Guide
Interactive stream overlays, explained
A normal overlay is decoration: frames, labels, a camera border. An interactive overlay is something your viewers can use. They vote, hype, ask, and draw from their phones, and it all shows up live on your broadcast. Here's how it works and how to set one up for free.
What makes an overlay interactive?
The difference is a second surface. A static overlay only has the broadcast: whatever your studio captures, viewers watch. An interactive overlay adds a viewer page. With Streamer Garden, your stream shows a QR code, and scanning it opens your channel's page in a phone browser. What viewers do there (vote in a poll, tap the hype meter, submit a question or a doodle) updates the overlay on your stream in real time.
There's no app for viewers to install and no account for them to create. Scanning the QR is the whole onboarding, keeping the path from watching to participating short.
What your viewers can do
Garden Desktop ships the interactions as widgets you place on your canvas: live polls where viewers rank what happens next; a shared hype meter the whole room charges together; viewer Q&A where you feature the best question on screen; and on-stream drawing, where viewer doodles appear after you approve them. There are also goal bars, a soundboard, and a BRB arcade that keeps the room busy while you step away.
Everything is moderated by default. Questions and drawings wait for your approval, you decide when voting and hype are open, and a panic control pauses every interaction instantly. Moderators can help run it through a scoped link with exactly the controls you choose.
How it gets on your stream
Garden Desktop draws the widgets live on your canvas, between your other layers, so they sit on top of your gameplay or camera exactly where you place them. It streams to Twitch and YouTube, and reaches more platforms such as Kick through Restream.
Streaming vertical? Garden can run a portrait (9:16) output alongside the landscape one, each with its own layout, so a vertical stream gets a layout designed for it instead of a squeezed 16:9 arrangement. You can even use your phone as a wireless camera: scan a one-time pairing code and it appears in your scene.
Do interactive overlays cost money?
Streamer Garden is free to use while it grows: download Garden Desktop, switch on the widgets you want, and your viewers can join the same stream from their phones. There is no card or trial clock.
Try it on your next stream
Setting up takes a few minutes: new to streaming? Start with the beginner's guide, or jump straight in.