streamers haven

How to Keep OBS Plugins Updated – Starscape Creator Studio

Did you know that the plugins you install to OBS Studio don’t automatically keep themselves up-to-date? This can be a problem in certain cases.

For example, with the release of OBS V28, there were a lot of under-the-hood changes that caused many plugins to break. Unfortunately, I was one such person who suffered that fate – Two plugins I loved broke, and I needed to get my OBS plugins updated. However, I also downloaded many other plugins to make blog posts about them for you guys. I, unfortunately, don’t remember every plugin I downloaded, which made updating them a chore.

Now, for some disclosure, I haven’t updated any plugins since I installed them in OBS Studio. I haven’t had to, they worked and did what I needed them to do, so there was no need to update them. That is until big bad V28 came along and shattered my jaded reality. I was heartbroken – My precious OBS ASIO plugin was broken (I have an old post about it you can read if you like), as was my OWN3DPro overlays plugin.

Rather than dwell in despair at the loss, I decided to do something about it. I did not want to get caught unaware in the future. So, I spent multiple minutes going through the OBS plugins repository looking for plugins I needed to re-download and update.

I was about three plugins in when it dawned on me, “What if there was a plugin manager that did this for me?”

Keep OBS Plugins Updated With a Plugin Manager – Starscape Creator Studio

The idea isn’t crazy – There was a precedent – the Vortex Mod Manager. I thought, “If such a thing can be made by tech-savvy gamers, why couldn’t tech-savvy streamers or content creators do something similar?”

Turns out, it exists. It’s known as the Starscape Creator Studio. I came across it after I typed in “OBS Plugin Manager” into a google search and looked up some YouTube videos about it. After I was satisfied that it seemed legit, I downloaded it. I was greeted with a very well-designed interface:

Starscape Creator Studio - Keep OBS Plugins Up To Date

The program sports a three-tab design with small icon-based left navigation. The first tab is the discover page, where you can see a list of plugins from the OBS plugin repository. Each entry has the following:

  • The name of the plugin
  • A brief description of the plugin
  • Filter Tags, if the plugin creator has them assigned
  • The Date of the most recent update the plugin has received
  • The number of downloads that a plugin has
  • And finally, an install button.

If you have a plugin already installed, then that button will be replaced with an “Installed” label with a checkmark.

Using the Starscape Creator Studio to Update Plugins

Keep OBS Plugins Up To Date - OBS Websocket Plugin in Starscape Creator Studio

Moving over to the update tab, you can see I have a plugin that is out of date. I intentionally downloaded an out-of-date plugin to be able to show you this. You’ll notice that the update button itself at the bottom is grayed out. Let’s Fix that:

  1. Left-Click Select All
Select All OBS Plugins
  1. Now Left-Click the Update button that has now unlocked
Starscape Creator Studio Update Process
  1. You’ll see a clean animation for the update process
Starscape Creator Studio Update Animation

Upon Completion, you’ll be greeted with this screen:

Starscape Creator Studio update complete

And that’s all there is to it. Simple, Sweet, and functionally User friendly.

Downsides – No Easy Way to Remove Plugins

As of this article’s publishing, there is no easy way to remove plugins once they are installed. I think this is one area that the program can be improved upon, as removing plugins is an essential debugging step for many programs. For now, you need to navigate to your OBS Plugin install directory. Mine differs from yours because I developed an organized folder structure to take advantage of my multiple SSD/HDD setup.

D:\Video Production\OBS-Studio\data\obs-plugins

If you aren’t sure where this folder is on your computer, you can find out using the Starscape Creator Studio:

Find OBS Install Location
  1. Left-Click on the Settings Cog in the left icon navigation
    • By default, you will have a Single Profile (I’ll revisit this feature later on when I have a better idea on how to use it)
  2. Under the OBS Root Path header is the file path to your OBS Studio .exe
  3. Clicking browse will open the folder that the obs.exe file is

Now to Remove Plugins manually:

  1. Go into the data folder
  2. Go into the obs-plugins folder
  3. Go into the 32bit folder
  4. Find a plugin folder you’d like to remove
  5. Delete the folder by pressing the backspace key

It is best to not remove any plugins here if you aren’t sure what they are from, though, because some official features are also located in this folder, like the obs-x264 folder. Deleting that folder will mean you will lose access to the x264 encoder.

Plugins Not In the OBS Repository Page Can’t Be Updated

Another downside to this particular program is that it cannot update plugins that are not uploaded to the OBS Plugin Repository. For example, remember the two plugins I mentioned above – The OBS ASIO Plugin and the OWN3D Pro plugin? Those weren’t on the list, so I’m out of luck with automatic updates for those.

Instead, because the developer of the “ASIO for OBS” plugin hosts their work on GitHub, I have to visit their GitHub repository to get the latest release and install it manually. The Same can be said about OWN3D Pro, where I had to go to my dashboard to get my hands on the V28-ready version directly.

Fun.

But hey, these developers create these tools for free, and they do so on their own time. They are free to host the plugin in any way they choose. I just wish there was some movement to centralize the location of all of the OBS plugins so that all of us can benefit from the incredible tools that expand OBS’s functionality to another level.

Starscape Creator Studio is also a Stream Deck

If you download the Starscape Creator Studio App on your android device (Here is the link for the IOS Version) and scan a QR code on the PC app, you can tie them together and have your phone act like the Stream Deck.

Then, using the “Sputnik” Module, you can control your stream scene transitions, audio, recording, and much more.

Conclusion – Plugin Managers are Great, When Widely Adopted

There are a lot of plugins out there for OBS Studio. If you use many of them, you will benefit greatly from using the Starscape Creator Studio to keep them up to date, as it will save you a lot of time when a big update like V28 comes along and shakes things up.

Leave a Comment