Your iPhone is already the best camera you own. Put it in OBS.
Two OBS sources — a camera and a screen mirror — wired straight to your iPhone or iPad over Wi-Fi or USB. No virtual-camera driver, no RTMP server, no subscription.
The app's Live screen. The red border is the tally light — this source is on air. Every control here is also in your browser on the computer.
Setup
Three steps, about three minutes
Plugin on the computer, app on the phone, source in OBS. No router configuration, no account.
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Install the OBS plugin
An installer for Windows and macOS, a tarball for Linux. Adds two sources to your existing OBS.
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Install the iPhone app
Through TestFlight. Or sideload the unsigned build, or compile it yourself.
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Add the source in OBS
Sources → + → LensLink Camera, then pick your phone or plug in the cable. Video appears in a second or two.
What you get
A real camera source, not a webcam workaround
The phone encodes in hardware; the plugin decodes on your GPU and hands OBS the frames. One connection, nothing in between.
Up to 4K at 60 fps
H.264 or HEVC. The picker only offers combinations your camera actually supports.
Wi-Fi or USB
USB needs no network, holds the steadiest latency, and charges the phone as it streams. Wi-Fi loses the cable.
Control it from the computer
Zoom, exposure, manual ISO and shutter, focus, white balance, flashlight, lens, flip — from the phone, a browser panel, or the source properties.
Automatic lip sync
The plugin measures the real latency and aligns your own microphone to the picture. Settles in about fifteen seconds, then holds.
Screen mirroring
A second source type mirrors the whole screen with its audio, over iOS's own broadcast. Good for mobile games and app demos.
Remote start
OBS starts the camera itself, so a mounted phone never comes down. Siri and Shortcuts work too.
Going further
Things a webcam cannot do
All opt-in. Left alone, the source is a plain SDR camera.
Apple Log (beta)
On Pro iPhones (iOS 17+), stream a flat 10-bit Log image and grade it with OBS's Apply LUT filter. The plugin decodes it faithfully and otherwise leaves the picture alone.
HDR in HLG (beta)
10-bit HLG over HEVC, on cameras that support it. OBS renders it correctly on SDR and HDR canvases alike.
Virtual green screen (beta)
The phone paints everything but you solid green before encoding, and the plugin adds a tuned chroma-key filter. With Face ID or LiDAR depth, a distance cutoff drops people walking past behind you.
Every lens, switchable live
Main, Ultra Wide, Telephoto, Front — switched mid-stream without dropping the OBS source.
GPU decode pipeline (beta)
Decoded video stays on the graphics card instead of round-tripping through system memory. Lower CPU and latency, most of all at 4K.
Health you can see
Decoded frame rate, wire bitrate and measured latency — per phone, every second — in OBS's status bar and a dockable panel.
At a glance
Specifications
| Video | Up to 3840×2160 at 60 fps, H.264 or HEVC. HDR (HLG) and Apple Log in beta. |
| Latency | Roughly 60 ms over USB at 1080p or 4K. Wi-Fi is higher and more variable. |
| Transport | USB or local Wi-Fi. One TCP connection, no cloud relay. |
| Audio | Optional phone mic as the source's audio, a timing reference for lip sync, or system audio with screen mirroring. |
| Computer | OBS Studio 32+ on Windows, macOS or Linux. USB on Windows needs iTunes for Apple's driver. |
| Phone | iPhone or iPad on iOS/iPadOS 15+. |
| Cameras | Several at once: one source per phone, each controlled separately. |
| Price | Free, GPL-2.0-or-later. No account, no watermark, no upgrade tier. |
Documentation
Written to answer the question
Every screen, setting and failure mode — including the awkward ones, like why iOS mutes DRM audio during a broadcast, and why USB needs iTunes on Windows.