How To Use Your iPhone As A Streaming Camera on Twitch (Streamlabs & OBS)

Adding a face cam to your stream is one of the best ways to create a better bond with your community as well as increasing your clickthrough rate to your stream.

However if you’re just starting out you maybe can’t afford to purchase an expensive webcam. Not to worry, if you have an iPhone you’re in luck! You can get an extremely high quality image right from your phone.

If you have an old iPhone lying around the house you can add this to your setup permanently!

Here is the step by step guide to using your phone as a streaming camera.

Step 1: Download EPOC Cam On Your iPhone

Epoc Cam is the app we are going to be using to allow us to use our iPhone as a camera. The app has a free version and a paid version. If you’re just looking to use the camera as an overlay cam while gaming the free version will be more than enough.

You can download Epoc Cam on your phone by clicking here or searching on the app store. If you are unable to see the free version through the link just search the app store.

Step 2: Download The EPOC Drivers For Your Computer

Next up we need to download the EPOC Drivers for our computer. This will allow our phone and computer to connect through wifi and transmit the live webcam to our computer (OBS/Streamlabs).

Click here to download the drivers for your computer on Mac or PC

Once you have installed the drivers on your computer we are ready to connect your phone to your computer.

Step 3: Open EPOC On Your Phone

Once you open the EPOC app on your iPhone you will go through the process below. You will need to accept the camera and microphone permissions for your phone to work as a web cam.

Once you have accepted the permissions you will now see your camera view appear on your phone and you may get a notification on your computer letting you know your “webcam” has connected.

This is what you will see on your iPhone when it opens up. Well you’ll probably see someone much more handsome than myself but you get the point…

So how do we get from having this video on your phone to showing it on your stream?

Step 4: How To Add Your iPhone Webcam to OBS

So now you have installed the EPOC app on your iPhone and installed the drivers on your computer all we need to do is add our webcam to our stream.

First I am going to show you how to add the webcam to OBS then I will show you how to add it to Streamlabs.

Adding the Webcam to OBS

Next up we want to open OBS. Once open decide whether you want to add your camera to an existing scene or create a completely new scene.

Then we want to add a new source to our scene.

Select Video Capture device and select –> Create New

Then select EPOC Cam from the dropdown menu.

Once you have selected EPOC cam make sure that the app is open on your phone. It will take a couple of seconds to connect through your wifi network.

Once connected you will now be able to see camera view from your phone. Congratulations, you’re now using your iPhone Camera as a webcam.

However as you can see the webcam does not display in 16:9. This is as you are on the FREE app instead of the paid version. It also displays an Elgato watermark at the bottom of your camera.

You can upgrade to the paid version to get extra features like 16:9. different zoom lengths, microphone, greenscreens and removing the watermark.

This may be worth it if you want to do full screen Just chatting streams or have conversations with your chat between games.

However, if you’re just looking to overlay your cam on top of your gameplay I would recommend cropping the camera instead to remove the watermark.

To do this right click on your webcam image –> Transform –> Edit Transform

If you want to remove the Elgato logo I would recommend cropping 120px from the bottom and then cropping 40px from the left to give you a nice webcam view.

Now you have the perfect webcam in OBS without even owning a webcam. In fact the camera in your iPhone is better than most of the webcams out there on the market and you can use this wirelessly.

This is the finished product inside OBS! It looks pretty damn good.

Adding The Webcam To Streamlabs

Next up we want to open up Streamlabs. We then need to decide if we want to add our camera to an existing scene or to a new one.

Then we want to add a new source to our stream in Streamlabs.

Go to Sources –> + –> Video Capture Device

Then you want to select the EPOC Cam Camera as your source. You can then click done and your camera will be added to your scene.

Once added to your scene you will likely want to crop out the Elgato logo. You can do this by going to Transform –> Edit Transform

Once inside the transform, I would recommend cropping the bottom by 120px and the left-hand side by 40px.

This will give you a high quality looking camera on your stream.

Once you have added your game source to the background you will end up with a scene looking just like this without ever having to purchase an overpriced webcam.

It looks almost as good as a DSLR! Down below I will show a comparison between my iPhone, DSLR and Logitech Webcam.

How To Improve The Quality Of Your Stream

Now that you have your iPhone camera all hooked up and ready to go there is one mroe thing you can do to improve your stream.

What is it you ask? Adding in a stream overlay. Let me show you how the stream looks with a cropped iPhone webcam and a sick stream overlay from Own3d.tv.

As you can see once we have added an overlay to our stream it instantly boosts the production quality. Not only do we have a great-looking border around the camera but we can now see all our recent subs, donations and followers.

If you want to level up your stream own3ed has hundreds of amazing customizable templates for your Twitch or Youtube streams.

Click here to check out all of Own3d.tv template overlays

iPhone vs Webcam vs DSLR

I wanted to showcase the free version of the EPOC free iPhone software vs my DSLR vs the Logitech C920 webcam so you can get can idea of how comparable each of them is.

Clearly, the Sony A7II beats everything by a mile however the iPhone combined with the free version of EPOC looks much better than the Logitech webcam.

So if you have an iPhone lying around your house it’s probably a much better option than spending money on a webcam or DSLR early in your streaming career.

The Round Up

If you’re looking for a free app solution I think EPOC Cam is the go-to for connecting your iPhone as a streaming camera.

On the free versions on the app you are unable to access the max resolution of your iPhone camera. This really doesn’t matter if you are only using it as your cam as an overlay on your game.

However, if want to go full screen and do some just chatting streams then I would recommend investing in the full version of the app which only costs $7.99. It might seem like a lot for an app but compared to buying a webcam it’s fairly affordable.

If you want to upgrade your stream setup even further to the level that I have it with a DSLR I would recommend checking out these products:

• Sony A7III
• Elgato Camlink

Let me know down below if this guide helped you upgrade your stream with your iPhone.