How to add a companion overlay to your Twitch stream

A companion is a small animated character that sits on your stream, in its own layer, over whatever you're playing. It isn't a chat bot and it isn't an alert box that flashes for two seconds and disappears. It's there the whole time you are.

Two things make it feel alive. Between events it behaves on its own: it looks around, wanders a little, stretches, naps, waves at chat, and once in a while walks clean off frame and peeks back in. And when something happens on your channel, it reacts to that specific thing, with its own scene per event.

Technically it's one browser source in OBS with a transparent background, so it composites straight over your scene without a green screen, a plugin, or anything to install.

Easier shown than described, so here it is. Press a reaction and watch what a follow, a sub, a gift, a cheer or a raid looks like on stream, or play one of the animations it gets up to between them.

A stream with nothing moving on it reads as empty, especially in the quiet stretches every channel has. A companion fills those without you having to perform: there's always something small happening in the corner of the frame.

It also makes your channel's moments visible. A new follower is a number in a dashboard nobody watching can see. A companion that stops what it's doing and celebrates turns that into a beat everyone in chat notices, which is exactly the moment people talk.

And it's yours. You draw it, name it, pick its colour and choose which reaction plays for each event, so two channels running the same tool never look alike. That's the part a stock overlay pack can't give you.

Start with the character. Pick one of the ready-made companions or draw your own, pixel by pixel, in the Studio, then give it a name and an accent colour. That colour follows it onto the overlay, so it matches the rest of your branding rather than fighting it.

Then choose how it reacts. Each event offers genuinely different scenes: a follow can melt on the spot, spring up in a burst of hearts, or take a deep bow. A raid can be a rocket launch, a stampede or a portal. Pick per event and watch each one play in the preview before you commit.

Last, choose its animations. Those are the behaviours it plays by itself, at random, all through your stream. Equip the ones that suit your channel: a calm companion that mostly looks around and stretches, or one that runs, dances and disappears off frame.

Here's the full menu you pick from, five events and three scenes each.

Connecting your Twitch account is what lets the companion hear your channel. It subscribes to the events you want it to react to, and from then on Twitch tells it directly when someone follows, subscribes, gifts, cheers or raids.

This is also where a silent companion usually gets fixed. A transparent overlay with nothing happening looks the same whether your channel is quiet, your connection expired, or a permission was never granted, so check that your reactions are reported as live before you go hunting elsewhere.

The overlay is a single URL. Copy it, then in OBS add a Browser Source to your scene and paste it in. Set its size to match your canvas, since the source is a transparent stage the companion moves around in rather than a fixed image.

Keep the source above your game capture and below your webcam if you want the companion to pass behind you. It starts moving the moment the source loads, so you can frame and position it right there, before you ever go live.

One thing worth knowing: that URL is the only credential the overlay has, so treat it like a password. If it leaks, or you show it on stream by accident, refresh it and the old one stops working immediately.