes only happen while the Twitch destination is live. A stopped destination is left alone.
Edits on Twitch hold until the next video. If you change the title on Twitch by hand, it stays until the playlist moves on.
Stopping it: switch off Change with each video and save. The channel keeps whatever title and category it has at that moment.
Other playlists count too. If the calendar plays a different playlist for a while, those videos get their own categories. Videos that are not in the stream's main playlist show up in the list while they are playing.
Related articles
Running a gaming channel around the clock? Set a category on your first few videos and let the playlist do the rest.