Audio device and application capture for OBS Studio using PipeWire

This plugin adds 3 sources for capturing audio outputs, inputs and applications using PipeWire

Usage

Requirements

• OBS Studio 28.0 or later
• WirePlumber

PipeWire 0.3.62 or later is highly recommended (#17, PipeWire#2874)

For the plugin to be able to capture applications, PipeWire should be set up to handle audio on your system. For most applications, the pipewire-pulse compatibility layer should be enough, but there are also pipewire-jack and pipewire-alsa. If applications aren't showing up in the plugin, your system may be missing one of those components.

Installation

1. Get the linux-pipewire-audio-(version).tar.gz archive from the latest release
2. In OBS Studio, go to File, then click Show Settings Folder
3. In the folder that opens, create a folder called plugins if it doesn't already exist
4. Extract the archive you downloaded in the plugins folder
5. Restart OBS Studio
6. If you're using the Flatpak and the sources aren't working, run flatpak override --filesystem=xdg-run/pipewire-0 com.obsproject.Studio and restart OBS Studio

Your files should look like this

.../obs-studio/plugins
├── linux-pipewire-audio
│   ├── bin
│   │   └── 64bit
│   │       └── linux-pipewire-audio.so
│   └── data
│       └── locale
│           ...

Important

Flatpak users note

THIS INSTALLATION METHOD IS UNSUPPORTED BY THE OBS STUDIO TEAM AND CAN BREAK AT ANY TIME This plugin relies on a Flatpak permission that OBS Studio could remove at any time, so it can't be on Flathub. If after updating OBS Studio the plugin stops working, check the latest release for a new version, or build the plugin yourself against the latest OBS Studio.

Note that native OBS Studio packages do not have this problem.

Building (for development)

Ensure you have CMake, PipeWire and OBS Studio/libobs development packages, then in the repo's root:

cmake -B build -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="/usr" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo
cmake --build build
# To install it system-wide:
cmake --install build

Inclusion in upstream OBS Studio

This plugin is currently in the process of being worked on to merge into upstream OBS Studio. See obsproject/obs-studio#6207