PlayOverlay is a free desktop app for adding live score and match-clock graphics to sports video streams, built for streaming community football (soccer) matches to YouTube, and usable for any stream where you key graphics over a live feed.
It renders a broadcast-style score bug, match clock, penalty shootout tracker, and custom graphics on a solid-colour background (green screen by default). Feed that 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.
Venues can also point a big screen straight at PlayOverlay: the Scoreboard screen fills the display with both teams in their club colours, the score, the time of day, and the match clock, no chroma key, no stream required.
PlayOverlay runs two windows:
- Control window: the dashboard where the operator updates scores, runs the match clock, tracks penalties, and switches screens.
- Display window: a clean, fullscreen output showing the graphics on your chosen key colour. Put this on a second display connected to your mixer (e.g. via HDMI into an ATEM input), then chroma key it over the match feed.
If you're streaming through OBS instead of a hardware mixer, you can skip the second display and chroma key entirely, see OBS browser source below.
- Score bug with team abbreviations, optional team logos, live scores, match clock, and stoppage time
- Match clock driven by the system clock (no drift over a half), with pause/resume and quick time adjustments
- Crash recovery: the score, clock, and match state are saved continuously; if the app closes mid-match you can restore where you left off
- Match phases: first/second half with configurable half lengths, and extra time that can be toggled off per match
- Generic timer mode: for sports that aren't halves-based, switch the timer to a configurable number of named periods (e.g. 4 × 12-minute quarters)
- Penalty shootout tracker: alternates teams automatically, records scored/missed, supports undo, and can be toggled off for matches that don't need it
- Screens: match title, score bug, penalties, end screen, plus your own uploaded full-screen graphics and overlay images linked to specific screens
- Custom key colour for whatever your mixer keys best
- OBS browser source output: an optional local server that serves the display graphics with a transparent background, so OBS users don't need a chroma key at all
- Phone remote (LAN): an optional PIN-gated server that lets a phone on the same wifi control goals, the clock, match phases, and the on-air screen from the touchline
- Keyboard shortcuts and Elgato Stream Deck support for goals, phase changes, and screen switching
- Saved match settings: store team line-ups/colours and reload them per fixture
- Multi-monitor aware: move the display window between screens, lock windows always-on-top, keep the machine awake while live
Grab the latest release from the Releases page:
| Platform | File |
|---|---|
| Windows | playoverlay-…Setup.exe |
| macOS (Apple Silicon) | playoverlay-darwin-arm64-….zip |
| macOS (Intel) | playoverlay-darwin-x64-….zip |
| Linux (Debian/Ubuntu) | playoverlay_….deb |
| Linux (Fedora/RHEL) | playoverlay-….rpm |
The binaries are not code-signed or notarized (signing certificates cost money and this is a free project), so your OS will warn you on first launch:
-
Windows: SmartScreen may show "Windows protected your PC", click More info, then Run anyway.
-
macOS: after unzipping, move
PlayOverlay.appto Applications. If macOS reports the app is damaged or from an unidentified developer, clear the quarantine flag once from Terminal:xattr -cr /Applications/PlayOverlay.app
If you'd rather not trust an unsigned binary, build it yourself from source, see Building from source below.
- Open Match Settings and 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, and toggle extra time and penalties for the match.
- In Window Settings, pick your key colour and whether screens auto-switch on phase changes.
- Move the display window to the output monitor and make it fullscreen.
- Kick off: start the first half, add goals as they happen, add stoppage time, advance phases.
While PlayOverlay is focused, 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 are also available system-wide (they work while OBS or your mixer software is focused) with Alt added, e.g. Cmd/Ctrl+Alt+Shift+H, unless the shortcut you've bound already includes Alt, in which case there's no separate system-wide variant.
These 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). Reset restores that action's default.
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; the logo key cycles between sets. (Uses WebHID, close any other software that's holding the deck, including the official Stream Deck app.)
Off by default. If you'd rather not manage a second display and chroma key, PlayOverlay can serve the display graphics directly as an OBS Browser Source, with a transparent background instead of a key colour:
- Open Window Settings → OBS Browser Source and switch it on (default port
4750). - In OBS, add a Browser Source pointed at the URL shown there (
http://127.0.0.1:<port>/), sized to your canvas resolution. - That's it, no chroma key needed, since the page background is transparent.
The server only listens on 127.0.0.1 (never reachable from the network) and stays off unless you enable it, so nothing changes for anyone who doesn't use it. It updates live over a local WebSocket connection and reconnects automatically if OBS is closed or the app restarts mid-stream.
Add ?screen=<name> to the browser source URL to pin that page to a specific screen, regardless of what the operator currently has selected on the display. This lets you run the normal feed into OBS while a venue TV (or a second OBS scene) shows something else, e.g. the spectator scoreboard, from the same running app, both fed by the same local server.
?screen= value |
Shows |
|---|---|
| (none) | Follows the operator (default) |
matchTitle |
Match title screen |
scoreBug |
Score bug |
penalties |
Penalties screen |
endScreen |
End screen |
scoreboard |
Spectator scoreboard |
Window Settings → OBS Browser Source shows a ready-made copyable URL for the scoreboard view. Only the built-in screens above can be pinned; custom (your uploaded full-screen graphics) and any unrecognised or missing value fall back to following the operator.
Off by default. When you want to run the match from the touchline instead of 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, usually the same wifi), either scan the QR code shown there or open the URL (
http://<laptop-ip>:<port>/) in a browser. - 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
- Switch which graphic is on air (score bug, match title, scoreboard, penalties, end screen, or blank)
The phone mirrors the live match state, so it stays in sync with the operator and with any other paired phone. Everything it does goes through exactly the same controls as the dashboard, so 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 is regenerated every time you enable the feature, and repeated wrong guesses are rate-limited to defeat brute forcing. It's intended for a trusted venue network, not a hostile public one; leave it off when you don't need it, and treat the PIN like any other password. A new PIN is issued whenever you toggle it back on or restart the app, so paired phones will need to re-enter it.
The interface and the on-screen graphics are available in 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; if you dismiss the prompt without choosing, it stays unset and asks again next time. You can change the language whenever you like under System Settings → Language, and it applies to both the operator dashboard and the on-air graphics. The phone remote control page is in English only for now. Text you type yourself is never translated: team names, abbreviations, venues, and the titles of saved match settings and custom screens are always shown exactly as you enter them.
The translations are machine-generated and have not 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.
On launch the app checks this repository's GitHub Releases for a newer version and shows a notification with a download link. Nothing is downloaded or installed automatically.
Prerequisites: Node.js 22.13+ (or 24+) and npm.
git clone https://github.com/JosephMaynard/playoverlay.git
cd playoverlay
npm install
npm start # run in developmentPackage distributables for your current platform:
npm run makeCross-build for Intel from an Apple Silicon Mac (or vice versa):
npm run make -- --arch=x64 # or --arch=arm64Type-check with npm run ts-check, lint with npm run lint, run the test
suite with npm test, and generate coverage with npm run test:coverage.
The CI-only package sanity check is npm run build:ci; use npm run make to
produce distributables.
Tagged releases (v*) are built automatically for Windows, both macOS architectures, and Linux (.deb and .rpm) by the release workflow and attached to a draft GitHub release.
PlayOverlay does not include telemetry or crash reporting. The only network request a default build makes is the update check against the public GitHub API.
Settings are stored with electron-store in config.json:
- Windows:
%APPDATA%/playoverlay - macOS:
~/Library/Application Support/playoverlay - Linux:
$XDG_CONFIG_HOMEor~/.config/playoverlay
Uploaded images live in an images folder alongside it.
Issues and pull requests are welcome. Before opening a PR, please run
npm run lint, npm run ts-check, and npm test, then describe how you tested the change
(this app's job is to not fall over mid-match, so reliability fixes are
especially appreciated).
PlayOverlay is open source under the MIT License: free to use, modify, and redistribute, including commercially.
The PlayOverlay name, logo, and branding are owned by Magic Zebra Ltd and are not covered by the MIT licence. A modified or rebranded fork must not present itself as an official PlayOverlay release. See TRADEMARKS.md for details.