Streamer GardenGuide
Interactive stream overlays, explained
A normal overlay is decoration: frames, labels, a camera border. An interactive overlay is a surface your viewers can act on — they vote, hype, ask, and draw from their phones, and the results render live on your broadcast. Here's how that works and how to set one up free.
What makes an overlay interactive?
The difference is a second surface. A static overlay only has the broadcast: whatever you point OBS at, viewers watch. An interactive overlay adds a viewer page — with Streamer Garden, your overlay 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
Streamer Garden ships the interactions as widgets you place on the overlay with a drag-and-drop editor: 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
One OBS Browser Source. Streamer Garden gives you a transparent overlay URL; add it to your scene, size it to your canvas, and the widgets paint on top of your gameplay or camera. Because it's just a browser source, it works with Twitch, YouTube, Kick, or any platform you stream to with OBS.
Streaming vertical? Each scene stores a separate portrait (9:16) layout alongside the landscape one, so a vertical output gets a layout designed for it instead of a squeezed 16:9 arrangement. You can even use your phone as a webcam: the studio's camera tab feeds the overlay over WebRTC.
Do interactive overlays cost money?
Streamer Garden is free to use while it grows: open the studio in your browser, drop the browser source into OBS, and your viewers can join the same stream. 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.