Vertical Stream Setup: Overlays and Chat for TikTok LIVE, Shorts and Reels

Vertical live is no longer a side experiment. TikTok LIVE, YouTube's vertical live and Instagram all put a full-screen 9:16 picture in front of an audience that is already scrolling. What does not work is taking a 16:9 scene and cropping it.

Here is the setup, start to finish.

The canvas: 1080 × 1920

In Settings → Video, set both Base (Canvas) Resolution and Output (Scaled) Resolution to 1080 × 1920. For TikTok in particular, the output should be exactly that — other resolutions tend to come back with black bars.

Sensible starting numbers for the rest:

The layout is the hard part

You have the same number of pixels as 1080p, arranged the wrong way round for games. A 16:9 gameplay capture placed in a 9:16 frame occupies a band across the middle and leaves two large empty areas.

Those two areas are the whole design problem. Three layouts that work:

• Game band, cam above, chat below. The classic. Gameplay in the middle at full width, facecam in the top third, chat in the bottom third. Everything is readable and nothing overlaps.
• Full-bleed cam, game inset. For Just Chatting and IRL. Camera fills the frame, gameplay or captures sit in a small window. This is the layout that looks most native to a phone.
• Cropped gameplay, full height. Works only for games whose action stays centred. You lose the sides, and with them most HUDs — check your minimap and ability bar survive before committing.

What does not work is scaling a 16:9 overlay down and leaving the rest of the frame empty. Vertical needs its own frame, its own panel positions and its own chat.

Stream OverlayCozy Cats Vertical Stream Overlays $23.99 Stream WidgetVertical Twitch Chat Widget $14.99

The safe zones nobody mentions

On a vertical platform, the app's own interface sits on top of your picture, and you do not control it.

• Bottom third: comments, the gift tray, the share and like buttons. This is the busiest area of the screen on every vertical platform. Put nothing there that must be read.
• Right edge: the vertical button rail — like, comment, share, often a profile bubble.
• Top: the viewer count, your handle, sometimes a ranking banner.

So the genuinely safe area is a band in the upper-middle of the frame. Your important content — the game, your face, the thing you want clipped — belongs there. Decoration can live at the edges.

This is also why in-stream chat matters less on vertical than on Twitch: the platform already shows comments over your picture. A chat widget on a vertical stream is for the VOD, the clip and the second platform — not for the live viewer, who is looking at the native comment feed.

TikTok LIVE: what you need before any of this

TikTok gates live streaming, and the gate moves by region:

• Followers: TikTok's own FAQ puts the threshold at 1,000, and it varies by country or region.
• Age: 18 or older.
• Account standing: LIVE access also depends on account age and history.

Once you are eligible, there are two routes from a PC:

1. TikTok LIVE Studio — TikTok's own free desktop app for Windows and macOS. You sign in with your account, no stream key involved. Note it is a different thing from TikTok Studio, which is for uploads and analytics and cannot broadcast.
2. OBS with a stream key — only for accounts with RTMP access. Click Go LIVE on the website, open the producer page in LIVE Center, and it gives you a Server URL and a Stream Key. In OBS: Settings → Stream, Service Custom, paste both. The key changes when you log out of TikTok, so grab a fresh one if a connection fails.

YouTube accepts a vertical live stream through the normal live flow — you simply send a 9:16 picture. Twitch remains a horizontal platform; there is no vertical mode there, so a vertical stream is an addition to Twitch, not a replacement.

Running vertical and horizontal at the same time

Plain OBS has one canvas. Switching it to 1080 × 1920 makes everything vertical — you cannot output both shapes from a stock install. Two ways around it:

• The Aitum Vertical plugin — adds a second 1080 × 1920 canvas with its own sources and its own stream target, from one OBS instance. This is the clean route.
• Two OBS instances — one horizontal, one portable-mode instance capturing a projector window from the first. It works, and it costs roughly double the resources.

Either way, plan for the vertical output to be 30 FPS and a lower bitrate than your main stream. Both encodes run on the same machine.

A realistic first setup

1. Decide whether vertical is your main output or a second one. If it is your main, just set the canvas to 1080 × 1920 and skip the plugins.
2. Build one vertical scene: cam, game, overlay frame, and a lower third with your handle.
3. Keep everything important in the upper-middle band.
4. Record two minutes, open it on your phone, and look at it the way a viewer will.
5. Only then add chat, alerts and a goal — in that order, as space allows.

Vertical rewards restraint. There is room for about a third of what you would put on a 16:9 layout, and the platform covers a third of what is left.

FAQ

What resolution should a vertical stream be?
1080 × 1920 for both the OBS canvas and the output. For TikTok it needs to be exactly that to avoid black bars.

Can I use my normal overlay on a vertical stream?
Not usefully. A 16:9 overlay scaled into a 9:16 frame leaves two thirds of the screen empty and puts your frame in the wrong place. Vertical needs a layout built for the shape.

Can OBS stream vertical and horizontal at once?
Not on its own — it has a single canvas. The Aitum Vertical plugin adds a second canvas, or you can run a second OBS instance capturing a projector window.

Do I need 1,000 followers to go live on TikTok?
That is the figure in TikTok's FAQ, and it varies by region. You also need to be 18 or older and have LIVE access on the account.

Does Twitch support vertical streams?
No. Twitch is a horizontal platform. Vertical is something you add on TikTok, YouTube or Instagram alongside it.

Should I put chat on a vertical stream?
For the live audience it is mostly redundant — the app shows comments already. It earns its place if you are multistreaming to a platform without a visible comment feed, or if you clip the VOD afterwards.

If you are also running a horizontal stream, the sizing rules there are different enough to be worth ten minutes: the stream overlay size guide covers canvas, scaling and safe areas for 16:9.