Documentation

Supported platforms

Requirements

• Windows 10 or 11: a single-file .exe, nothing to install.
• Linux x86_64: an AppImage that bundles its own Python. It needs glibc 2.35 or newer (Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12, Fedora 36, Linux Mint 21 or newer).
• From source: Python 3.10 or newer with Tcl/Tk, no other dependency.
• To watch: Streamlink and a video player, VLC by default.

On Linux, the launcher has no notification-area icon, global shortcut, start with the system, drag and drop, live notifications, stream previews or built-in update.

Languages

Both apps come in English, French, Spanish, German and Italian. They follow the system language; you can change it in Settings › General (Launcher) or Settings › Display (Chat).

Streamlink is a free command-line program. It fetches a stream's video feed and sends it to your player. So you watch Twitch, Kick or YouTube in VLC or mpv, without the web page around it: less memory, no Twitch ads, and your player's own shortcuts.

Streamlink is normally used in a terminal:

Streamlink Launcher writes this command for you: it recognizes the platform, adds the right options and the chosen quality, then starts Streamlink. Streamlink Chat uses it for its ▶ button.

Qualities

best picks the highest quality, worst the lowest, audio_only sound only (Twitch). You can also ask for a specific quality such as 1080p60, or a fallback list: 720p60,720p,best takes the first one available.

What about Twitch ads?

Since version 7.5.0, Streamlink always filters out ads on Twitch streams. The old --twitch-disable-ads option is no longer needed (it is deprecated, but still accepted).

Streamlink is available from its official website, streamlink.github.io/install. Choose your system:

Check the installation

If the command prints a version number, you're all set. In Launcher, Settings › Streamlink also shows the version it found.

Streamlink installed elsewhere? Launcher Chat

The apps look for Streamlink in the PATH and in the usual locations. If it is somewhere else, enter the path to streamlink.exe in Settings › Streamlink › Custom path (Launcher) or Settings › Watch (Chat).

Where to put the apps Launcher Chat

Download the file from the releases page (Launcher, Chat) and put it in a folder of your own, for example Documents\Streamlink. Settings are stored next to it, and the built-in update can replace the file. Avoid C:\Program Files, which is write-protected.

On Linux, make the AppImage executable, then run it:

For an entry in the applications menu, use a tool such as Gear Lever or AppImageLauncher.

Your first stream Launcher

1. Make sure Streamlink and a video player are installed.
2. Choose the platform with its pill: Twitch, Kick, YouTube, Dailymotion, Steam TV or Direct link.
3. Type the channel name (eslcs) or paste a link (https://kick.com/…): a link selects the platform by itself.
4. Choose the quality if needed, then Enter or Launch. The player opens after a few seconds.
5. To follow or stop the stream, open the Log at the bottom of the window: it shows Streamlink's output and a Stop button.

Three faster ways Launcher

• Copy a link: copy a stream's address, then switch back to the launcher. It offers to launch it, and the link is already in the mini bar. Can be turned off in Settings › Streamlink › Detect copied links.
• Drag and drop (Windows): drag the address from the browser's address bar, selected text or a .url Internet shortcut onto the window.
• Mini mode (Windows): Ctrl+Alt+S from any application, type, Enter.

Your first chat Chat

1. Choose the platform with its pill, under the Add a chat field.
2. Type the channel name or paste a link, then Enter. Ctrl+T puts the cursor in this field.
3. The chat opens in a new tab, read-only. To write, connect your account (see Writing in chat).
4. In the chat header, ▶ opens the stream with Streamlink and the link icon opens the channel in your browser.

The field accepts a name (eslcs), a prefix (kick:lunaria, steam:name) or a link: twitch.tv/…, kick.com/…, steam.tv/…, steamcommunity.com/broadcast/watch/…, “popout” links included. Your tabs come back at the next start.

Main window Launcher

The global shortcut can be replaced by Ctrl+Alt+Space, Ctrl+Shift+Space, Alt+Shift+S or Ctrl+Alt+L, in Settings › Window and shortcut.

Mini mode Launcher

Tabs and typing Chat

Clicks in the chat Chat

Add a favorite Launcher

1. Choose the platform with its pill (Twitch, Kick…) and type the channel name.
2. Click the Add a favorite card on the main screen.

The main screen shows the favorites of the selected platform, live ones first. See all opens the full list.

Launch, edit or remove a favorite Launcher

• Launch: click its card.
• More options: right-click the card, then Launch, Fill the field, Open the chat (Twitch and Kick, in Streamlink Chat) or Remove from favorites. With several live favorites, Open the chats of live favorites opens them all at once, one tab per channel; this choice is also in the Favorites panel and the tray menu.
• In the Favorites panel: clicking a row fills the field, ▶ launches, the trash can removes.

Who is live? Launcher

With Settings › Live › Check who is live, the launcher checks your Twitch and Kick favorites while it is open, every 2, 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes (5 by default). Live previews adds the thumbnail, title and viewer count of live Twitch favorites (for Kick: the title and viewer count, without an image), and Windows notification tells you when a favorite goes live: click the notification to watch.

History Launcher

• The last 200 launches are kept. The most recent ones are shown under Recent; ▶ relaunches directly.
• Full history opens the panel: a click fills the field, ▶ relaunches, the trash can deletes an entry, Clear all empties the history.
• Statistics, at the bottom of the panel, shows the time spent per channel and your peak hours, over the last 30 days or since the beginning. A stream's duration is recorded when it ends (one minute at least); these statistics stay on your computer.
• Suggestions in the input field come from your favorites, then your history: use ↓ ↑, then Enter.

Back up or copy to another PC Launcher

Settings › Backup › Export… saves your settings and favorites to a single file. Import… restores them and lets you choose: Yes adds the imported favorites to yours, No replaces your favorites, Cancel changes nothing. Paths specific to the computer (Streamlink, player, scripts) are not included, and neither is the history.

And in the chat? Chat

Streamlink Chat has no favorites: open chats come back by themselves at the next start. Close a chat with Ctrl+W or a middle click on its tab. To always open the same chats in one go, see the recipe Open your chats from a shortcut.

Where are the files?

Each file has a .bak copy of its previous version: if a file gets damaged, the app recovers it. In Launcher, Settings › About › Open the data folder opens the right folder.

Where are the tokens kept? Chat

• In chat.json. On Windows, they are encrypted with DPAPI: only your Windows account, on this PC, can read them back.
• On Linux, they are stored in plain text in your home folder. Don't share this file.
• If you copy chat.json to another PC, the tokens can't be read there: log in again.

Log out and revoke access Chat

• Log out, in Settings › Accounts, deletes the tokens from your PC.
• To revoke access on Twitch's side too, open Settings › Connections on Twitch and disconnect your application.
• On Kick's side, delete the application in the developer settings.

Where do emotes come from? Chat

Each provider can be turned on or off in Settings › Emotes. Lists are loaded from their servers when a chat opens.

Formats, animations and cache Chat

• Tk, the graphics library, only displays PNG and GIF: an emote offered only as WebP or AVIF stays as text.
• Animated emotes only move in the displayed chat, with 40 frames at most each. Settings › Display › Animated emotes freezes them all.
• Downloaded images are kept in cache/emotes/ so they aren't downloaded again. This folder is never emptied automatically: you can delete it while the chat is closed, it is rebuilt as needed.

How each platform is read

These unofficial channels can change without notice. When that happens, the live status stays unknown or the chat goes into error until the app is updated.

What the chat shows Chat

• Badges (broadcaster, moderator, VIP, subscriber…), username colors adjusted to stay readable on the theme.
• Replies, subscriptions and other events. Deleted messages and those of banned users are struck through.
• Messages that mention your username or a word from Settings › Mentions are highlighted, and their tab shows it.

Choose the player for the ▶ button Chat

The chat starts Streamlink without any player option, so Streamlink uses the one from its configuration file, VLC by default. To switch to mpv, create this file (no extension) and add:

If mpv isn't in the PATH, put its full path after player=. Launcher also uses this file when Settings › Video player is set to Default (Streamlink setting).

Watch with less delay

Streamlink has a low-latency mode for Twitch and Kick. The simplest way is to turn it on for one platform only, with a configuration file for its plugin, next to the config file:

It works for both apps. The gain depends on the broadcaster, who must have enabled low latency; playback may buffer a little more often.

Record a stream while watching it

In a terminal, --record writes the stream to a file while you watch:

{author} becomes the channel name and {time:…} the date and time. Open the .ts file with VLC or mpv.

Launcher To do it from the launcher, add a dedicated platform to platforms.json (the Edit platforms.json link at the bottom of the settings), with a full path to your videos folder:

Restart the launcher: a Twitch REC pill appears. hosts stays empty so pasted Twitch links keep going to the regular Twitch pill. In JSON, each \ of a Windows path is written \\.

Never hit “quality not found”

Not every channel offers every quality. Launcher In the quality list, choose Custom… and enter a fallback list such as 720p60,720p,best: Streamlink takes the first one that exists, and the launcher remembers it for this platform. Chat The quality of the ▶ button is chosen from a fixed list; keep best if you watch very different channels.

Open your chats from a shortcut Chat

Streamlink Chat accepts chats as arguments. Create a Windows shortcut (right-click the desktop › New › Shortcut) with a target such as:

If the chat is already open, these chats are added to the existing window. A channel link works as an argument too.

Tip: first rename the executable without a version number, for example StreamlinkChat.exe. A file named after its version changes name at each update, and the shortcut would no longer find it. A name without a version is kept.

Start the launcher minimized Launcher

Settings › Window and shortcut › Start with Windows starts it in the notification area. You can do the same with your own shortcut by adding --tray after the executable's path.

Keep your old .bat scripts Launcher

If you used to launch your streams with scripts, turn on Settings › Advanced › Show .bat scripts and choose the Scripts folder. A Scripts pill lists the .bat, .cmd, .ps1, .exe, .py and .lnk files in that folder. The field lets you pass an argument to the script (letters, digits, ., _ and - only).

The launcher Launcher

1. Open Settings › About: the card shows your version and the latest one published on GitHub.
2. If a newer version exists, click Update. The launcher downloads the new .exe, checks its size and SHA-256 fingerprint, puts it in place of the old one and restarts.

• Check for updates at start-up does the check by itself.
• Update the launcher automatically also installs the new version at start-up, never during a stream.
• A file named after its version (StreamlinkLauncher-1.4.2.exe) takes the new number; start with Windows follows the new name.

The chat Chat

Same idea in Settings › Updates: Check, then Update. The chat restarts with your open chats. A dot on the settings button signals a new version, and Automatic updates (off by default) does it all by itself at start-up.

Update Streamlink itself

The launcher compares your Streamlink version with the latest one published. If yours is older, the Settings › Streamlink card offers Update: with the Windows installer, it opens the download page; with pip, it copies the pip install -U streamlink command. With winget, Chocolatey, Scoop or your Linux distribution, use their usual update command (winget upgrade streamlink, for example).

What's new?

The details of each version are in the changelog, in English and French: Launcher, Chat. Downloads are on the releases pages: Launcher, Chat.

What the launcher contacts Launcher

What the chat contacts Chat

What stays on your PC

• Settings, favorites, history, open chats: in the files described in Where are the files, nowhere else.
• Login tokens (Chat): encrypted with DPAPI on Windows, in plain text in your home folder on Linux.
• Clipboard (Launcher): only read to spot a stream link; neither saved nor sent.
• Logs: launcher.log and chat.log record errors (two files of 512 KB at most each). They stay on your PC unless you attach them to an issue.
• Windows registry (Launcher): a single value, StreamlinkLauncher in HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run, and only if Start with Windows is on.

The launcher on Windows Launcher

1. If Start with Windows is on, turn it off first in Settings › Window and shortcut.
2. Note where your data is: Settings › About › Open the data folder. If you want to keep your favorites, do an Export….
3. Quit the launcher: right-click its icon near the clock › Quit.
4. Delete the .exe, then the data folder (config.json, platforms.json, streams/, launcher.log and the .bak files), next to the .exe or in %APPDATA%\Streamlink Launcher.

Already deleted without turning off start-up? Disable the entry in Task Manager › Startup apps, or delete the StreamlinkLauncher value from HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run.

The chat on Windows Chat

1. In Settings › Accounts, click Log out for each account, then revoke access on Twitch's or Kick's side if you wish (see Writing in chat).
2. Close the chat.
3. Delete the .exe, chat.json and its .bak, the cache/ folder and chat.log, next to the .exe or in %APPDATA%\Streamlink Chat.

On Linux Launcher Chat

Delete the AppImage, then the data folders:

If you created a menu entry with Gear Lever or AppImageLauncher, remove it from that tool.

What about Streamlink?

It is uninstalled separately, the way you installed it: Windows Settings › Apps for the installer, winget uninstall streamlink, pip uninstall streamlink or your distribution's package manager. Its configuration file is in %APPDATA%\streamlink or ~/.config/streamlink.

Before opening an issue

• Update the app: only the latest version receives fixes.
• Search the existing issues (Launcher, Chat): the problem may already be known.
• Read through Troubleshooting.

What to include

• The app and its version (Settings › About or Settings › Updates).
• Your system (Windows 11, Ubuntu 24.04…) and the kind of install: .exe, AppImage or source.
• The Streamlink version: streamlink --version.
• What you did, what you expected and what happened. For a chat, the platform and the channel.
• The log: launcher.log or chat.log (and .log.1 if it exists), in the data folder. For a stream that won't start, also copy the text of the log drawer.

Read the log before sending it. It may contain channel names or paths from your PC; remove anything you don't want to make public.

Then open an issue: Launcher or Chat.

A security vulnerability?

Do not open a public issue. Use GitHub's private form (Launcher, Chat) with the version, the steps to reproduce and the impact. You'll get an answer within about a week.

Contribute

Bug reports, translations and pull requests are welcome.

1. For anything bigger than a small fix, open an issue first to discuss it.
2. All you need is Python 3.10 or newer, with no third-party dependency. Tkinter is needed for the interface.
3. Run the checks before the pull request:

• Add a line under Unreleased in CHANGELOG.md, in both English and French.
• Releases are published by the maintainer.

Translate the apps

Texts live in lang/*.json, one file per language (fr, en, es, de, it). Every language must have exactly the same keys: a test checks it. For a new language, copy en.json, translate the values without touching the keys or the {variables}, and keep texts short, especially in the launcher.