YouTube Live Settings Explained

Where These Settings Live

Each YouTube destination has a YouTube panel. Open your stream, then open the destination's YouTube panel. Under Settings you see what the YouTube live is set to do.

Who can watch, End broadcast when the stream stops, Start new YouTube lives automatically and Altered or synthetic content change right there.
Edit opens a dialog for the title, description and the settings listed below them.
Made For Kids and the category are chosen when you create a live with Create Broadcast in a new destination. To change them later, use YouTube Studio.

A new YouTube live that playout.video starts for you keeps the title, description, privacy, category and these answers, so you set them once per destination.

Who Can Watch

Public: anyone can find the live on YouTube, and your subscribers can be told it has started.
Unlisted: only people with the link can watch. It does not show in search, on your channel or in subscribers' feeds.
Private: only you and the people you invite in YouTube Studio can watch.

Only public lives count toward the watch hours the YouTube Partner Program asks for. Hours on an unlisted or private live do not count, and neither do hours of a live YouTube did not save. A stream left on Unlisted after testing can run for weeks and add nothing toward monetization.

You can change who can watch at any time, also while the live is on air. New lives get Public unless you choose otherwise.

Made for Kids

YouTube asks every channel to say whether its videos are made for children. Turn Made For Kids on only if children are the main audience.

On a live made for kids, YouTube turns off live chat, Super Chat, notifications to subscribers, and personalized ads, which usually lowers what the live earns. YouTube can change an answer it thinks is wrong, and the law in some countries requires the answer to be right. YouTube's own help explains how to decide.

Altered or Synthetic Content

YouTube asks you to say when a video could make viewers believe something that is not real. Answer Yes when the live shows realistic people, voices, places or events that were made or changed with AI or other tools, for example a real person made to say something they did not say. YouTube then adds a label to the live.

You do not need a Yes for:

Content that is clearly not real, such as animation or fantasy scenes
Color and lighting changes, beauty filters, background blur and other effects
Using AI to help with a script, title, thumbnail or captions

The answer applies to the live you are on now, even while it is on air, and to every new live the destination starts afterwards. Until someone answers, YouTube Studio shows the question as blank.

End Broadcast When the Stream Stops

This switch is ours, not YouTube's. It decides what happens to the YouTube live when you stop your stream on purpose.

On (the default): stopping the stream ends the YouTube live, so YouTube saves the recording. Your next start makes a new live with a new link.
Off: one YouTube live stays open across stops, so its link keeps working. You end it yourself in YouTube Studio. YouTube may not save a live that runs longer than 12 hours.

A drop we recover from on our own never ends the live, whichever way the switch is set. If you stop and start often, share your channel's Live tab, which always reaches the current live.

On Free, the switch is fixed to On. For a 24/7 stream that keeps every live saved, see Keep Every YouTube Live on a 24/7 Stream.

Publish When Video Arrives

YouTube Studio calls this auto-start. The panel shows one of these:

On: the live goes public as soon as video from your stream reaches YouTube.
On, preview first: the live has a preview stream, so YouTube holds it in preview. It reaches viewers only when someone presses Go live.
On, held for start time: the live is scheduled, and it goes public at its start time if your stream is sending by then.
Off: the live waits in Ready until someone presses Go live, in the YouTube panel or in YouTube Studio, even while video is arriving.

The setting next to it, End when video stops, is YouTube's auto-stop. We leave it off, because with it on a short drop in video ends the live for good. We end the live when you stop the stream instead, as described above.

Do not confuse this with Start with the playout on the destination, which decides whether the destination sends video at all when the stream starts. See Start With the Playout.

Settings YouTube Fixes When a Live Is Created

Some settings can only be chosen when a live is created. The panel lists them at the bottom, next to a lock:

Latency (normal, low or ultra low)
360° video
Captions
Whether the live starts in preview

To change one, change it in YouTube Studio or create a new live. DVR (rewind) and Added delay can be changed until the live starts. Embedding can be changed at any time.