- What is that hair?
Hat on for this video.
Being able to quickly and easily control things
on your livestream is one of the most important skills
you'll need to develop as a live streamer,
whether it's changing scenes,
muting your microphone, swapping camera angles
or just keeping up with your chat and alerts,
there are many different balls that you'll need to juggle
as a live streamer while still trying
to be engaging with your audience.
That is why tools like the Stream Deck
and Stream Deck XL from Elgato
have become almost essential
for streamers as it makes controlling
and managing your live stream that much easier.
But these tools don't come cheap.
At the time of recording this video,
the Stream Deck, the original 15 key variant,
costs almost $150
and the Stream Deck XL, I think costs almost $250
and that's even if you can find them in stock.
But thankfully there are some alternatives,
instead of investing in a completely new piece of hardware,
most of you will already have something
in your pockets that you can use instead.
Yes, your smartphone.
Today we'll be testing and comparing the three best apps
that you can install on your iPhone, your Android phone
or even a tablet that will help you control
all the different aspects of your live stream.
Let's go.
(upbeat music)
Before we jump into the video,
I would like to give a big thank you to the sponsor,
Nerd or Die.
Throughout this video,
wherever we have been able to customize the icon set,
we have been using icons from the Nerd or Die website
which you can download for free.
Nerd or Die have also just dropped
a new pack called Iridescent
which is one of my absolute favorites that they've done.
It has an ultra contemporary design,
smooth material background loops
and loads of different color options
for you to customize however you want.
Head over to nerdordie.com
and grab yourself a new design for your live streams.
The first 100 of you to go over and use code,
GamingCareers50 will get 50% off your purchase
and if you lost that race then you can always get 15% off
by using coupon code GamingCareers.
The first app that we're going to be diving
into is Touch Portal, which has quietly become one
of the most popular choices for live streamers
looking to use an app to control their live streams.
Touch portal has two different versions,
a Free version and a Pro version.
The Free version is just limited to two different pages
each with eight buttons on.
So it's useful to test out the app
but it's definitely too limited
if you're going to be using it
as your controller app of choice.
The upgrade to the Pro version costs $12.99
and that is a lifetime license.
So you just pay that once
and you'll get all the updates
to Touch Portal in the future.
It completely removed that restriction of just two pages.
You can have unlimited amount of pages
and you can customize how many buttons are shown
on the screen all the way up to 110 buttons per page.
Touch Portal has a decent amount of integrations and apps
that you can control in its library.
From a streaming app perspective,
this includes OBS Studio, Streamlabs OBS and Xsplit.
Changing scenes, muting microphones
or enabling and disabling sources are of course
amongst the actions that you can add to your phone
or tablet with Touch Portal but there's also
some more advanced OBS controls that you get
with Touch Portal that you don't see from other apps,
things like setting specific source volumes or enabling
and disabling filters on different scenes or sources.
It is worth noting
though that to get that extra level of OBS control
you will need to install a web socket for getting into OBS.
There's also a really detailed integration
for those of you that are streaming to Twitch.
We can do basic things like sending a message in chat,
running an advert for a certain amount
of time or creating a clip all the way
to more advanced things that can trigger based on
when somebody takes an action on your channel
like subscribing to you or redeeming some channel points.
For example, you can have your background lights change
when somebody subscribes to your channel
or you could even have chat control
with scene US streaming through some chat commands.
Something I see implemented incredibly well
on Mr.Gregles drumming stream
that his viewers can apply effects
and change camera angles through his chat.
These extra controls and deep integrations that you get
with both OBS Studio and Twitch through Touch Portal
is one of the biggest selling points.
However, one of the biggest negatives
is probably the UI of the desktop app.
This is where you actually set up
all the actions for your device
and it's not necessarily hard to use
but for a first time user,
it can be a bit overwhelming jumping in, getting connected
and creating your first few pages.
Touch Portal uses what they call the Spider Web navigation
between each page that you create
which basically just means that any one page
that you create can be linked to any other page,
you just need to create a button
that links those two pages together.
This is useful because you can quickly customize exactly
where each page takes you to
but this definitely does take some getting used to
and if you're not careful,
you can easily end up creating a page,
forgetting to put any navigation controls onto it
and then you're stuck there.
Thankfully, there is an option in the settings
that we'll always add a navigation button
to each new page that you create
which will take you back to the main page.
One thing that I like to do with navigation
especially if you're on a bigger device
like a tablet is reserving a whole row just for navigation
where you can have buttons that link
to various different pages
that way you're only ever really one click away
from any action that you need whilst you're live streaming.
One negative that all apps will suffer
from over a physical Stream Deck is it's hard
to always know when you've pressed the button.
You don't get that tactile feedback
that you do off a physical Stream Deck.
Touch Portal have aimed to solve this issue
with the option for some haptic feedback,
which basically vibrates the device
when you have clicked a button
but this really he doesn't implement too well,
I don't think it feels more like an aggressive vibration
that you get when you get, say a text message on your phone
rather than a simulated click.
Touch Portal also has options outside
of just having on and off states for certain buttons.
So you can toggle things based on
whether you are holding or releasing a button as well.
So you can have like a Push to Mute button
that if you need to cough
or someone needs to come into your room,
you can hold down a button on the Touch Portal app
which will keep your microphone muted
and as soon as you release it, it will then unmute your mic.
You can, of course customize all of the buttons
on your Touch Portal app to look exactly
as you want to with custom colors and texts,
icons, even gifts if you want to
and you can set two different button styles depending
on if the button is on and off
so you can easily see at a glance
the current state of your stream.
The last couple of things that I want to mention
on Touch Portal that came up in my testing
is when you are using the app
and creating buttons on the desktop PC,
you quite often need to click this little Refresh button
to update your device to reflect the layout
and designs that you've just chosen on the app.
It would be nice if this just happened automatically
as does with other apps.
Also, I found that with newer iPhones
that have a notch at the top,
which I believe is from the 10 onwards,
the app doesn't always account for the notch
when it's being used in landscape mode,
which I find quite annoying.
You can of course set up custom border sizes
on the desktop app to fix this
but it'd be nice if it was automatic
like most iPhone apps are.
Right.
That's enough talking about Touch Portal.
Let's move on to our second app, Streamlabs Deck.
Streamlabs Deck has not surprisingly
been developed by the team over at Streamlabs
and giving content creators greater control over
at Streamlabs OBS.
Probably the biggest advantage
of this app is that it is completely free
and it is incredibly quick and easy to set up.
All you have to do is download the app
onto your phone or tablet from the app or Google Play Store
then simply scan a QR code to sync it,
which can be found in the Streamlabs OBS settings
under Remote Control.
Once you've done that,
you'll automatically get given one scrollable page
with all the controls available
to your currently selected scene.
So buttons for things like starting
or stopping your streams or recordings,
swapping scenes, enabling and disabling sources
or muting microphones are automatically populated
and updated to reflect whichever scene
you currently have selected.
This does however mean that there is no way
to create custom pages with your own custom controls.
You're literally given everything
that Streamlabs OBS can control on that current scene
in one scrollable page.
You can go into the settings and rearrange certain icons
and hide ones that you don't want to see.
but yeah, there's really no way
to create custom pages of your own controls.
If you do get some zoom in and zoom out controls
to change how many buttons are shown
on this scrollable page all the way
up to 200 buttons for you tablet users
but there's no way to customize
what these buttons look like.
Similarly to Touch Portal,
there is the option for haptic feedback
and unlike Touch Portal,
this does now feel much more like a simulated click
so I'd definitely recommend turning this on.
And there's some advanced options
for controlling your audio sources.
So if you press and hold down on any audio source,
you'll get given a slider control
to really fine tune the volume of that audio source.
That unfortunately though is I think
where the positives end for this app.
The biggest limitation of this
is that it's locked down to Streamlabs OBS.
So you can't even use this with OBS studio
and the integrations with platforms like Twitch
really don't offer much control at all.
The app does feature a couple of other tabs
so you can keep on top of your stream chat
and your recent events which is nice
especially if you're a single monitor user
and you need one app that can do all
of these different things like controlling
the streaming application as well as keeping up
with Twitch Chat and recent events.
To his credit, the UI of the actual buttons
that you'd get given automatically does look good
and it's incredibly quick to set up.
You can seriously get set up with this app
in like 30 seconds because it auto generates
all the buttons for you
but it's so limited with it just working
with Streamlabs OBS that I'd only really recommend it
if you're already using that streaming app.
Our third app is Elgato's Stream Deck Mobile
which is Elgato's official offering
of the Stream Deck experience in a mobile app.
Now I have high hopes for this app
because it's Elgato's official app
and the Stream Decks are so universally loved
but have they been able to nail
that experience on mobile as well?
So let's start with the price.
Now, maybe not surprising Elgato's Stream Deck Mobile
is the most expensive of the three apps that we're comparing
but thankfully it's nowhere near the $150
you'd have to shell out for a physical Stream Deck.
You can choose between either paying $2.99
per month or $24.99 per year to have access
to Elgato's Stream Deck Mobile.
But there is also a 30 day free trial
so that you can test out its functionality limit-free
for one month before committing
to either the monthly or annual subscription.
Just like with the original Stream Deck,
you get 15 keys in a five by three grid,
which can be displayed in either a portrait
or landscape mode but annoyingly,
there is no way of changing this limit of 15 keys.
So if you're on a tablet or a larger device,
you're still stuck with 15 keys.
You can of course use folders
and then folders within folders.
So you're technically never limited
by the number of buttons
but really if you're on a bigger screen device
and you're just getting 15 keys that are really large,
it's not a great experience.
Now Stream Deck Mobile uses the exact same desktop app
as the physical Stream Decks,
which makes adding actions and folders
as simple as dragging and dropping
which is then instantly reflected on your device.
Adding your device is a similar process
to what we saw in Streamlabs Deck,
where you simply scan a QR code
with your phone through the Stream Deck Mobile app
and everything should be synced.
I much preferred the desktop interface
when compared to Touch Portal's.
Everything is laid out as you'd expect it to
and it makes changing things like text or icon super simple.
There is a big selection of streaming apps
that are supported with actions through Stream Deck Mobile,
OBS studio, Streamlabs OBS, Stream Elements OBS Live,
Nvidia ShadowPlay, Elgato Game Capture
and even Twitch Studio are all supported.
It is however worth noting
that the officially supported integration
with OBS Studio isn't as deep as it was with Touch PortaL.
There are also integrations with streaming platforms
like Twitch and YouTube, where similar to Touch Portal
you could create clips, you could send chat messages,
you could run adverts, all those kinds of controls.
If you've bought into Elgato's ecosystem of products,
such as their key lights or their wave microphones,
then you do get some additional functionality
you can control through the app.
With either Elgato's lights or products
from companies like Phillips Hue,
you can turn lights on and off,
control things like the brightness, color temperature
or even RGB like I do with my Phillips Hue Lights
behind my setup.
With Wave microphones,
you can control all aspects
of your audio like adjusting volumes,
totaling monitoring and changing the mix
and balance of your stream audio.
Elgato also has a rich and open API
for developers to build their own integrations
into the Stream Deck app
which has seen controls introduced for all kinds of apps
including things like ShareX, Voicemod, Voicemeter
with plenty of new controls being added every month.
There's even an OBS Tools App
which has been built by a community member
which gives more control over OBS functions.
So it kind of brings it on par
with what you could do through Touch Portal.
This developer API is one of the best things
about Stream Deck mobile because any company
that's looking to build an integration
into a physical Stream Deck,
you'll also be able to benefit
by having those available to you in Stream Deck Mobile.
There's also a neat option in the Stream Deck application
that allows you to set automatic profile switching based
on apps that are focused on your computer.
What this means is that you can set a full layout
of buttons in your profile on Stream Deck Mobile
that will only show when you have OBS open
or one that will only show when you have Discord open
and there'll be shown automatically
as soon as you switch to the application
which might save you a button press.
Similarly to the other two apps,
there is haptic feedback enabled by default
which lets you know when you've pressed a button
but they haven't really taken advantage of the touch screen
with any additional functionality.
On iOS devices, they have added the option to use Siri
to control certain actions on your stream.
Personally, I think this is more of a gimmick than a feature
because it wouldn't exactly be a great viewer experience
if you're constantly talking to Siri,
asking them to change scenes and mute microphones
for you and your stream can hear all of that.
So more of a gimmick for me
but I can certainly see a use case
where if you're maybe running a cooking stream
or something like that, you need to be able to communicate
with the software to change scenes
without using your dirty hands
and touching the touch screen.
Just like with Touch Portal,
you can set custom icons or even gifts for your buttons
and have different states for enabled or disabled.
One thing that I noticed actually way back
when Stream Deck Mobile was released
and still hasn't been fixed is that on retina screens
particularly you can see some jagged edges
on any of the curved corners of buttons.
You would have thought that this would be an easy fix
but it's existed since the app came out.
The other thing that I've noticed
is that there is sometimes a delay on pressing on a button
particularly when you're opening up a folder
which contains lots of integrations inside.
It's not a deal breaker.
It's not like seconds that you're waiting
but it is noticeable and I thought it'd be worth mentioning.
By far my biggest gripe with Elgato's Stream Deck Mobile
though is the limit to 15 buttons per page.
It just makes it useless for those of us wanting to use
a tablet as the device of our choice
because you're just going to get 15 huge buttons
whereas all of that space could be saved
and used over you know, 50 plus buttons
and it'd be a lot more useful.
My guests there is probably the Elgato want this
to be sort of a gateway app into purchasing
a physical Stream Deck or Stream Deck XL.
And if they offered you the ability
to have like 50 buttons on a tablet of your choice,
then maybe they would sell less $250 Stream Deck XLs
which is probably true.
In terms of compatibility for all three of these apps,
they have versions for both Android and iOS
and the desktop companion can be installed
on either Windows or Mac OS.
If you're wanting to install the app
on an iPad or an Android tablet,
technically all three apps support that
but like we've just mentioned Stream Deck Mobile
still limits you to just 15 keys whereas the other two apps
at least you can display more buttons per page.
So if you want to install it on a tablet,
I would maybe steer clear of Elgato's Stream Deck Mobile.
All three of these apps work by connecting
to the same network as your PC.
So if your PC is say hardwired connected
to a router and then your phone is connected
over wifi to that same router,
these should all work and connect seamlessly.
Touch Portal technically does also offer USB connection
but it's only with Android devices and Windows PCs.
And actually in my testing,
I found that the wifi connection was much more stable.
So let's summarize exactly what I've learned
over the last few weeks of testing these apps
and which one would I recommend to you?
Or maybe not surprisingly,
it's going to completely depend on your use case.
If you are somebody that really wants
the most control of Twitch and OBS Studio
and don't mind having a slightly more complicated setup
but you can customize all the things
about how many buttons are shown on screen
and exactly how those buttons look,
then Touch Portal is probably the best choice for you.
If however, you just want something easy to get you started
and you always plan to upgrade
to a physical Stream Deck at some point
or maybe you already own some of Elgato's other products
like the Key Lights or the Wave microphones,
then I would say that Elgato's Stream Deck Mobile is for you
providing that you don't mind the 15 key per page limit.
If you are broke and spending money right now
isn't an option and you're already using Streamlabs OBS
and you just want something simple to control
that piece of software whilst keeping up with chat
and some of your alerts then maybe Streamlabs Deck
is going to be enough for you.
So what do you think?
Have any of these apps tempted you into trying them?
Were you using any already
or are there any that I have missed in this video?
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
So leave them down in the comments below
so that I can learn back from you guys too.
Thanks so much for watching.
If you enjoyed this kind of comparison video,
where we put the apps head to head
then please do give that thumbs up.
That will let me know
that you like this kind of video,
then maybe in the future
we can do more comparisons of different microphones
and different lights and things like that.
So I'll catch you in the next one.
Peace.
(upbeat music)
- I thought it was like nursery kid music.
I don't even know what it is.
- I'm just imagining like the panic of the person.
I'll stop it now,
the panic of the person like managing the livestream
just like quickly finding Twitch soundtrack
or something to look like in the first track then they see.
- what's on my desktop?
Oh my kids nursing music, use it quick.
(laughing)