Cloud OBS users — IRLToolkit, UnlimitedIRL, Lightstream, IRL Uplink — can add live translated captions to their stream via a single browser source. Here is how.
Start Translating FreeCloud OBS is OBS Studio running in a managed cloud environment instead of on your local PC. The cloud machine handles scene composition, overlays, transitions, and stream output. You control everything from a web dashboard. The advantage: you can stream from anywhere with just an encoder bag, you do not need a powerful local PC, and the stream survives network drops on the field side.
The major cloud OBS services in 2026 are IRLToolkit, UnlimitedIRL, Lightstream Studio, and IRL Uplink. All of them are built around the same idea: their server runs OBS, your stream sources feed into it via SRT or RTMP, and the composed output goes to Twitch or Kick.
For translation, the question is simple: does cloud OBS support browser sources the same way desktop OBS does? Answer: yes, all of them do. Which means StreamTranslate works on cloud OBS exactly the way it works on desktop OBS, with the same one-line setup.
On IRLToolkit: log in to your dashboard, open your cloud OBS, add a browser source to your active scene, paste your StreamTranslate overlay URL, save. Done.
On UnlimitedIRL: same flow — UnlimitedIRL uses IRLToolkit as its cloud OBS layer, so the steps are identical. Browser source, paste URL, save.
On Lightstream Studio: scene editor includes a browser source widget. Drag it in, paste the URL, position it over your video. Same outcome.
On IRL Uplink: cloud OBS dashboard, add browser source, paste URL. Same outcome.
For every one of these services, the heavy lifting is on the StreamTranslate server. The cloud OBS is just rendering the overlay text it receives in real time via WebSocket. There is no audio routing happening inside the cloud OBS — audio capture happens wherever you have your StreamTranslate control panel running.
Most serious IRL streamers use a hybrid setup: their backpack encoder sends SRT to a home PC, the home PC runs desktop OBS as the broadcast machine, and the home PC sends the final stream to Twitch or Kick. In this configuration, StreamTranslate runs on the home PC the same way it does for any normal desktop OBS user.
If you go pure-cloud — backpack encoder direct to IRLToolkit, no home PC in the path — the audio capture moves to your phone. Keep the StreamTranslate control panel open in a Safari or Chrome tab on your phone, grant microphone permission, and your phone's mic becomes the audio source for translation. The phone uses cell data to upload audio, which is light bandwidth compared to your video stream.
Either way, the captions arrive in the cloud OBS via the browser source. The path is independent of where you captured audio — the StreamTranslate server is the broker between input audio and output captions.
All of them. Any cloud OBS service that supports browser sources — IRLToolkit, UnlimitedIRL, Lightstream Studio, IRL Uplink — works with StreamTranslate. The setup is the same: one browser source, one URL.
No. StreamTranslate runs as a browser source — same as any web-based overlay. You do not install software on the cloud OBS, you just paste a URL.
The browser source reconnects automatically when the cloud OBS comes back. Captions resume without any manual step. For dual-pipeline configurations, the captions are part of the OBS scene so they go out on both pipelines.
No noticeable difference. The translation pipeline adds approximately two seconds from spoken word to caption. The cloud OBS rendering adds milliseconds. Total perceived latency matches what desktop OBS users see.
Yes — the integration is identical regardless of cloud OBS subscription level. Most free or starter plans support browser sources, which is all that is required.