The Whatnot overlay: a live break board for OBS.
Every break answers the same three questions all night: which teams are left, who got that spot, and what is happening right now. A good overlay answers them on the stream itself, so chat stops asking. Here is what an overlay actually is, the honest way to get one onto a Whatnot stream, what a live break board shows, and what it costs.
What is a Whatnot overlay?
An overlay is a graphics layer in your streaming software that sits on top of your cameras. For most streamers that means a webcam frame and a logo. For a breaker it should mean the break itself: the spot grid, which teams are still open, which buyer claimed which team, and whatever giveaway or promo is running right now.
Most overlays for sale are static art: a border, a banner, a starting-soon screen. Those look fine, and they never change during the show. A break board is different, because the state of the break changes every time you sell a spot. A static image cannot show that, which is why so many breakers end up pointing a camera at a whiteboard or sharing a spreadsheet window on stream. A live overlay is a web page rendered inside your stream, and the page changes as the break changes.
Whatnot does not have built-in overlays
Worth saying plainly, because nobody selling overlay art says it: the Whatnot phone app streams whatever the camera sees, and that is it. There is no overlay slot to fill.
The way breakers add graphics is to stream from a computer. OBS Studio, which is free, builds the scene: your face cam, your hand cam, and your overlays are layers inside it, and OBS sends the finished picture to Whatnot using the stream key from the Seller Hub. Whatnot treats it like any other video feed. Every overlay on this page, and every overlay a designer will ever sell you, goes through that same door.
If you have not made the jump to OBS yet, the OBS setup guide for Whatnot breakers walks through all of it: scenes, cameras, audio, and the streaming key flow.
What the live board shows
BreakTemplate's overlay is a live break board. One browser source in OBS, and your viewers see:
- The spot grid. Pick a league and the template fills every spot: NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL, 124 teams with real logos and team colors on the board.
- Claims as they happen. Sell the spot in your live, type the buyer once in Break Control, and their name lands on the team cell on stream in about two seconds, with a claim animation viewers actually notice.
- On-stream actions. LIVE AT $1, STASH OR PASS, hit and promo takeovers, fired from the dashboard when the moment hits, not edited into a graphic afterward.
- Sticky notes and the ticker. Pin a note to the board, run a scrolling giveaway ticker under it, change either mid-show without touching OBS.
The point of all of it: "who got the Cowboys?" gets answered by the board before anyone types it. Fewer repeated questions, fewer disputes at ship time, and screenshots of your stream do your marketing for you.
Add it to OBS in three steps
- Copy your overlay link. It is on your dashboard, and it is permanent: one URL per account that never changes, no matter how many breaks you run.
- Add a Browser source in OBS. Sources, then +, then Browser. Paste the URL and set 1920 by 1080. Streamlabs and anything else with browser sources works the same way.
- Activate the break you are running. The board follows whichever break is active, so next show you activate the next break and OBS never gets touched again.
That is the whole setup. One tip worth knowing: check "Refresh browser when scene becomes active" in the source properties, so the board reloads cleanly even when OBS sat open all day. And if you spin for giveaway or draw order on stream, the free team randomizer has its own clean OBS view at randomizer/obs.
Five themes, one click
The board is not one look. A click in Break Control reskins the whole stream: backdrop, cells, claim effects.
- Baseball, a stadium at night: light towers up, chalk down, city asleep behind the wall.
- Basketball, an arena bowl with LED ribbon boards and spotlights pooling on hardwood.
- Neon Nights, every cell a tube sign at 2am, and one of them always flickers.
- Camera, the board becomes a stage rig around your live camera feed.
- Halloween, live for the October season: moon, bat traffic, ghost claim animations.
A football stadium theme is in the works, and there is a theme request box inside the app. Requests genuinely move the build list, because one person builds these and he reads everything.
Free preview vs Pro, honestly
The free plan is not a demo timer. You get one break, the full tracking dashboard, and a watermarked preview of your board, so you can see your real teams and your real buyers on the real design before paying anything. If you are still running shows from a sheet, the free break templates are yours regardless.
Putting the live board on your stream is Pro: $19 a month with a 3-day free trial, which also unlocks unlimited breaks, the themes, and the finance view of every break, revenue, the costs you logged, and profit. Locked features stay visible in the dashboard, so you always know what Pro unlocks before you pay for it. Full details on the pricing page. The practical move: start the trial the day of your next show, so your first break on the live board is the free one. It is the same board I run my own Whatnot breaks on.
Put it on your next stream
One link in OBS. The whole show updates.
Build your first board free in a few minutes and preview it with your own teams. When you want it live on stream, the Pro trial is 3 days, long enough to run a real show on it.
Whatnot overlay questions
How do I add an overlay to Whatnot streams?
Whatnot has no built-in overlay feature. When you stream from the phone app, viewers see your camera feed and nothing else. To show an overlay, you stream from a computer instead: OBS Studio sends your scene to Whatnot through the stream key from the Seller Hub, and the overlay is a browser source inside that scene. Any streaming software with browser sources works the same way.
Does the board update by itself when a spot sells?
You type the buyer once. Sell the spot in your Whatnot live like always, type the name in Break Control, and the claim lands on the board on your stream in about two seconds. BreakTemplate does not read your chat or capture buyers automatically, and it never needs your Whatnot login, so there is no connection to break mid-show.
Is the Whatnot overlay free?
The free plan is one break, the full tracking dashboard, and a watermarked preview of your board, so you see exactly what viewers would see before paying anything. Putting the live board on your stream is Pro, $19 a month with a 3-day free trial, so your first show on it can be the trial.
Does it only work with OBS?
No. The overlay is a web page at a permanent URL, so anything that can show a web page can show your board: OBS Studio, Streamlabs Desktop, or any streaming software with a browser source. OBS is what most Whatnot breakers run, so the guides here use it.