Hotkeys don’t work on OBS on Mac OS? Here’s how to fix it

If you’re using OBS on a Mac OS X you might be frustrated to see that the Hotkeys feature is not working. Hopefully you found that out before you started your live stream!

On a Mac you have to first give OBS permissions on the OS-level to listen to input devices such as the keyboard. It’s very easy, though it does require you to restart OBS after making the change.

Simply open System Preferences then navigate to Security & Privacy then scroll down till you find “Input Monitoring”. There you should see OBS listed, begging to be ticked.

Figure 1 — OBS showing as a greyed out option under the Input Monitoring section

Click on the padlock to enter your admin password so you can make the change.

Figure 2 — Padlock in locked state. Click it to authenticate as admin before you can make the change.

Once the interface is enabled, just tick OBS and save. You’ll be prompted about the fact that OBS will close down and restart. Say yes and let it do its thing.

Figure 3 — Pop up warning you that OBS is going to be restarted. Choose Quit & Reopen.

Boom! You’re back on OBS and your Hotkeys should work now! :) This was tested on macOS Monterey V12.5, but should work on other versions.

Figure 4 — me waving to the camera before I start my recording now that everything is working :)

Happy live streaming/video content creation! :)