Docs
Everything you need to set up a match, choose an output, and use the extras.
Getting started
1. Match Settings
Set team names, abbreviations, colours, and logos, plus the venue, kick-off time, and half lengths. This is also where you choose between the football timer and generic periods (for sports that aren’t halves-based, e.g. 4 × 12-minute quarters), and toggle extra time and penalties for the match. Saved match settings can be reloaded per fixture, so you don’t have to re-enter the same line-up every week.
2. Window Settings
Pick your key colour and whether screens auto-switch on phase changes. This is also where the OBS browser source and keyboard shortcuts live, see below.
3. Move the display to your output
Move the display window to the output monitor and make it fullscreen. PlayOverlay is multi-monitor aware: you can lock windows always-on-top and keep the machine awake for the whole stream.
4. Kick off
Start the first half, add goals as they happen, add stoppage time, and advance phases. If the app closes mid-match, the score, clock, and match state are saved continuously, so you can restore where you left off.
Chroma key or OBS browser source
There are two ways to get PlayOverlay’s graphics into your stream.
Chroma key via a mixer
Feed the display window’s solid-colour output into a vision mixer or capture device, for example a Blackmagic ATEM Mini, key out the background, and composite it over your camera feed before streaming. You can set a custom key colour under Window Settings to suit whatever your mixer keys best.
OBS browser source
Off by default. Open Window Settings → OBS Browser Source and switch it on (default port 4750). In OBS, add a Browser Source pointed at http://127.0.0.1:<port>/, sized to your canvas resolution. The background is transparent, so no chroma key is needed. The server only listens on 127.0.0.1 (never reachable from the network) and stays off unless you enable it, and it reconnects automatically if OBS or the app restarts mid-stream.
Pinned views
Add ?screen=<name> to the browser source URL to pin that page to a specific screen, regardless of what the operator currently has selected. This lets one venue TV (or a second OBS scene) show something different, such as the spectator scoreboard, from the same running app. Valid values are matchTitle, scoreBug, penalties, endScreen, and scoreboard; leaving it out follows the operator. Window Settings shows a ready-made copyable URL for the scoreboard view.
Keyboard shortcuts
While PlayOverlay is focused, these work by default:
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+Space | Next match phase |
| Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+H | Home team scored |
| Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+A | Away team scored |
The same actions also work system-wide (while OBS or your mixer software is focused) with Alt added, for example Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+Shift+H, unless the shortcut you’ve bound already includes Alt, in which case there’s no separate system-wide variant. Shortcuts are rebindable: open Window Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts, click Change next to an action, then press the new key combination (a modifier other than Shift is required). Resetrestores that action’s default.
Stream Deck
Connect an Elgato Stream Deck from System Settings → Connect to Stream Deck. The deck shows rotating button sets for scoring, match phases, and screen switching, and the logo key cycles between sets. PlayOverlay talks to the deck over WebHID, so close any other software that’s holding it, including the official Stream Deck app.
Phone remote (LAN)
Off by default. When you’d rather run the match from the touchline than the laptop, PlayOverlay can serve a small control page to a phone on the same local network (usually the same wifi):
- Open System Settings → Phone Remote and switch it on (default port
3006). - On the phone, connected to the same local network as the laptop, scan the QR code shown there or open
http://<laptop-ip>:<port>/. - Enter the 6-digit PIN shown in Settings. Once paired, the phone shows the live score, clock, and on-air screen.
From the phone you can add or remove a goal for either team, start or stop the match clock, advance to the next match phase, and switch which graphic is on air. It mirrors the live match state, so it stays in sync with the operator and any other paired phone: a phone tap and an on-screen click behave identically.
Security: the remote server binds to the local network only and is never reachable from the internet. Pairing is gated by a 6-digit PIN that’s regenerated every time you enable the feature (and again on every app restart), and repeated wrong guesses are rate-limited. It’s built for a trusted venue network, not a hostile public one, so leave it off when you don’t need it and treat the PIN like any other password.
Note: the phone remote interface is English-only, regardless of which language you’ve chosen for the operator dashboard.
Languages
The operator dashboard and the on-screen graphics are available in 8 locales: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish (Spain and Latin America), and Portuguese (Portugal and Brazil). On first launch, PlayOverlay suggests a language based on your system and asks you to confirm it or pick another. You can change it any time under System Settings → Language, and it applies to both the operator dashboard and the on-air graphics. Anything you type yourself, team names, abbreviations, venues, and the titles of saved match settings or custom screens, is always shown exactly as you enter it and is never translated.
These translations are machine-generated and haven’t been reviewed by native speakers, so some wording, especially the on-air football terms, may read a little off. If you spot a mistake, please open an issue and it’ll get fixed.
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