Live control · 6 min read
Control your stream from your phone (without touching OBS)
During a live stream, changing anything on screen means leaving your game, switching to OBS, adjusting a setting, then coming back. That is lost time, broken focus, and often a visible mistake on screen. The control room idea is the opposite: you drive the overlay from a second device, the way a TV show has a control room separate from the studio floor.
Free during the open beta
Before you start
- An overlay displayed in OBS via Browser Source (see the Browser Source guide)
- A phone or tablet on any network
- A Twools account
Step by step
- 01
Open the Control Panel on your phone
On your phone, open a browser and go to twools.app/control_panel. Log in with your Twools account. That is all: no app to install, it works directly in the browser, whether you are on Wi-Fi or mobile data.
- 02
What you see: one card per widget
The Control Panel shows a card for every widget on your canvas. Timer, counter, quiz, wheel, sub goal: each widget becomes a control room button. You see the state in real time and act from there.
- 03
Drive it live
You increment a score counter, start or pause a timer, trigger a quiz question, spin the wheel, hide or show a widget. The effect is instant in OBS: the overlay updates live in the feed without any action on your PC side.
- 04
The typical use case: launching a poll mid-game
You are in the middle of a game and want to know what chat thinks of a decision. You pick up your phone, launch the poll from the Control Panel, and the question appears in the overlay. No alt-tab, no game interruption.
- 05
Reliability across different networks
Synchronization goes through the Twools server: your phone does not need to be on the same network as your streaming PC. You can control your overlay from a phone on 5G while the PC streams over ethernet. The latency is near-instant.
Watch the demo
The full workflow in real conditions: build the overlay, export it to your streaming software, drive it live. (Video in French.)
Tips
- Keep the Control Panel tab open throughout the stream: the state stays active as long as you do not close the tab.
- It also works on a tablet or a second PC screen: any browser, any device.
- Game widgets (quiz, wheel, poll) are designed to be triggered on the fly, without preparation during the live.
FAQ
Do I need to install an app?
No. The Control Panel is a web page: open it in any browser, on a phone, tablet or second screen.
Does it work on 4G or 5G?
Yes. The phone and the PC do not need to be on the same network. Synchronization goes through the server, not the local network.
How much latency is there between my action and the overlay?
The update is near-instant: synchronization is real-time, with no perceptible delay on the stream.
Does chat see a delay?
The overlay updates live in the OBS feed. The natural encoder delay remains, but there is no additional delay from the control room.