Start Streaming PS5 Games to YouTube In 5 Minutes!

If you game on your PS5 and want to stream directly to YouTube from your PlayStation without needing a capture card, this article will teach you exactly how to do that. 

If you're new here, be sure to check out The Streamer Academy where I help you start, build, and succeed as a streamer. There are tons of free resources available for you to utilize that will help grow your stream. 

Also, be sure to check out the Ultimate Streamer Checklist: Optimize Every Stream—Before, During, and After. 

Linking your YouTube to your PlayStation

The first thing we're going to do on our PlayStation is come to settings and head to 'User and Accounts'. Then, go to 'Linked Services' and you'll see the option to select YouTube. 

When you select this, it's going to ask you to go ahead and link your YouTube channel to your PlayStation. To do this, you've got two options. You can either get your phone and use the camera to scan a QR code or you can use the browser directly on the PS5. Since I have my YouTube channel linked directly to my phone, I'm going to scan the QR code. 

All you have to do is use your phone camera to scan the QR code and it's going to bring me over to a Google site that says, "To continue, connect a device to your Google account." Then, you'll put in the code that you see on your PlayStation. You do not need to put the dashes that you see in the code. 

Once you hit 'Continue', you'll select the account that you want to connect to your PlayStation and then press 'Continue' again. 

You now just need to follow the on-screen prompts and say yes to everything. When you finish this, your PlayStation will show you that your YouTube account is now linked. 

Now, press 'Done' and you can back out of these settings. Since your accounts are now linked, when you go live on your PlayStation, it's going to immediately start your livestream on YouTube too. 

Adjusting Your Broadcast Settings 

The first you need to do before going live is to decide and open whichever game you'll be playing during your stream. You're not able to go live from the PlayStation dashboard, so you'll need to go ahead and choose your game. I'm going to open up Marvel Rivals and say this is the game I want to play during my stream. 

With your game up, press the 'Create' button on your controller and go to 'Broadcast' on the right-hand side. 

Here, you'll be able to see that YouTube is now selected and you'll see your channel name. 

Press the three dots to the right of 'Go Live' and select 'Broadcast Options' so that we can adjust our settings and make sure that everything is running smoothly. 

'Display Camera' is good to have turned on if you have a camera connected to your PlayStation that you want to show on your live stream. 

I think that 'Display Chat' is really important so that you can see the chat and know when people are talking on YouTube. This is going to block your display, and therefore your gameplay. If you don't want this to block your gameplay elements, then I would encourage you to have the chat open on your phone instead. This way, you can still see and respond to the chat without it blocking your gameplay. 

'Display Activity' lets you see how many viewers you have. This will also block your gameplay. It is a personal preference, but I like to have as few things blocking the display as possible, so I leave this turned off. 

For 'Overlay Position', I leave this set to 'Bottom-Right'. 

You can go ahead and use 'Include Party Audio' if you're in a party with some of your friends who are also playing the game and you want them to be heard. This is very important, for them to be heard, both you and everyone in your party need to have this turned on. 

For 'Video Quality', I would encourage you to use '1920 x 1080 at 60 fps' so that you can try to get the best possible quality stream. 

Once you've done that, you have all of the best settings on your console to be able to stream to YouTube. 

Adjusting Your Broadcast Information

Next, you need to add your title. 

I would encourage you to choose a title that's going to make viewers say, "I want to click on this livestream." You want this to be engaging and curiosity-driven.

Since I'm playing Marvel Rivals, my title might be, "Bronze to Grandmaster solo q in 1 stream". 

Again, you want to make people interested to select and watch your stream. 

For the 'Description', I just simply put 'Subscribe' since I'm on a console. 

As for 'Tags', I just tend to leave this blank or you can just put the title of the game, like Marvel Rivals. 

The 'Privacy' settings are going to be super important. Your options are 'Public', 'Private', and 'Unlisted'.

When you select 'Public', everyone is going to be able to see that you're live and YouTube will be able to push this so that people can find it.

If you only want to share this with specific people by sending them the link, then you're going to want to make this 'Unlisted'. This is also good if you just want to test your stream and make sure that your chat is coming up or that you can see everything on your phone. It's also helpful if you want to experiment with things or just to record content and download it from YouTube onto your computer to edit it. 

'Private' is going to make it so that only you can view the stream. 

For this example, I'm going to set mine as unlisted because I don't want to go live and am just recording content. 

Now, you're ready to hit 'Go Live' and start livestreaming. 

Going Live

Once you press 'Go Live', it'll say 'Starting Broadcast'. Then, in the top-right, it will say 'Now Broadcasting' once you're live. 

At this point, you can just start playing your game. 

If you have headphones connected to your controller or if you're using a USB microphone connected to your PlayStation, people are going to be able to hear you talking. 

Now, if you go over to YouTube, either on your computer or phone, you'll be able to see that you're live. You'll also be able to see your title and description. If you click the link on your YouTube Studio, it will take you to your stream and you can see and hear what it looks like. 

You can see your chat, gameplay, engagement, and everything else here. 

When you're ready to stop your stream, all you need to do is press the 'Create' button on your controller again, go to 'Broadcast', and then select either 'Pause Broadcast' or 'Stop Broadcast'.

I'll select 'Stop Broadcast' and then select 'Yes'. Now, I'm no longer streaming and my VOD is going to be saved to my YouTube channel where I can download it at any time, edit it, and use it to create content.  

If you want to have a professional-looking stream with overlays, graphics, and alerts, but don't want to use OBS Studio, StreamLabs, or have a capture card, check out this video here. In this video, I walk you through how to add overlays to your console streams utilizing a tool called LightStream.