How to Make a Stream Starting Soon Screen (OBS, Countdown & Free Options)

Almost nobody shows up the second you go live. There's always a gap - your followers get the notification, open the app, and drift in over the next few minutes. A "Stream Starting Soon" screen is what fills that gap. Instead of viewers landing on dead air (or you awkwardly talking to an empty room), they get a branded holding screen with a countdown, and the chat starts buzzing before you've even said a word.

It's one of the most useful screens you can make, and it takes about ten minutes in OBS, Streamlabs or StreamElements. This guide covers what to put on it, the four screens every streamer needs, how to add a countdown timer, and the free vs animated options - with the settings that actually work.

What is a "Starting Soon" screen?

A Starting Soon screen (sometimes called a stream intro, waiting screen or holding screen) is a full-screen graphic you show for the first few minutes of your broadcast, before the real content begins. It usually has a background, your branding, a short message like "Starting Soon," and often a countdown timer ticking down to go-time.

Why it works is simple psychology:

• It catches the stragglers. Your notification goes out the moment you go live, but people take a few minutes to arrive. A countdown gives them a window to join before they miss the start.
• It builds hype in chat. While the timer runs, early viewers start chatting and the room warms up - so when you actually begin, there's already energy instead of silence.
• It saves you from dead air. No more "uhh, can you hear me? is the mic working?" for five minutes. You get a clean, professional open every single time.

The four stream screens you actually need

A Starting Soon screen rarely comes alone. A proper overlay set includes four scene screens, each for a different moment of your broadcast:

• Starting Soon - the pre-show holding screen with your countdown.
• Be Right Back (BRB) - for quick breaks mid-stream (bathroom, snack, sorting an issue) so you don't go fully offline.
• Stream Ending - a wind-down screen for the last minute, often thanking viewers and pointing to your socials or next stream.
• Offline - what shows on your channel page when you're not live (on Twitch, this is your offline banner).

Having all four in the same style is what makes a channel look designed rather than improvised. A matching Starting Soon, BRB, Ending and Offline screen tells a new viewer "this person takes their stream seriously" before you've said anything.

How to add a Starting Soon screen in OBS

The setup in OBS is straightforward. The idea is to make a dedicated scene for it, so you can switch to it with one click.

1. In the Scenes panel (bottom-left), click + and name a new scene "Starting Soon".
2. With that scene selected, go to the Sources panel, click +, and add your screen file: choose Media Source for an animated MP4 background, or Image for a static PNG/JPG.
3. Browse to your file. For an animated background, tick Loop so it plays continuously.
4. Resize it to fill the canvas - right-click the source and pick Transform → Fit to screen (or press Ctrl+F) so it snaps to 1920×1080.
5. Repeat the same steps to make separate scenes for BRB, Stream Ending, and Offline.

Now you can switch between your gameplay scene and your Starting Soon scene instantly, and your stream looks intentional at every stage.

Adding it in Streamlabs or StreamElements

Using Streamlabs Desktop instead of OBS? Same idea, same files. Create a new scene, add your MP4 as a Media Source (tick loop), and stretch it to fit - the interface is nearly identical to OBS here. If your overlay came as a .overlay file, you can import the whole scene collection in one go via Settings → Scene Collections → Import Overlay File, screens included.

On StreamElements, you build the scene in the online overlay editor instead: add your Starting Soon video as a layer, then bring the whole overlay into OBS as a single Browser Source URL. Handy if you stream from more than one PC, since everything lives in the cloud.

Whichever app you use, the screen file itself is identical - a 1920×1080 MP4 loop works everywhere.

Adding a countdown timer

A countdown is the part that makes a Starting Soon screen feel alive. There are two reliable ways to add one, and they have a real trade-off.

Option 1 - StreamElements (or Streamlabs) widget. Both platforms have a built-in countdown timer widget you add to OBS as a Browser Source (paste the widget URL). The big plus: you can control and reset it from your dashboard or phone. The downside: because it's a browser source, it depends on your internet and their servers - if either hiccups, the timer can stall.

Option 2 - OBS Text from a file (local, rock-solid). Add a Text (GDI+) source, tick Read from file, and point it at a small Timer.txt that a timer app updates. Because everything runs locally, it keeps working even if your connection drops - it's the more stable, set-and-forget option.

For the timer length itself, the sweet spot is 3 to 10 minutes, with 5 minutes being a solid default. Long enough for people to arrive, short enough that nobody gets bored. If you worry viewers might drift off during the wait, give them something to do - chat with them directly, or set up a bot to drop the occasional message.

What to put on your Starting Soon screen

Keep it clean. A cluttered holding screen looks worse than a simple one. The essentials:

• Clear, legible text - "Starting Soon" plus your name or channel handle.
• A background that matches your brand - animated looks more premium, static is lighter on resources.
• A countdown timer so people know how long they're waiting.
• Optional extras: your social handles, a one-line teaser of what's coming ("Today: ranked grind to Diamond"), or a small "follow" prompt.

The one rule: don't drown the screen in information. A background, a title, a countdown, and maybe your socials - that's a screen that looks professional. Everything else is noise.

Free vs animated Starting Soon screens

You can absolutely start with a free Starting Soon screen. There are plenty of free static and even animated ones out there, and they're a fine way to test the look before investing in a full set. Online template makers (Canva, Adobe Express and the like) can also spit out a quick static screen in minutes - fine for day one, though the results tend to look like everyone else's, and they won't match the rest of your layout.

The trade-off is the usual one with free assets: a free Starting Soon screen rarely matches your alerts, your webcam frame, your panels, or your other scenes. You end up with a patchwork - one style for your intro, another for everything else - which is exactly the mismatched feeling a good overlay is meant to fix.

An animated screen (a looping MP4 background) is the upgrade most streamers want eventually: subtle motion makes a holding screen far less boring to stare at for five minutes, and it signals quality. If you want to see how a matching, animated set feels without spending anything yet, grab a free overlay pack - it includes an animated Starting Soon screen built to match a full layout.

Get a matching set of stream screens

A Starting Soon screen is one of the easiest wins for a more professional stream - and a free one will get you going. But the real difference is when your four screens (Starting Soon, BRB, Ending, Offline) all share one style, and match your alerts, chat box, webcam frame and panels too.

That's what every NeonStreamLab pack includes: four animated scene screens designed as a set, in dozens of themes - so your whole broadcast looks like one cohesive production from the first frame to the offline banner.

Once your screens are sorted, the next quick wins are your chat and your camera - here's how to add a chat overlay in OBS and how to add a webcam overlay in OBS, set up the same way. Or browse the overlay packs and find a screen style that already feels like your channel.