How to Setup Alerts in Ecamm Live (MAC Only)

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase. Learn more!

In this tutorial, I'll be walking you through step-by-step how to set up your Twitch or YouTube alerts inside of Ecamm. This way, whenever someone follows or subscribes to you, it pops up on the screen. 

Getting Started

The first thing that we're going to do is go to Stream Elements. Once you're here, you'll log in with either Twitch or YouTube- whichever platform you'll be utilizing. If you're streaming to both, you will have to do this for each platform. Setting up one will not automatically set up the other. For this example, I'll be using Twitch. 

Once you get logged in, you'll be brought to your dashboard. On the left-hand side, you'll go to 'Streaming Tools' and then select 'Overlays'. Now, click on 'New Overlay', select '1080p', and press 'Start'. Let's go ahead and name this 'Twitch Alerts' and then press 'Save'. 

Next, you'll select 'Add Widget', then press 'Alerts', and select 'Alert Box'. 

Personally, I only like to keep the 'Follower', 'Subscriber', 'Cheer', and 'Raid' alerts turned on. I'll turn off the 'Tip' and 'Purchase' alerts. You can decide which ones you want to utilize. Today, I'll be showing you how to set up a few of them as well as some variations, and then you can follow the same process to set up the others. 

Adding Your First Alert

Let's start off with the 'Follower' alert. To edit this alert, you'll need to press the gear icon next to it. 

By default, it's going to give you a generic alert. You can see this if you press 'Emulate' and then 'Follower Event'. 

Generic Follower Event

What we'll be doing today is setting up custom alerts that are going to make your stream look a little bit more professional. 

For this example, I'll be using alerts from Stream Designz. There are lots of professional overlays, countdown timers, transitions, and animated alerts for you to choose from that match all styles and aesthetics. Every single package does come with alerts. 

Today, I'll be using the 'Zen Zone' animated overlay package

Zen Zone Animated Alert Package- Stream Designz

This package will include the alerts, but you can also purchase them separately if you do not want the full package. 

The alerts package and the full overlay package will include your 'New Subscriber', 'New Donation', 'New Follower', 'New Member', 'New Host', 'New Bits', 'Gifted Sub', 'Gifted Membership', and 'Super Chat' animated alerts. 

Zen Zone Alerts

These are interchangeable, but some of these are for Twitch and some of them are for YouTube. 

If you purchased your alerts from Stream Designz, these will come downloaded as a zip file. To unzip this, all you need to do is double-click the zip file and it will unzip. All of your unzipped files will be added to a new folder that's ready for you to use. 

Once you have your alerts, you can head back over to StreamElements. When you're back here, you'll select 'Change Video' and upload your file. If you downloaded your alerts from Stream Designz, you'll go to the 'Alerts' folder and then select the 'New Follower Alert' file. Press 'Open' and then your alert will be brought in. 

You'll want to bring in all of your other overlays as well, but for now, we can stick with this one and then you'll just follow the same steps for the others. 

Now, you can go back to 'Emulate' and select 'New Follower Event' again. You can see that the text is not going to be where it needs to be, so we need to adjust that. 

New Follower Alert with Zen Zone Overlay

Adjusting Your First Alert

The first thing I like to do when customizing my alert is to change the 'Alert Message' from "{name} is now following!" to "{name} followed". The shorter you can keep this, the more it can compensate for longer names. 

For the duration, I like to keep this set to six seconds which is enough time for it to appear and be read on the screen. 

As for the sound, you can choose whether or not you want to use this. Personally, I choose to turn the sound effects off. However, if you do want to use the sound effects, I would recommend checking out Epidemic Sound. There are over 90,000 different royalty-free sound effects that you could choose from to go with your alert. 

To adjust the text settings, scroll down to the bottom and click on 'Text Settings'. 

For 'Size', I like to leave this set to 30. 

You'll also want to make sure that the text is centered. 

Make sure that both 'Bold' and 'Text Shadow' are turned on. 

Now, we can emulate the 'New Follower' event again.

Edited Text on New Follower Alert

You can see now that the text has been adjusted, but we still need to get it placed into the right spot. 

As for the color of the name, you can make this whatever you want or whatever fits with your alert. Personally, I just leave this white. 

Now, we'll go to the top and select 'Advanced'. This is where we're going to be able to get the name to show up in the middle of the alert. 

Typically, I like to start at '-150' for the 'Top' margin and see how this looks. If you want to make it a little bit higher, then you'd need to make it a slightly larger negative number, like '-155'. In opposition, if you want to make it lower, then you'll change it to a smaller negative number, like '-145'. To see what it looks like, all you need to do is emulate the 'New Follower' event again. 

For me, it looks like the sweet spot is '-175'. I'm also going to go back to the 'Text' settings and make the font just a little bit bigger, changing the size to '40'.

Now, the name should be centered exactly where you want it to be. 

New Follower Alert Edited

Once you have this finished, go ahead and press 'Save'. 

Next, let's look at some variations of this. 

Adding Your 'New Subscriber' Alerts

When you get to the 'Subscriber' alert, this is where the process is going to slightly change. People can subscribe for one month, two months, or three months, or maybe they're resubscribing to you, so you'll want to have different alerts for each of these different events. 

'Cheer' and 'Raid' alerts will be set up the same way as the 'Follower' alert. 

Once you understand this variation aspect, you'll be able to do the same for all of the others. 

Let's go ahead and set up the 'Subscriber' alert. 

Start by pressing the gear icon next to the alert and select 'Change Video'. You'll go ahead and select the 'New Subscriber' alert overlay for this one in your files. Once you've found the file, select it, and press 'Open'. Then, select it again and press 'Submit'. 

With this added, the first thing I'll do is remove the sound. Again, you can change this and use a custom sound if you'd like, but I'll just be removing it.

Then, I'm going to edit the text to only say "{name} just subbed". This is just to keep it short so that longer names will still appear. 

For the 'Duration', I'll change this to '6 seconds'. 

Now, we'll scroll down to the bottom and go to 'Text Settings'. 

Here, you'll make this a little bit bigger. I'll start off with '35' and adjust it later if I need to. 

Then, I'll go over to 'Advanced' settings and change the 'Top' to '-175' since that's what I used for the 'Follower' event. 

Now, let's emulate this to test and see how it looks. 

New Subscriber Alert Added

For the color, I'm going to go in and change this to white, but you can always choose a different color or one that matches your overlays. 

At this point, we can start to make the different variations of the 'New Subscriber' alert. 

Adding Variations to Your Alerts

To add variations, start by going to 'Settings', then to 'Subscriber Alert', and click on the gear icon. 

If you scroll down, you'll find 'Variation Settings' and this is where you'll need to go.

Here, there will be three different variations: 'Resubscriber', 'Subscriber Gifts', and 'Community Gifts'.

Variations for New Subscriber Alerts

You can toggle these on or toggle them off depending on which ones you want to use, but I'll be showing you the process to set these up. 

Looking at the 'Resubscriber' variation, we'll start by pressing the gear icon next to it. From here, we'll follow the same process to change the video. If you don't change this here, then it's not going to show up on StreamElements or on your stream. 

Select 'Change Video' and then select the 'New Subscriber' alert again. Scroll down and make sure that the duration is set to '6' and get rid of the sound. 

Then, scroll down even further and say that the 'Text' size will be '35'. Next, go over to 'Advanced' and set the 'Top' to '-175'. Now, hit 'Save Variation'. 

If you go ahead and emulate this, you'll see that it's going to be out of line. 

New Subscriber Alert with Variation

To adjust this, click on the gear icon again and change the text to say "{name} just resubbed for {amount} months". Then, I'll scroll down and change the 'Text' size to '28'. Press 'Save Variation' and emulate the alert again. 

New Subscriber Alert Edited

Now, you can see that everything is where it needs to be. 

You would follow these same steps for 'Subscriber Gifts' and 'Community Gifts' if you choose to use these variations. 

With all of this, now you'll finish changing all of the other alerts using the overlays that you got from Stream Designz. 

Bringing Your Alerts into Ecamm

Once you've finished changing all of your alerts, it's time to bring them from StreamElements into Ecamm. 

To do this, start by saving your work on StreamElements. I would encourage you to save your work after every change that you make just so that you don't end up losing any of it if something happens. 

Click on the paper clip icon in the top-right corner and select 'Copy to Clipboard'. Now, we'll go over to Ecamm. 

Once you're on Ecamm, you'll want to go to 'Scenes' and select the screen that you want these alerts to appear in.

Let's say, for example, that I want to add these to my 'Just Chatting' scene. I'll select the scene and then go over to 'Overlays'. If you don't see the 'Overlays' window, all you need to do is go to your menu bar, press 'Windows', and then select 'Overlays'. 

Now, you'll select the world icon (third from the left on the bottom row) which is the browser source. 

Browser Icon

I'll name this "Alerts Zen Zone" since that's the overlay package that I'm using, but you can name this whatever you would like. 

I'll double-click the 'Stream URL' to select this and then I'll paste the URL that I copied from StreamElements into its place. 

We'll keep this set to '1920 x 1080'.You'll also want to select 'High-Resolution Mode' and 'Keep Running'. This is super important. 

Then, you can click 'Add Widget Overlay' and now you'll see that it's been added. This is going to be our alert. 

Next, if you go back over to StreamElements, you can press emulate for one of your alerts four or five times, and then quickly go back over to Ecamm to make sure that it's showing up there as well. This is going to give you enough time to resize this and place it exactly where it needs to go. 

Alerts Working on Ecamm

Now, whenever I get an alert, it's going to pop up there. If you want to be able to add this to any other scene, all you need to do is click on it, press 'Command + C' on your keyboard to copy this, and then paste it into whichever other scene you want to use it for using 'Command + V'. Then, you'll just go back to StreamElements and emulate the alert a few times to adjust this and place it where you want it to be. 

If you want to be able to add a countdown timer to Ecamm to help build up some hype for your stream, check out this video here. In it, I'll walk you through step-by-step how to get this set up. 

Back to blog

Animated Stream Overlays