Camera, lenses and image
The picture is decided on the phone, before encoding. The plugin decodes what it's sent and changes nothing.
Choosing lens, resolution, frame rate and codec#
Four pickers in the Setup screen's Camera section, each filtered to what the selected lens can do. A combination that isn't listed isn't supported by the hardware.
| Setting | Notes |
|---|---|
| Lens | Main, Ultra Wide, Telephoto or Front. Switchable mid-stream. |
| Resolution | Up to 3840×2160. Higher isn't automatically better — 1080p60 beats 4K30 for most talking-head work. |
| Frame rate | 30 or 60. Match your OBS canvas. Options → High frame rate (experimental) adds 120 and 240 where the camera has them. |
| Codec | HEVC looks the same as H.264 at roughly 40% less data. Use it unless your OBS build can't decode it. |
| Quality | Balanced streams at a bitrate that is safe on ordinary Wi-Fi. Maximum keeps probing upward while the connection stays clean — up to about six times that over USB, four over Wi-Fi — and settles just under whatever the link carries. It also switches the encoder to quality-first settings (at 1080p and below; at 4K they would add about 50 ms of delay for no visible gain) and streams from the full sensor readout. More data and more heat; USB is the place for it. |
If the source says "Connected, but this OBS build can't decode the stream", that build has no HEVC decoder. Switch the app to H.264; nothing else changes.
Changing settings mid-stream#
Lens, resolution, frame rate and codec can all change while the stream is live, from the browser panel or the source properties. A lens change is instant; a format change pauses briefly while the camera restarts.
Live camera controls#
The same controls appear on the app's Live screen, in the browser panel, and (in part) in the source properties — same order everywhere, and touching one updates the others.
On the phone, the Live screen shows the picture, the status pill, Pause, Stop, and the lens buttons — .5, 1×, 2, as in the Camera app, with the Flashlight button to their left on a camera with a flash and the green screen button to their right. Pinch to zoom, or tap the active lens button for a zoom dial. Tap the picture to focus and expose there, and drag up or down on it to brighten or darken the shot. The chevron opens the adjust tray: one dial and a chip for each thing it can drive (Focus, WB, EV, ISO, Shutter). The ISO, Shutter and EV dials click between the usual stops; Focus and WB are smooth, and small icons under WB mark where bulbs, office lights, daylight, cloud and shade sit. The buttons under the dial stay in the same place on every chip. A yellow A on a chip means that setting is on auto; drag the dial and it goes manual, tap the active chip again and it goes back (on EV, back to 0). The browser panel lays the same controls out as rows.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Zoom | 1× to the lens maximum. Pinch the Live screen, or tap the active lens button and slide along the zoom dial that opens; tap the button again to reset the zoom. The other lens buttons stay a tap away above the dial. In the panel, use the slider. On phones with a 48 MP Main camera (iOS 16 and later, in formats that offer it), an extra 2 lens button lands exactly on the full-detail 2× sensor crop, and pinch and the dial settle on it when they pass close by. At 4K it is noticeably sharper than other zoom levels. |
| Exposure | On auto, the EV chip is a bias dial in third stops (or drag the picture on the phone). ISO and Shutter each go manual on their own: drag Shutter to fix the shutter speed and ISO keeps adjusting to hold the exposure, or drag ISO to fix it and the shutter adjusts. EV still works while one of them is on auto, and greys out once both are manual. Tap the active chip to put that one back on auto. ISO and Shutter are hidden on cameras that lack manual exposure. |
| Natural motion blur | On by default. While the shutter is on auto it stays at half the frame interval or faster (the 180° rule: 1/60 at 30 fps), so motion blurs the way film does and a dim room raises ISO instead of smearing. Turn it off in Options, or with the button on the Shutter chip in the tray or the panel, even mid-stream. The button dims while you set the shutter by hand, since there is nothing for it to limit. |
| Focus | Auto, or locked with a near-to-far dial. On auto the camera follows faces (Options → Focus on faces). Tap the preview to focus and expose there until the scene changes; hold it to pin focus and exposure to that spot of the frame, so they keep following whatever is there as you move the phone, until a tap lets it go. |
| White balance | Auto, or locked with a 2500–8000 K dial. To calibrate, put plain white paper anywhere in the shot under your lights, tap the eyedropper on the WB chip, then tap the paper in the picture. The browser panel works the same way: click the eyedropper, then click the paper in the still of the shot it shows. White balance locks to the paper, green or magenta tint included, which fixes LED and fluorescent casts the dial can't. Tap WB again for auto. |
| Lock | In the tray's bottom row on the phone. Tap it to lock the selected value (ISO, shutter, both from the EV chip, white balance, or focus) at what auto is doing right now, or to hand it back to auto. Hold it to lock every value at once, or unlock them all. The lock fills in while the selected value is locked, and turns into a stack of locks when everything is. |
| Flashlight | A hard fill at close range, with a brightness from 1% to 100%. On the phone, hold the Flashlight button left of the lens buttons to turn it on or off; while it is on, tap it for a brightness dial, and tap again to go back to full. The tray's Flashlight button switches it too. In the panel, click the Flashlight button by the lenses and use the brightness slider that appears. The light comes back at the brightness you left it at, and the button only shows on a camera with a flash. |
| Lens | The device's real lenses: the lens buttons on the phone, a menu in the panel. Tap the active lens button for the zoom dial, and again to reset its zoom. On a device with two front cameras (an iPad Pro, for example), the front camera has its own lens buttons. |
| Flip | Front to back and back again. In the tray's bottom row on the phone. |
Lock focus and white balance once the shot is set. Autofocus and auto white balance hunt when someone walks past or a light changes, and the hunt is visible on stream. This is the single biggest quality win on the page.
Color: HDR and Apple Log#
Color sits in the app's Format sheet and offers only what this phone can capture. Both options are HEVC-only and take effect when the camera next starts; the sheet marks them "HEVC only", and picking H.264 there returns Color to Standard.
HDR (HLG)#
10-bit HLG capture. OBS tone-maps it for an SDR canvas; an HDR canvas gets the real thing. Off by default.
Apple Log#
On Pro iPhones (iOS 17+), a flat 10-bit image for grading: add an Apply LUT filter to the source and load an Apple Log LUT. The plugin applies nothing of its own.
Log looks washed out until it's graded. If you aren't adding a LUT, use Standard.
Virtual green screen#
Everything but you is painted solid green before the video leaves the phone; turning it on sets Color to Standard. The source then adds a tuned chroma-key filter in OBS — once only, so deleting or re-tuning it sticks. The phone's own preview keeps showing the plain camera; the green appears in OBS. Turn it on in the app before going live, or mid-stream by holding the green screen button beside the lens buttons (it lights up yellow while on, and the person in it turns to dots while depth assist runs) or with the panel's button. Switching it restarts the camera briefly. The button and the panel's row show up only once green screen is on for the stream, so they stay out of the way if you never use it. Setup shows Depth under Green screen when the camera and format you picked have depth assist. With green screen on, the Format sheet's menus mark the resolutions and frame rates that have it with Depth, or say which frame rates would, like Depth at 30, 60 fps. The camera can't zoom while depth assist runs, so the zoom dial, the 2 button and the panel's zoom slider go away until it stops.
- Depth assist sharpens the cutout with real depth: the front camera on Face ID phones, the rear Main lens on Pro (LiDAR) phones. Other lenses use shape detection alone, which keeps every person in frame. It also turns off Center Stage and the other system effects.
- Subject distance works while depth assist runs: anything farther from the phone than the cutoff becomes background, which is how you drop someone walking past behind you. It starts on Auto, which keeps the cutoff about 0.6 m behind you as you move; a small A on the green screen button says it is on Auto. Tap the lit button for the Subject dial, which shows the distance above it and takes the lens buttons' place while it is open. Drag for 0.5–5.0 m, or past 5 m for All (no cutoff); tap the button again for Auto. Without depth assist there is no dial, and a tap only reminds you to hold. In the panel, drag the slider, or click its readout for Auto.
Remembered settings#
Each camera's exposure, white balance, zoom and focus are kept from one stream to the next, per lens, so a shot dialled in once stays dialled in. Lock white balance on the Main lens today and it comes back locked tomorrow; switch to the Ultra Wide mid-stream and it comes up the way you last left it, at its own 1× (a lens switch never brings back an old zoom). There is nothing to name or save: the tray shows what came back, and tapping a chip releases it.
Options → Remember camera settings turns it off, which also forgets what was stored.
Control Center video effects#
Portrait, Studio Light and the rest are iOS features, toggled in Control Center while an app uses the camera. iOS offers them only on certain cameras and formats — typically the front camera, nothing above 1920×1440 — and on many iPhones the rear cameras get none.
- Options → Camera diagnostics lists what your device offers, per camera and format.
- LensLink picks an effect-capable format whenever your settings allow one.
- A toggle that appears but greys out means the frame rate is too high: drop it, and turn on Options → Allow system video effects so iOS can vary it.
Apple's Camera-app filters and Photographic Styles aren't available to any third-party app. For looks, use OBS filters (right-click the source → Filters).
Holding the phone#
The interface follows the phone's rotation (unless rotation lock is on) and the live view stays upright in any orientation. What OBS receives is always sensor-native landscape, so rotating the phone never resizes the source in your scene.