How to trigger GIFs & stingers on stream

Launch GIF Player and copy your overlay URL

From the dashboard, click LAUNCH on GIF Player, then hit COPY on the overlay URL at the top of the page. It never changes — one URL covers every slot you will ever create, including ones you add months from now.

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Add it to OBS

1. Sources → + → Browser, name it "GIF Player".
2. Paste the URL.
3. Set the width and height to your canvas — normally 1920 × 1080 — and click OK.

Two OBS details that pay off later. Tick Control audio via OBS in the source properties so slot audio lands in your Audio Mixer as its own channel — duckable under your mic instead of firing at whatever volume the file was exported at. Then drag the source to the top of the scene's source list; GIFs are meant to land over your camera and gameplay, not behind them.

Match the canvas size exactly: slots are positioned against the browser source's own box, so a 1280 × 720 source drops a "bottom-right" GIF at the corner of that smaller box rather than the corner of your stream.

Build your first slot

Click + ADD SLOT. The editor drops in below the list with these fields:

• Label — what you will see in the list, on a Stream Deck key and in Command Center. Name it after the moment ("Walk-off", "Airhorn"), not the file.
• GIF / Image — paste a direct image URL, or click Upload for a local file; a thumbnail preview confirms you grabbed the right one. GIFs and PNGs with transparent backgrounds are the ones that look produced — a white or black box baked into the file will show on stream.
• Audio — optional, same deal: URL or upload. It fires the instant the slot appears, so a still PNG plus a sound effect makes a perfectly good soundboard button.
• Loop — governs the audio bed. With Loop on, an attached track repeats for as long as the slot is on screen; with it off, the track plays through once. The animation in the GIF file itself loops according to how the file was exported, so if you need endless motion, export the GIF as looping.
• Hide When — the auto-hide rule. Big enough to get its own step below.
• Transition In and Transition Out — thirteen options each, chosen independently: None, Fade, four Slides (up, down, left, right), Scale, Flip, Bounce, Blur, and three broadcast wipes, which the dropdown lists as Wide Left ◀, Wide Right ▶ and Center Expand ↔. Both default to Fade.
• Position and Window Size — the 3 × 3 anchor grid and a width × height in pixels. New slots start at 400 × 300 in the center.

Hit ADD SLOT to save it (the button stays grayed out until the slot has media). The page autosaves after a few idle seconds, and the header's SAVE button — or Ctrl+S — flushes it immediately if you are about to go live.

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On uploads: the file is stored inside your saved settings rather than on a separate host, so keep them lean — a couple of megabytes is plenty for something on screen for four seconds. Host anything heavier and paste the URL.

Size and place it so it looks intentional

The width and height define a frame, not a crop. Your image scales to fit entirely inside that box keeping its aspect ratio — never stretched, never cut off — which also means a 400 × 300 box holding a tall 3:4 image renders just 225 px wide, a little over half the box, with dead space down both sides. Match the box to the GIF's own aspect and it sits exactly where you expect. Width accepts 50–3840, height 50–2160.

The nine anchors sit flush against the canvas edges: pick bottom-right and the box's corner lands on the corner pixel of your stream. There is no built-in margin, so for breathing room either build transparent padding into the image or make the box larger than the artwork needs.

On a 1920 × 1080 canvas, 320 × 320 in a corner is a reaction that can live beside a scorebug without arguing with it, and 900 × 506 in the center is a celebration nobody misses while your lower third stays readable. Go full 1920 × 1080 only with a transparent GIF, unless you genuinely want the stream blacked out for a beat.

Decide how it leaves the screen

Hide When is the setting that separates a clean stinger from a GIF you forgot about ten minutes ago. Three options:

• Manual — only hide when stopped. It stays until you press Stop. Right for a "BRB" graphic or a sponsor bug held through a segment; wrong for anything you fire mid-sentence.
• When audio ends. The slot leaves the moment its audio track finishes, making screen time exactly equal to the sting's length — the best option for celebrations, because you never guess a duration. It needs audio attached: with no track nothing is scheduled to end and the GIF stays up until you stop it. Loop is deliberately ignored here, since a looping track would never end.
• After a timer. Reveals a Duration (seconds) field, 1 to 3600. The clock starts when the slot appears, so the in-transition is included; the out-transition then plays on top, adding roughly another 0.6–0.9 seconds. For a three-second GIF, set 4. Type a real number — the field opens at 0 on a brand-new slot, and a duration of 0 schedules nothing, so the slot behaves exactly like Manual.

Sound and picture stay in step at the other end too — the audio is cut the moment the exit begins, so a sting never blares on under a graphic that has already slid off. That applies to every hide rule, so audio never outlives the graphic: a track longer than the on-screen time simply gets cut where the exit starts. If you want a full song under a segment (walk-up music, say), set the timer long enough to cover it or play it from your own audio source and keep the slot for the picture.

Two things the transition names undersell: the directional slides exit in the direction they are named, so Slide Up leaves upward rather than reversing the way it came (pair Slide Up in with Slide Down out and a corner graphic rises into frame, then drops back out), and the wipes reveal the artwork edge-to-edge without fading, which reads far more like a broadcast package than a crossfade.

Fire it on stream

Every saved slot has a ▶ Play button. Click it and the GIF animates onto your overlay with its transition and audio; the row turns cyan with a PLAYING badge and the button becomes ■ Stop. When a slot auto-hides on its own, the badge clears itself — the overlay reports back, so the page always shows what is actually on air.

One slot is on screen at a time. Playing a second replaces the first rather than stacking on it — the outgoing GIF is cut rather than played out, so the new one's in-transition starts immediately. The ■ STOP ALL button in the header clears the screen instantly from anywhere on the page; that is the one to memorize for when chat baits you into something regrettable.

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Three recipes worth stealing

The celebration stinger. Transparent celebration GIF, 900 × 506, center, Bounce in / Scale out, airhorn attached, Hide When = When audio ends. Nothing to time — it plays through and cleans itself off the screen the instant the horn stops.

The corner reaction button. 320 × 320, bottom-right, Slide Up in / Slide Down out, Hide When = After a timer at 4 seconds, no audio. Build three or four — hype, disbelief, disgust — and you have a reaction rack you can hit blind.

The walk-up moment. Player cut-out PNG at 700 × 900, center-left, Center Expand in / Fade out, walk-up clip attached with Loop off, Hide When = After a timer at 12 seconds. The audio is cut when the graphic exits, so trim the clip to roughly that same 12 seconds — or switch to When audio ends and let the file decide the hold for you. Add a lower third with the name and slash line and it stops looking like a GIF.

Get it off the browser: Stream Deck and Command Center

Alt-tabbing to a settings page during a big moment defeats the point. The StreamSlayers Stream Deck plugin has a Play GIF action — drop it on a key and pick which slot it fires in the button's property inspector — plus Stop GIF to clear whatever is up. One physical key per moment, hit blind.

Prefer a screen? The Command Center board has a GIF Player module: every slot is a button, the live one lights up, and a Stop button sits alongside — next to the same controls for your ticker, scorebug, topics and video clips. One tab drives the whole broadcast.