How to Set Up Different Donation Alerts for Weekday and Holiday Streams in OBS

Why Separate Alerts into Two Modes

A holiday stream and a regular broadcast serve different purposes. On weekdays, an alert should be short and not break the pace: the viewer sees the notification, you have time to say thanks and get back to the game. On a holiday, the same donation can be played up bigger — with sound, animation, a separate scene. If everything hangs on a single source, you either have to put up with overloaded design on weekdays or manually reconfigure the widget before every stream. It's easier to prepare two sets in advance and switch between them.

Two Ways to Separate the Design

The choice comes down to how your donation widget is set up. Roughly speaking, there's the path through the widgets themselves and the path through OBS scenes. The first is cleaner, the second is more universal.

Separate Widgets for Each Mode

Many donation services let you create multiple alert widgets in one account, each with its own design, sound, and text. You make a weekday version — restrained — and a holiday one — with a GIF and music, get two links, and insert both into OBS as browser sources. After that, the only question is which one is visible at the moment.

The downside is that settings get duplicated: edits to the greeting text or minimum amount will have to be made in both widgets, and it's easy to forget about the second one. Plus, not every service offers multiple independent widgets on a free tier — some platforms only make a second alert available on a paid level, and some limit a free account to one active widget. Check this before you build a scheme on two links: if the service doesn't support it, move on to the scenes option.

One Link, Different Scenes

The second option is one widget but two sources in OBS, each on its own scene. A browser source can be added twice with different sizes, positions, and filters: on the weekday scene — a small notification in the corner, on the holiday scene — a large block in the center with a backdrop. Sound is separated too: the holiday source has higher volume, the weekday one is muted.

There's no duplication of settings here — there's one widget, and edits apply to both sources at once. But this method has another downside: two sources of the same widget are active in OBS at the same time, and if both scenes use it as shared, the alert may fire in both places. Isolation is solved through scene structure — more on that below.

A Ready-Made Scene Structure

The simplest framework you can copy. The order of scenes in the OBS panel:

1. "Weekdays" — the main broadcast: game or screen capture, camera, microphone, the weekday alert source in the corner.
2. "Holiday" — the same set plus the holiday alert source in the center, frames, background, additional overlays.

Keep shared sources (game capture, camera, microphone) in a separate base scene or in a group that you copy to both scenes. That way you don't reconfigure them when switching modes. If the modes differ a lot — a different set of sources, a different chat widget, a different layout — set up two scene collections: it's like two independent projects inside OBS, switched via the "Scene Collections" menu. The downside is that edits in one collection don't carry over to the other, and shared elements will have to be maintained in two places.

OBS profiles store output and audio settings, not sources, so for a difference only in alerts they aren't needed. A separate profile makes sense if the holiday broadcast changes the bitrate, resolution, or audio devices — for example, a second microphone is added for guests.

What to Change in the Alert Itself

Different modes aren't just about image size. Think through exactly what differs between the weekday and holiday notification.

• Display duration: short on weekdays, longer on holidays so the viewer has time to take it in.
• Sound: background, quiet during a regular broadcast and a full audio effect on a holiday.
• Text: a neutral thank-you on weekdays, separate congratulations or themed phrases on a holiday.
• Display threshold: on a holiday you can show alerts from a smaller amount or, conversely, only large donations — it depends on how you position the broadcast.
• Position and size: corner of the screen versus center, small font versus large.

Two or three differences are enough for the viewer to feel the difference between broadcasts.

Chat Bot and Commands When Switching Modes

If you have a chat bot set up, commands and auto-replies should also be tied to the mode. Some bots let you keep separate command sets for different channels or switch the configuration manually — check what yours can do. In practice, it's easier to keep the weekday command set as the main one and enable the holiday ones (congratulations, giveaways, themed replies) before the stream and disable them afterward. If the bot doesn't support profiles, set up a second bot instance for the holiday broadcast and keep it off the rest of the time so commands don't duplicate in chat.

Switching Without Restarting

The main requirement is to change the mode on the fly without stopping the stream. Scenes are switched with hotkeys or from the panel, widgets are turned on and off via the eye icon in the source list. Assign hotkeys to the needed scenes in advance — that way you won't be hunting for the mouse in the middle of a broadcast, and switching will take a second.

Test the transition before the stream: send a test donation and make sure the alert appeared exactly where and how you intended, and that the second variant didn't fire. A test donation can usually be made with a minimum amount or via the service's test mode.

A Common Mistake: Two Active Sources

If both alert variants are on the same scene and both are enabled, the notification will show twice or overlap itself. Keep the weekday and holiday sources on different scenes or disable the unused one. If you want to keep both on one scene — for quick comparison, for example — add them to separate groups and manage the visibility of the whole group rather than individual sources: that way there's less chance of forgetting to turn off the extra one.

Check filters and sound separately: a disabled source's sound shouldn't leak into the broadcast. If you use one widget in two sources, make sure the second source is muted in audio, not just hidden visually.