8 Twitch Tips for Watching Esports
Twitch is a powerful tool for watching esports competitions, but its best features may not be obvious to the average user. Our guide shows you how to dig into Twitch’s toolset to enhance your esports-viewing experience.
Twitch is the Amazon-owned face of video game streaming. Available via a desktop app, mobile apps, set-top box apps, or your browser of choice, Twitch is the place to view gaming streams. Not only can you find popular streamers like Ninja and Maximilian Dood chopping it up with their respective audiences, but there are also heated esports tournaments for sometimes large cash prizes.
Using Twitch, you can view sponsored streaming events like Dota 2 International and EVO, esports competitions that feature some of the world’s best players. If you’re into that sort of thing, our roundup of the best esports games highlights popular, competitive titles that are very much worth your time. Thankfully, you can find tense Twitch matches featuring those games at nearly any hour, so you can easily satisfy your desire to watch high-level Counter-Strike: Go or League of Legends play now that COVID-19 has us stuck in our homes.
The service is surprisingly robust. In fact, Twitch is packed with so many features and settings that it may prove a bit overwhelming to casual viewers. That’s where this guide can help. It shows you how to tweak the video stream, tinker with camera settings, and make other changes to enhance the esports-viewing experience.
We begin this guide by assuming that you are already familiar with Twitch as a service. If not, you can create an account using Twitch’s various apps or the Twitch.tv website. Please note that we used the Twitch Windows desktop app to create these suggestions, so some of the steps might slightly vary depending on how you access Twitch.
Once you really get into Twitch, you might find that you want to try and do a little broadcasting yourself. When you’re ready, check out our piece on how to stream on Twitch.
1. Run the Twitch Desktop App on Start Up
If you’re like me, Twitch programming is a regular part of your entertainment diet. So instead of manually launching the Twitch app after your PC boots up, why not let it open on its own?
To set the Twitch desktop app to automatically open, dip into Settings > General > Preferences. There, you can toggle the Run Twitch on Startup option to the on position. That’s it! The next time you start your PC, Twitch will automatically load and log you into the system.
2. Find Games
It’s easy to fall into the habit of only watching your favorite channels and games. Sometimes, however, you’ll want to step outside of the familiar. Thankfully, finding new streams and games is easy. Here’s how to do it.
Click the Browse tab, and select one of the highlighted games to see the related streams. Alternately, you can key a search term into the Browse’s tab search box to see what’s available. Lastly, you can select the dedicated Esports tab to see the highlighted streams.
3. Follow Your Favorites and Get Notifications
You’ll quickly amass a list of favorite streamers if you spend significant time viewing Twitch content. Naturally, you’ll want to know when the streamers go live. To do that, simply follow them by clicking their channels’ Heart icons. After you do that, the channels appear in the Followed Channel column on the left side of the interface.
Additionally, you’ll want to click the Bell icon, which is next to the Heart icon. This Get Notifications feature lets a streamer alert you when they go live or post a rebroadcast.
4. Adjust the Stream’s Video Resolution
Twitch video streams peak at 1080p resolution and 60 frames per second, so if your PC has a particularly strong internet connection, set the video quality to 1080p60 (Source). Of course, not everyone has an internet connection that can ride that wave, so Twitch includes 720p60, 480p, 360p, and 160p resolution options. To alter the stream resolution, click the gear in the lower-right corner of the interface.
If you’re not sure which video quality level is best for your internet connection, select Auto. By doing that, the Twitch app selects an ideal stream resolution based on the signal strength.
5. Fire Up Theater Mode or Full Screen Mode
Even the most die-hard user will admit that the Twitch interface is a bit busy. If you want to minimize the distractions, activate either the Theater Mode or Full Screen Mode via icons in the bottom-right corner of the video player.
Theater Mode darkens the interface so that your focus is the video content. It also increases the video player’s on-screen real estate, while keeping the chat feed. Full Screen Mode, on the other hand, takes things to the next level by ditching the chat feed so that the feeds completely fills your television or monitor.
6. Enter Squad Stream
Released in early 2019, Squad Stream lets up to four Twitch streamers go live and broadcast together in one window. The benefit? As a viewer, you get more angles on the action, a way to discover new streams, and the ability to chat with multiple Twitch communities at once . The internet may be a burning hellscape at times, but this may be an instance when you’ll want to connect with others online
7. Ditch Commercials
There are many benefits associated with subscribing to your favorite channel using Twitch Prime or a monthly donation, including custom emotes, subscriber badges, and knowing that you’re putting a few coins in a content creator’s pocket.
One of the most attractive subscription bonuses, however, is ad-free viewing. If a channel has this option activated on the back end, and many do, you’ll never have to worry about the feed being interrupted by a Twitch-delivered commercial spot ever again. That said, if an esports event has a sponsor that the channel plugs as part of the broadcast, your subscription won’t eliminate those ad spots.
8. Get Twitch on Your TV
Sometimes you just want to see an intense Overwatch League match on a big, big screen. Fortunately, there are several ways to do so. If you have an Amazon-powered smart TV, Amazon Fire TV Stick, or Apple TV, you can simply download the official Twitch app and log in.
However, if you own, say, a Roku-powered smart TV, you won’t be able to download the official Twitch app. That requires workarounds that we haven’t tested, but the information is available online.
Originally published at https://www.pcmag.com.
