OBS Blade turns your phone into a remote for OBS Studio

A remote for OBS Studio, built with Flutter

OBS Blade is described in the README as the open source remote for OBS Studio on iPhone, iPad and Android, with the tagline Your OBS, in your pocket. The mechanism is the OBS WebSocket plugin, obs-websocket, which is the standard control interface for OBS Studio.

The primary language for the repository is Dart, and the README badge says it is built with Flutter, which is consistent with the repository layout: an android/ directory, an ios/ directory, plus linux/, macos/, windows/ and web/ platform folders, a lib/ directory for the application code, a test/ directory and an integration_test/ directory. There is also a shaders/ directory, a tool/ directory, a build.yaml, a release.yaml and a pubspec.yaml, and a fastlane/ directory holding the store metadata and the screenshots the README uses.

The app is available in three places, and the differences between them matter more than the README's ordering suggests. The App Store and Google Play listings carry the current release for iPhone, iPad and Android. The F-Droid listing and the GitHub releases point at an older open source build, version 3.2.0, taken from the foss branch, and the README is explicit that it comes without the features added since.

The project also states plainly that it is an unofficial app, not affiliated with OBS Studio or the OBS Project. That is worth noting for anyone evaluating it for a professional broadcast workflow, because it means there is no relationship with the upstream project and no support commitment from them.

Setup is four steps and one network requirement

The preparation section is short and the steps are concrete.

First, the server side. OBS Studio 28 or newer ships with OBS WebSocket built in, and older versions need the obs-websocket plugin at version 5.x or newer, though the README suggests upgrading OBS Studio is the better route. The badge in the header confirms the app targets OBS WebSocket v5.

Second, in OBS you open Tools, then WebSocket Server Settings, tick Enable WebSocket server, and note the port, which defaults to 4455, and the password if authentication is on. That password matters and is worth understanding before you connect anything: the WebSocket server is a control surface for your studio, and if it is exposed beyond a trusted local network it is a much larger problem than a remote scene switch.

Third, put your phone or tablet on the same network as the computer running OBS. The README's final step mentions the port, which is cut off in the text available here, but the arrangement is clear from the structure: this is a LAN application, not a remote access solution, and it is not designed to reach your OBS instance from the internet.

Fourth, open OBS Blade. Autodiscovery finds running OBS instances on its own, and you can also type in the computer's local IP address or a domain name. The autodiscovery is the friendly path, and the manual address is the fallback when the network is awkward, for example across a VLAN or a guest wifi segment where broadcast discovery does not reach.

What the free tier covers: the studio controls

The feature table splits the app into a free tier and a Pro tier, and the free tier is the part that matters if you are deciding whether the app is usable at all.

It goes live, meaning start and stop your stream, recording, replay buffer and virtual camera. It switches scenes, with Studio Mode and transitions, and can show or hide any source. It mixes audio with live volume meters, or mutes in one tap. It gives a live preview of the current scene.

There is also a canvases feature for OBS 32.1 and newer, where you can browse vertical and extra canvases, and run Aitum Vertical's own stream, recording and replay buffer. That is a relatively recent addition, and it tells you the app tracks new OBS capabilities rather than freezing at the v5 protocol.

Control covers switching profiles and scene collections and triggering hotkeys, which is how you get a genuinely separate control surface. Stream health shows FPS, CPU, bitrate and dropped frames live, and statistics let you look back on every past stream and recording.

Chat is in the free tier, with Twitch, YouTube, Kick and Owncast each in their own tab, or next to your controls while you are live. The layout of the dashboard is yours to arrange.

For most single-streamer setups, the free tier is the whole remote control, and the Pro tier adds depth to the chat side of the job rather than to the studio side.

The Pro tier is a chat product with moderation

The Pro column is almost entirely about chat, and the split is informative about where this project sees its value.

The first item is every chat in one place, with native Twitch, Kick and YouTube chat, either separate or merged into one live timeline where replies land on the right platform. The second is that the chat keeps up, with 7TV, BTTV and FFZ emotes, an emote picker, autocomplete, role badges, highlights, mute words and search.

The third is an activity feed for your own channels, with follows, subs, raids, cheers, Super Chats and KICKs in one list, plus a to-thank queue for shout-outs. The fourth is hearing your chat, with messages read out loud while you play, in each message's own language if you want.

The fifth is moderation from your pocket, deleting, timing out and banning on every platform, plus AutoMod, unban requests and chat modes on Twitch. The last is custom colour themes for the whole app.

The pricing is monthly, yearly or a one-time lifetime unlock.

Two things are worth pointing out. The read-out-loud feature is a genuinely unusual thing to build, and it is the kind of feature that only makes sense on a phone held to the side of a stream, where you cannot look at a screen. And the moderation set spans four platforms with their own permission models, which is a large surface to keep working as each platform changes its API.

The open source build is a different and older thing

This is the part of the project that deserves the most careful reading before you install it.

The repository is GPL-3.0 licensed, and the F-Droid listing and the GitHub releases carry version 3.2.0 from the foss branch, described as an older open source build without the features added since. The release history in the repository record shows the same two artefacts: foss-3.2.0 published on 2023-05-02, and OBS Blade 2.1.0 marked as Legacy, published on 2022-12-07.

So the open source distribution is more than three years behind the store release, and the gap is not a small one, because the Pro features, the chat aggregation work and the recent canvas support all sit on the store side. If you install from F-Droid you get the 3.2.0 codebase, which predates the 2.1.0 to 3.2.0 store line and the work that followed it.

That split is a legitimate pattern for a project that wants to release its client side source under a copyleft licence while also shipping a commercial product, but it does mean the label open source in the README headline is doing some work. The source of the current app is in the repository, and the FOSS build is a fork point of it rather than the same thing the stores serve.

The branch guide is not documented in the text available here, so if you want to build the current app from source and see for yourself where the open source build and the store build diverge, the foss branch and the main branch are the two things to compare.

The last push was on 2026-10-20, so the repository itself is being worked on, even though the last published open source build is from 2023.

A Flutter project with fastlane, a Gemfile and integration tests

The repository layout describes a project with real release engineering rather than a hobby app.

The fastlane/ directory holds the store metadata, including the Android feature graphic and the per-device screenshots in en-US for both iPhone and iPad, which is what produces the strip of images in the README. There is a Gemfile and a Gemfile.lock at the root, which is the Ruby side of fastlane, and release.yaml and build.yaml describe the release and build configuration. A .metadata file and a .claude/ directory are present, along with an AGENTS.md, and analysis_options.yaml holds the Dart lint configuration.

The test story is more substantial than a typical app. There is a test/ directory for unit tests and a separate integration_test/ directory, and a tool/ directory for developer tooling. The pubspec.yaml and pubspec.lock are the Dart package manifests.

What is missing from the visible list is as informative as what is present. There is no CODE_OF_CONDUCT file or SECURITY policy at the top level in the entries given here, and no separate documentation of the network protocol handling. For a project that connects to a control surface of a live production system, those are the two files a security reviewer would ask for first, and their absence is worth noting if you are considering this for a professional broadcast environment rather than a personal stream.

The shaders/ directory suggests the app does some of its own GPU work rather than only relaying control messages, which is a differentiator from a pure remote control client.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt OBS Blade if you stream and want to run your show from a second screen, and you are willing to enable the OBS WebSocket server and put your device on the same network as the machine running OBS. Do not adopt it from F-Droid expecting the current feature set, because the open source build there is 3.2.0 from the foss branch and does not include the features added since. Before you install, confirm your OBS Studio version is 28 or newer, decide which chat platforms you need, and note that the project states it is unofficial and is not affiliated with the OBS Project.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. Kounex/obs_blade on GitHub
3. License: GPL-3.0
4. README
5. Releases