Vertical Streaming on Twitch: How to Broadcast in Two Formats at Once

Dual Format is a Twitch mode in which one broadcast goes out in two versions at once: horizontal 16:9 for computers and TVs and vertical 9:16 for phones. Since June 17, 2026 it has been available to every streamer, with no Affiliate or Partner status required. To start you need OBS Studio 32 or newer with Enhanced Broadcasting turned on, a plugin for the second canvas (Aitum Vertical or SE.Live), a supported graphics card and a stable upload speed of at least 12.5 Mbps. You build the vertical layout yourself, and Twitch shows each viewer the one that suits their device.

What Dual Format looks like to viewers

A viewer on a computer sees the usual horizontal picture. On a phone held upright, a full-screen vertical version opens: you build it separately, and it is not an automatic crop. The viewer can switch to the classic view (video on top, chat below), and if they turn the phone sideways, they get a full-screen horizontal stream.

In vertical mode viewers can take part in the Hype Train, subscribe, gift subs and send Bits without leaving full-screen viewing. Viewers also choose for themselves how much chat is shown over the video.

You still have a single stream key: both formats reach Twitch in one Enhanced Broadcasting stream, not as two separate streams.

Why a streamer needs it

• Mobile audience. According to Twitch, 70% of new viewers come to the platform from a phone. If your stream takes up a narrow strip on a smartphone screen while the next channel fills the whole screen, the viewer's choice is easy to predict.
• Clips without editing. With Dual Format, Twitch creates both a horizontal and a vertical version of clips and VODs. A vertical clip with a ready-made layout (webcam on top, game below) can go straight to TikTok, YouTube Shorts and VK Clips, with no need to cut out your face and fit the frame in an editor.
• Promotion from Twitch itself. At launch Twitch promised to feature Dual Format streams on the main pages of the mobile app, and in August 2026 it ran a promotion with bonus gift subs only for such channels. The platform is clearly betting on vertical.

If most of your audience is on PC, for example if you stream long strategy games with a tiny interface, the benefit will be smaller. But almost everyone needs clips for short-form video, and a vertical canvas solves that right during the stream. How to cut out highlights is covered in the article how to make a clip on Twitch.

Requirements: software, hardware, internet

Software

• OBS Studio 32.0.0 or newer. Enhanced Broadcasting itself appeared in OBS earlier, but the second (vertical) canvas needs version 32.
• A second-canvas plugin: the free Aitum Vertical, which Twitch used for the launch, or SE.Live from StreamElements. Install only one: StreamElements directly warns that running both plugins at once can crash OBS.
• A Twitch account connected in OBS via Settings → Stream (sign in with your account, not just a key).

Hardware and upload

Enhanced Broadcasting encodes video on your graphics card. Without server-side transcoding, your PC prepares several quality levels for each format itself, so the requirements depend heavily on whether your channel has it. Twitch gives server-side transcoding to Partners and many Affiliates. Below are the figures for 1080p from the guides by Streamlabs and XSplit, Twitch's official partners for Dual Format.

Condition	Graphics card (minimum)	Upload speed
With server-side transcoding	NVIDIA GTX 900 series or newer (GTX 1050, 1060, 1650), AMD Radeon RX 5500 or newer	from 12.5 Mbps
Without server-side transcoding	NVIDIA RTX 3070 or newer, AMD Radeon RX 6600 or newer	from 13.5 Mbps

That is the minimum for the video alone. Leave some headroom: if a speed test shows 15 Mbps of upload, but someone at home is uploading files to the cloud at the same time, your stream will start dropping frames. For more on how to work out your stream's bandwidth, see how to choose a bitrate for streaming.

As for operating systems: Streamlabs and XSplit support Dual Format only on Windows 10/11. If you stream from a Mac with OBS, check Twitch's current Dual Format help page before your first broadcast, because system requirements are updated there.

A separate note on 2K: only Affiliates and Partners can stream in 1440p, and only the horizontal picture goes out in 2K. Vertical stays at 1080×1920.

Step-by-step setup in OBS with Aitum Vertical

1. Update OBS to version 32 or newer. Close the program before installing the plugin.
2. Install the latest Aitum Vertical and restart OBS. A separate vertical canvas dock will appear on the right. For an overview of other useful add-ons, see the article OBS plugins.
3. Set the canvas to 1080×1920. This is the standard vertical resolution for Twitch.
4. Build the vertical scenes. For each horizontal scene ("Game", "Camera only", "Break") make a vertical counterpart and link them in the plugin settings. Then when you switch scenes in the main window, the vertical canvas switches by itself.
5. Connect Twitch and turn on Enhanced Broadcasting. Go to Settings → Stream, choose the Twitch service, sign in with your account, and in the Multitrack Video block check Enhanced Broadcasting.
6. Choose the additional canvas. In the Additional Canvas field select the Aitum Vertical canvas, then click Apply and OK.
7. Start the stream and check it from a phone in both orientations. Switch through all the scenes and make sure nothing has slipped off the edge.

To go back to a normal stream, just set Additional Canvas to "None". If you used the Backtrack feature in Aitum before, it is best to turn it off while using Dual Format.

How to build a vertical layout

The most common setup for game streams is the "sandwich": the webcam in the top third, the game in the middle, and the bottom part left free. A few rules that save time:

• Don't stretch the whole horizontal frame into a vertical one. A 16:9 game squeezed to a width of 1080 pixels takes up a strip about 600 pixels tall. It is better to cut out the central part (the Crop/Pad filter on the capture source) and scale it up.
• Keep important things away from the edges. In the mobile app there can be buttons and the channel name at the top, and chat and controls at the bottom. Twitch does not publish exact safe-zone sizes, so check your layout on a real phone and don't put anything valuable right against the top or bottom edge.
• You don't have to duplicate chat on screen. A viewer of the vertical version already sees chat over the video. If you want a chat overlay for clips, make it compact, 3 to 4 lines, with a large font.
• Make the webcam bigger than in the horizontal layout. On a phone the streamer's face is the main element of the frame. A good guide is a webcam as wide as the whole canvas.
• Bring alerts and goals into view. Move donation and follow notifications to the vertical canvas as separate sources and check that they don't cover your face.

Streamlabs, StreamElements and other software

Streamlabs Desktop supports Dual Format without plugins. You need to sign in through Twitch, turn on Dual Output in the editor window, set the resolution and FPS for each canvas in Settings → Video, and select both formats in the Go Live window. Streamlabs advises monitoring the load through inspector.twitch.tv: two formats load the system noticeably more. It works on Windows 10/11.

StreamElements offers the SE.Live plugin for OBS (it is in public beta). The procedure is the same as with Aitum: a 1080×1920 canvas, linked scenes, Enhanced Broadcasting, and choosing the SE.Live canvas in Additional Canvas. It needs OBS 32.0.0 or newer, and Aitum Vertical should be uninstalled before installing it.

Dual Format is also supported by XSplit Broadcaster: it has two video tracks, a horizontal 16:9 one and a vertical 9:16 one at 1080×1920.

What happens to VODs and clips

Twitch saves both versions: VODs and clips will have a horizontal and a vertical variant. But they are stored differently. According to the Streamlabs help, a vertical VOD is deleted after 7 days, after which only the horizontal one remains, for your channel's usual retention period. So the best vertical moments should be cut into clips or downloaded during the first week, not put off until later.

Common mistakes

• A cropped game interface. In shooters the minimap, health and ammo sit at the edges of the screen, and they disappear when you crop to the center. Add the UI element you need as a separate source: duplicate the game capture, crop it down to the minimap and place it in a free corner of the vertical canvas.
• Tiny text. Goal titles, tickers and chat that are readable on a monitor turn into pixels on a phone. For vertical, use at least a large bold font and no more than one or two lines of service information.
• Not enough upload. A dual stream needs almost twice the bandwidth of a normal one. The signs are dropped frames in the OBS stats and warnings in Twitch Inspector. The fix is to lower the bitrate or FPS, switch to a wired connection instead of Wi-Fi, or give up 2K.
• An overheated graphics card. If the game and encoding share a single mid-range graphics card, both the in-game FPS and the stream suffer. Cap the frame rate in the game and watch the GPU load.
• Unlinked scenes. You switched the horizontal canvas to "Break" and the vertical one stayed on the game. Link all scene pairs before going live.
• Two vertical plugins at once. Aitum Vertical and SE.Live together cause crashes. Keep only one.

How Dual Format differs from vertical streams on YouTube

YouTube has a similar idea, a dual stream, where the horizontal broadcast goes to the channel and the vertical one lands in the Shorts feed. The difference is in the details:

Parameter	Twitch Dual Format	YouTube dual stream
Where vertical is seen	The Twitch mobile app, on the same channel	The Shorts feed, including viewers who are not subscribed
Layout	Only your own vertical scene	You can leave the cropping to the built-in encoder or build a scene in OBS
OBS plugin	Aitum Vertical or SE.Live	Aitum Vertical

For the YouTube setup in detail, see our article vertical streams on YouTube. If you stream to both platforms, one vertical scene from Aitum is enough for both.

How to build a mobile audience faster

In mobile recommendations, as on PC, viewers are more willing to join a stream that already has viewers online and a live chat. So that your first broadcasts in the new format don't play to an empty room, you can add starting viewers through the viewer control panel or build a base of Twitch followers. The other tools for your channel are collected on the Twitch services page.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need Affiliate status to stream in Dual Format?

No. Since June 17, 2026 Dual Format has been available to every Twitch streamer. Affiliate or Partner status is needed for 2K and affects access to server-side transcoding, which reduces the load on your PC.

Do I need a second stream key for vertical?

No. Both formats go out in one Enhanced Broadcasting stream with a single key. The vertical canvas is simply selected in the Additional Canvas field in the OBS stream settings.

How long is a vertical VOD stored?

According to Streamlabs, 7 days. After that only the horizontal VOD remains. Save vertical moments as clips during the first week.

Will the vertical picture be in 2K?

No. Only the horizontal stream goes out in 1440p, and vertical stays at 1080×1920. Mobile viewers do not get 2K.

How do I check that everything works?

Open your channel on a phone: holding it upright, you should see the vertical layout, and when you turn it, the usual one. Check the load and stream stability in inspector.twitch.tv and in the OBS stats.