How to show discussion topics on stream

Launch Topics Panel from your dashboard

Sign in and click LAUNCH on the Topics Panel tile. The settings page opens on four tabs — Panel Settings, Topics, Videos and Appearance — with your overlay URL pinned above them.

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Copy your overlay URL and add it to OBS

Hit COPY next to the URL at the top of the page, then in OBS: Sources → + → Browser, name it "Topics", paste the URL and set Width 360, Height 1080. That is the recommended size — the panel pins itself to the top of the source and fills its full height.

One decision to make now, because it changes the source size: the Videos tab has Fullscreen and Center display modes, and both fill the browser source they live in. If you plan to use those, build the source at 1920 × 1080 instead and place the sidebar inside it with the Panel Position and Panel Width settings in the next step. At 360 × 1080 a "fullscreen" clip is only 360px wide.

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Shape the panel

Panel Settings is where the sidebar gets its identity. Show Topics Panel at the top is the master on/off switch — it animates the whole panel out, and it also suppresses any auto-graphics a topic would otherwise trigger, so it is a safe panic button mid-show.

• Position — left, center or right. Panel Width runs 200–600px (360 is the default), and Panel Height at 0 means full height; any value up to 1200px stops the panel short of the bottom.
• Transitions — separate In and Out menus, 13 entries each: None plus 12 animations — fade, four slides, scale, flip, bounce, blur, and three wipes (Wide Left, Wide Right, Center Expand). The slides leave in the direction they are named rather than rewinding their entrance.
• Header Text and Header Subtitle — "TODAY'S TOPICS" is the default. Header font size runs 18–42px with left/center/right alignment.
• Header Branding Image takes a URL or an UPLOAD from your machine. Header Branding Video takes an .mp4/.webm and loops it silently above the header — when it is set, it replaces the image.
• Show current date and Show "LIVE" badge add the date stamp and the pulsing live dot to the header.
• Timer End Sound — a chime when a topic's countdown reaches zero, with its own volume slider and a TEST SOUND button so you can set the level without going on air.

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Write the rundown

On the Topics tab, the header counts your slots as you fill them — ADD TOPIC (3/15). You can store 15 topic slots; the overlay renders the first 10 of them, so keep the ones you actually intend to hit at the top of the list and use the extra five as a bench.

Each slot carries more than a line of text:

• Topic Title — the only required field. It is the line that shows while the topic is dormant, dimmed until you highlight it. Titles clamp to three lines and then ellipsize, so write them as chyron lines rather than sentences.
• Duration (sec, 0 = manual) — 0 keeps the topic on screen until you move; any other number runs a visible NEXT m:ss countdown in the header and chimes at zero.
• Subtitle / Description and Media (Image or GIF) stay hidden until the topic is highlighted — that reveal is the whole effect. Images get a crop mode (Fit, Crop to fill, Stretch) and, on Crop to fill, a crop position of Center, Top or Bottom. Media renders up to 160px tall inside the panel, so tight crops read better than wide ones.
• Audio on Highlight — a URL or an uploaded file that plays the moment the topic goes live. Short stings work; it is not a music bed.

Below the form, IMPORT FROM HEADLINES is the fastest way to fill a rundown: tap one or more league chips, click Load headlines, and click a story to drop it in as a topic with its headline, summary and photo already attached. Imported topics land with duration 0 and the image set to Crop to fill, so they are ready to run as-is.

In the TOPIC SLOTS list, the ▲ / ▼ arrows set your running order — worth doing properly, because the Prev/Next controls you'll use on air walk this list in order and wrap around at the ends. Open segment first, hard-out topic last. One trap worth knowing: Prev/Next cycle all 15 stored slots, not just the 10 the panel draws. Land on slot 11 and the panel shows nothing highlighted — but that topic's auto-graphic still fires. Keep the bench empty during a show, or expect a name plate with no matching row on the board.

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Attach an auto-graphic to a topic

This is the piece that makes the panel a rundown rather than a list. At the bottom of the topic form, Auto-Graphic (Optional) lists every design saved in your Graphics library. Pick one and it goes on screen by itself the moment that topic is highlighted, then comes off when you switch topics.

Graphic Duration (sec) next to it controls the exit: 0 means the graphic stays for as long as the topic is live, while a number pulls it after that many seconds while the topic keeps running. Set it to 8 or 10 for a name plate that should introduce a segment and then get out of the way; leave it at 0 for a persistent sponsor bar.

One thing worth understanding, because it explains the setup: the auto-graphic is not drawn inside the topics sidebar. The panel drives the real on-air state of your Graphics app, so the graphic renders through your Graphics browser source at the position you designed it, and your Graphics Stream Deck keys and the Graphics page can pull it manually at any time. That means the Graphics overlay must also be in your scene — a 1920 × 1080 browser source — or nothing will appear. Each Topics Panel topic drives one graphic.

Add videos and schedule them into a segment

The Videos tab holds reusable clips. Give each one a Label, then fill exactly one source field — a YouTube Video ID (the code after v=, not the whole URL), a direct .mp4/.webm URL or an upload, or an iFrame URL for any embeddable page. Filling one clears the others.

Display Mode decides where it lands: Panel Body covers the sidebar below the header, Topic Title tucks a 16:9 embed inside the expanded topic itself, and Fullscreen / Center both take over the entire browser source (see step 2) — Fullscreen edge to edge on black, Center dimming the whole source and floating a 16:9 player at three-quarters width. Sound and Loop are per clip, and Auto-close (sec, 0=never) hides it on a timer. Note that a non-looping YouTube or iFrame clip with no auto-close time is dismissed after 30 seconds by default, because an embed cannot tell the overlay it has finished — set an explicit auto-close for anything longer.

Back on a topic, + VIDEO EVENT under Scheduled Videos links a clip to a delay: choose the slot, set Delay in seconds, and it fires that long after the topic goes live. A clip at 0 seconds opens the segment; a clip at 45 seconds drops a replay in mid-discussion without you touching anything. Switching topics cancels any events that haven't fired yet.

Style it to match your show

The Appearance tab has five panel themes: Classic, Broadcast, Industrial, Retro and HUD. Only Classic and Broadcast actually paint from the Background / Text / Accent / Border pickers. Industrial (brushed metal and hazard striping), Retro (an arcade palette of yellow, red and cyan) and HUD (a cyan-and-magenta telemetry look) run on fixed palettes by design — on those three, the Highlighted Topic Color is your customization. HUD still shows the four pickers, but the theme ignores them, so change the highlight instead of chasing them.

The Team Colors grid recolors the panel from one click — pick MLB, NBA, NFL or NHL, then a club. On Classic and Broadcast it rewrites background, text, accent, border and highlight together; on the three fixed-palette themes it moves the highlight only. After a team pick, a Mix button appears that reshuffles those same team colors into different roles, which is the quickest way to find a version that reads well against your camera. Below that: title font size 14–32px, subtitle 10–24px, and a font family of Inter, Oswald or Roboto Mono.

The Watermark card drops a logo over the overlay in one of five positions, sized 5–50% of the browser source's width — not the panel's — with its own opacity and X/Y offsets. The four corner positions honor the offsets; Center ignores them. Keep it low — around 15% opacity — so it brands the corner without fighting the topic list.

Run the show live

During the stream you work the TOPIC SLOTS list. The ○ button on a row ("Highlight Now") puts that topic on air and a red NOW badge marks it; press ◉ to clear it. In one action the overlay expands the topic, grows its title, reveals the subtitle and image, scrolls it into view if it is far down the list, plays the audio sting, arms the scheduled videos and brings up the auto-graphic. The ■ button on every row is a panic stop for whatever video is playing, and ✎ / ✕ edit and delete.

If the topic has a duration, the header counts down NEXT m:ss and chimes at zero. Treat that as a cue to yourself, not an auto-cut: the chime fires and the countdown stops, but the highlight stays where it is until you press Next or another topic's ○. That is what you want on a talk show — a segment that overruns by twenty seconds shouldn't yank its graphic out from under you.

You don't have to keep the settings page open. The Command Center gives Topics Panel its own board — a button per topic and per video, plus Show / Hide, Prev, Next, Stop Video and Watermark, with a panel-position selector and a status line reading Highlighting: <topic>. The Stream Deck plugin (v1.18.0) does the same from physical keys, and Next/Prev deliberately fan out to the Topic Bar too, so one key walks your rundown whether you run the vertical panel, the horizontal bar, or both at once.