You've probably heard and used some of the date/time plugins for OBS on Windows, like Snaz. There's plenty of options for Windows.

However, if I wasn't wrong, there's currently no any OBS plugin for macOS that can help us to display some information like current time in our live stream.

Introducing OBSTimeBud, a plugin for Open Broadcaster Software on macOS to show the current time in your live stream.

Here is a rough demo video: https://youtu.be/UPDV8Qzzjh4

Step 1. Open the app first. The app will generate a file path for the text file, which is called "time.txt".

Step 2. In OBS, create a new source "Text (FreeType 2)" for the current time.

Step 3. Select "Read from file".

Step 4. Click "Browse". Go to your home directory (you can do that by click on your username in the sidebar).

Step 5. Search for "Test.txt". Select this file.

Step 6. Congratulations, you have a text source for displaying the current time! Select "OK" to close the window.

This program is based on an assignment I had last year for one of my Mac development course at Arizona State University. It was about making a tiny program that has both the current time display and a stopwatch functionality in a simple GUI. Similar to the idea what Snaz has, I started making the OBSTimeBud app that can save and update the current time into a text file.

OBS for mac has a test source called "Text (FreeType 2)" that allows you to show the text content that is read from a text file (txt). This plugin creates a text file, "time.txt", in the document directory of this app, which is inside your home folder. What we are doing is linking these files into your OBS text sources.

In the current version, there is a significant lag on my MacBook Pro. According to my test, the text file updates almost instantly, but the text source in OBS reading the text file responses a bit slow. The time shows on the OBS will be 1-2 seconds slower than the actual time. Sometimes the time even stops updating for a few seconds, but it is rare (it might depend on how fast your computer are).

Some new features I'm planning in my head for the future update, includes

• Current date. Besides the current time, why not add the current date (even in different formats)?
• Stopwatch and lap. I actually have this feature in the current version, but not implemented for the OBS yet. I just need to create two more text files for these.
• World times. Display the current time in the different time zones from all countries/regions.
• You will see some UI design updates as well.

I also made a plugin for OBS, OBSLyricsBud, that can help you display song lyrics or captions in your live stream. You can control the lyrics/subtitles by simply pressing buttons for the next/previous sentence.

1.0 Beta 1

If you have any question or advice, please email me by [email protected].