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Features and Audio Modes
Add 2 to 6 Twitch channels by username and the layout adjusts automatically to fit however many are in the grid. A panel that goes offline shows a clear "offline" state instead of a blank or broken embed — it stays in the grid so it's easy to notice when the streamer comes back.
Overlapping audio from multiple channels at once is the core problem StreamHive exists to solve, so audio behavior is deliberate, not incidental. There are two audio modes, switched from a segmented control in the top bar:
Selection — one channel is audible at a time, everything else is muted. Clicking a panel's sound icon makes that channel the audio source and mutes the rest automatically. The active channel's panel also grows ("focus-follows-audio"), so the layout itself tells you what you're listening to. If the active channel is removed from the grid, another still-online channel is picked automatically — the viewer is never left in silence without knowing why.
Both/All — every channel is audible, each with its own independent volume slider. The grid drops the focus layout in this mode and goes back to a symmetric arrangement, since no single channel is "the" one anymore.
Tip
Which mode a new session starts in is a saved preference, not a fixed default — see Preferences below.
Warning
SmartVoiceSwitch is not a real, selectable mode in the app today. Only Selection and Both/All exist in the current audio control. The original product vision included a third mode that would automatically switch to whichever streamer is talking and cancel duplicate audio between synced streamers — a spike confirmed part of that (reading a channel's real audio) is technically possible from a browser extension, but nothing has shipped, and duplicate-audio cancellation itself remains unsolved. See Roadmap for the full, honest status.
A dedicated chat bar sits apart from the video panels, with one tab per channel currently in the grid. All tabs are pre-loaded, so switching between them never triggers a visible reload — only the active tab is shown. By default the visible chat tab follows whichever channel has audio focus in Selection mode, but it can be switched manually without changing what's playing, so a viewer can read one streamer's chat while listening to another.
Every panel keeps direct access to that streamer's own Twitch features — a link to their channel, a follow button, and a donation link where the streamer has one set up publicly — so using StreamHive never means losing access to the normal ways of interacting with a channel.
A small settings panel lets a viewer set their own defaults for new sessions: which audio mode to start in (Selection or Both/All), whether the chat bar starts open, and a light/dark theme override (StreamHive otherwise follows the browser/OS theme automatically). These are stored locally in the browser, not tied to a Twitch account.
Note
Preferences are separate from saved grid templates (below). A preference decides how a new, empty session starts; a template restores a specific set of channels and their own audio mode/layout on top of that.
Logging in with Twitch unlocks saving the current grid (channels + layout + audio mode + chat bar state) as a named template, so a viewer doesn't have to rebuild the same setup every time. Anonymous, read-only viewing works without an account — login is only required for actions that need to be tied to a Twitch identity: sending chat messages, following, and saving templates.