Use your iPhone or iPad as a high-quality camera directly inside OBS Studio — over Wi-Fi or a USB cable. No virtual-camera drivers, no RTMP server, no monthly subscription.

It comes in two parts: an OBS plugin (adds "LensLink Camera" and "LensLink Screen" sources) and the LensLink iPhone/iPad app. You install both, then OBS connects to your phone.

What you need

• OBS Studio 32 or newer, on Windows, macOS, or Linux.
• An iPhone or iPad on iOS/iPadOS 15 or later.
• For USB: iTunes installed on Windows (it provides Apple's device driver); nothing extra on macOS.

Install

1. The OBS plugin. Download the build for your system from the Releases page:

• Windows — run LensLink-installer-windows-x64.exe. It finds your OBS Studio folder automatically; restart OBS afterwards. (Prefer manual? Unzip lenslink-windows-x64.zip into C:\Program Files\obs-studio\, merging the obs-plugins and data folders.)
• macOS — open LensLink-installer-macos-universal.pkg (right-click → Open the first time; the package isn't notarized). Restart OBS.
• Linux — extract lenslink-linux-x86_64.tar.gz into ~/.config/obs-studio/plugins/.
• Or build it yourself: obs-plugin/BUILDING.md.

2. The LensLink app — pick whichever suits you:

• TestFlight (recommended): join the beta at https://testflight.apple.com/join/N7Rth6m3 and install from the TestFlight app. Updates arrive automatically; no computer or re-signing needed.
• Sideloading: download LensLink-unsigned.ipa from Releases and install it with Sideloadly and a free Apple ID (free accounts expire the app weekly — re-sign to refresh).
• Build it yourself with Xcode: ios-app/BUILDING.md.

Connect

1. On the phone, open LensLink, choose your camera/resolution/frame rate, and tap Start camera stream. The app shows the phone's IP address.
2. In OBS, add a source: Sources → + → LensLink Camera (or LensLink Screen to mirror the phone's screen instead — see below).
3. Point it at your phone:
   • Wi-Fi — open the Phone dropdown and pick your phone (it's found automatically by name while the app is open), or enter the IP the app shows. (Phone and computer must be on the same network.) If the phone doesn't appear by name, allow the Local Network permission when the app asks (it needs it for the name broadcast) — or check Settings → Privacy & Security → Local Network → LensLink. Typing the IP works regardless.
   • USB — connect the cable, set Connection → USB cable. No network needed, and the phone charges while streaming.

The video appears within a second or two. Closing or backgrounding the app blanks the source.

Features

• Wi-Fi or USB. USB needs no network at all, is lower-latency, and charges the phone as you stream.
• Up to 4K at 60 fps, in H.264 or HEVC (HEVC looks the same at ~40% less data). The app only offers resolution/frame-rate combinations your specific camera supports.
• Pick any lens — Main, Ultra Wide, Telephoto, or Front — switchable live while you stream.
• Hold it however. The app's UI follows the phone's rotation (unless rotation lock is on), and the live view stays fullscreen and upright in any orientation — landscape either way round, portrait too. The video sent to OBS is always steady sensor-native landscape, so rotating the phone never resizes or disturbs the OBS source.
• Multiple cameras. Add one "LensLink Camera" source per phone. On USB you can pin a source to a specific device so the same phone always maps to the same source.
• Live camera controls, both on the phone (full-screen view with pinch zoom, tap-to-focus, exposure, focus lock, flashlight, camera flip — plus manual ISO/shutter and white-balance lock on cameras that support them) and from your computer via a browser panel at http://localhost:9980 (the same set: zoom / exposure / manual ISO & shutter / focus / white balance / flashlight / flip, plus switching lens, resolution, frame rate, codec, and microphone mid-stream). With more than one phone connected, the panel shows a tab per source — one page controls them all.
• Remote start. With the app open, OBS can start the camera for you — automatically when the source connects, or from a button in the source's properties or the browser panel. Siri works too: "Start streaming with LensLink." Great for a phone mounted out of reach. (See "Remote start" below.)
• Screen mirroring. Mirror your whole iPhone/iPad screen — with the app's audio — into a dedicated LensLink Screen source; great for mobile games or app demos. Works over Wi-Fi or USB, encoded in HEVC for bandwidth-friendly quality. Your microphone isn't sent — mic yourself in OBS as usual.
• Phone mic audio (optional). Turn on Send phone mic to OBS (in the app's Options) and the camera source carries the phone's microphone as its audio — the phone doubles as a wireless mic. (Off by default; most streamers use their own mic and lip-sync it instead.) A mic row on the Live screen (and in the web panel) picks which microphone: Auto is iOS's default input routing — normally the Bottom mic regardless of which camera is active, since iOS doesn't tie the mic to the camera (a connected headset/Bluetooth mic takes over automatically). Pick Front or Back explicitly to aim a specific mic at your subject; the switch is live, no restart.
• Automatic lip sync. The plugin measures the camera's latency and can automatically line up a separate microphone with the video — no guessing at delay values. (See "Lip sync" below.)
• Stream health at a glance. A live readout in OBS's own status bar — LensLink: iPhone 60 fps · 11.9 Mb/s · 43 ms beside OBS's stats — plus a dockable LensLink panel (View → Docks) with one row per phone. Decoded fps, wire bitrate, and measured capture→decode latency, updated every second. On the phone, the gauge button on the Live screen shows the same health line (fps · Mb/s · dropped frames).
• GPU decode pipeline (beta). Optionally keep decoded video on the graphics card the whole way to your scene — no round-trip through system memory. Lower CPU use and latency; the gains grow with resolution (biggest at 4K). Off by default: enable it in Tools → LensLink Settings (takes effect after an OBS restart, and applies to all LensLink sources). If your system can't share textures — see the notes below — sources fall back to the standard pipeline automatically.
• Plugin-wide settings under Tools → LensLink Settings: the browser control panel on/off and its port, verbose diagnostics, the stream-dump troubleshooting switch, and the GPU pipeline beta.
• Smooth on weak Wi-Fi. If the connection congests, the app lowers quality briefly and recovers, instead of piling up latency.
• Battery saver. While streaming, the phone screen dims after 10 seconds; tap to wake it. (Turn this off in the app's Options, or dim immediately with the moon button on the Live screen.) Optionally, enable Disconnect when this source isn't shown anywhere in the source properties and the phone stops streaming entirely whenever the source is hidden, reconnecting when shown.

Remote start

A phone mounted behind a monitor or on a rig shouldn't need to be pulled down just to tap a button. While LensLink is open and idle, OBS can start the camera for you (turn off with Remote start from OBS in the app's Options):

• Automatically. The LensLink Camera source's "Start the phone's camera automatically when it's ready" option (on by default) starts the stream as soon as the open, idle app becomes reachable. Open the app — by hand, with Siri, or from a Shortcuts automation — and the video just appears in OBS.
• Buttons in OBS. The source's properties have Start camera on the phone and Stop camera on the phone, and the browser panel (http://localhost:9980) shows a Start camera button whenever the app is connected but idle, and a red Stop camera button while it's live — each with an Auto-start toggle beside it that flips the same setting as the properties checkbox. (Scriptable, too: POST http://localhost:9980/api/control with body {"cmd":"start_stream"} or {"cmd":"stop_stream"}.)
• Siri / Shortcuts. "Hey Siri, start streaming with LensLink" opens the app and starts the camera (iOS 16+). The Start/Stop Camera Stream actions are available in the Shortcuts app for automations; on iOS 15, use an "Open URL" action with lenslink://start or lenslink://stop.
• Hide/show follows too. With Disconnect when this source isn't shown anywhere enabled, hiding the source now stops the phone's camera entirely and showing it starts it again — automatic power management for scene switching.

iOS only runs the camera (and LensLink's listener) while the app is on screen, so remote start works whenever the app is in the foreground — that's why the Siri/Shortcut path opens the app first. Stopping the stream on the phone won't ping-pong: OBS only auto-starts when the app has just become reachable, not after you pressed Stop.

Screen mirroring

Add a LensLink Screen source in OBS, then tap Start screen broadcast in the app to send your whole iPhone/iPad screen (plus the app's audio). It uses iOS's built-in screen broadcast, so it works from any app — pick LensLink Screen in the broadcast picker and tap Start Broadcast.

Note: DRM-protected audio (Apple Music, Spotify, Netflix) is muted by iOS during any screen broadcast — that's an iOS rule, not a LensLink limit. Game/app/browser audio comes through fine. To hear the audio on the computer (not just record/stream it), set the source's Audio Monitoring → Monitor and Output in OBS's Advanced Audio Properties.

Locking the source size. A screen mirror reports whatever resolution iOS is broadcasting, and that can differ between apps and orientations, so the OBS source may resize when you switch. To pin it to a fixed box on your canvas, right-click the source → Transform → Edit Transform… and set Bounding Box Type to Scale to inner bounds ("Fit"). OBS then scales each incoming size to fit your box instead of resizing the layout.

The LensLink Screen source has no camera controls (and no browser panel) — its properties are just the connection, decoding, and diagnostics. Each source type accepts only its own stream: a LensLink Screen source rejects a camera stream (and vice versa), with the Status field in the source's properties explaining what to switch.

Lip sync

Streamers usually use their own microphone, not the phone's. The plugin can line that mic up with the video automatically:

1. In the LensLink Camera source properties, pick your microphone under Lip-sync audio source, then enable Automatically delay that audio source to match the camera latency and Auto-calibrate.
2. In the app's Options, turn on Auto lip-sync reference.

The phone then sends its microphone purely as a timing reference (never heard on stream); the plugin compares it with your real mic to measure the exact offset and correct it. If your mic is slower than the video (some USB audio interfaces are), enable Auto video delay and it delays the video to match instead.

Prefer a fixed correction? Leave Auto-calibrate off and the delay checkbox alone shifts your mic by the measured camera latency; if your audio device adds its own delay, enter it under Audio device's own latency and it's subtracted.

Latency

Over USB you can expect roughly 60 ms from the camera to OBS at 1080p or 4K; Wi-Fi is a little higher and more variable. The plugin shows a live latency figure in the source's Status field and the OBS log.

A few things already minimize it: GPU-accelerated decoding, low-latency decode settings (both on by default; toggleable in the source properties), and dropping (rather than queuing) frames when the link stalls. USB is the most consistent and immune to Wi-Fi hiccups. For the lowest possible delay, use USB and good lighting (brighter scenes let the camera expose faster).

GPU decode pipeline (beta)

Normally, even with hardware decoding, each decoded frame is downloaded from the GPU to system memory, handed to OBS, and uploaded straight back to the GPU for compositing — at 4K60 that detour moves ~2 GB/s of pixels for nothing. The beta pipeline hands OBS the decoded frame as a texture, skipping the round-trip entirely: lower CPU use, less memory traffic, slightly lower latency, and comfortable multi-phone setups.

Enable it in Tools → LensLink Settings (all LensLink sources switch together; takes effect after OBS restarts). Platform notes:

• Windows — works on any OBS 32-supported system (Windows 10 1909+), using shared D3D11 textures.
• macOS — works on any OBS 32-supported system (macOS 13+), via IOSurface.
• Linux — needs OBS rendering via EGL (the default on Wayland and on current X11 builds) and a VAAPI driver (built into Mesa for Intel/AMD; NVIDIA needs nvidia-vaapi-driver).
• Multi-GPU systems — if decoding and OBS rendering land on different GPUs, textures can't be shared; the source detects this and falls back automatically.

The fallback is per source and automatic in every case above — worst case is exactly the standard pipeline's behavior, with a log line saying why. If you try the beta, the OBS log and the status-bar health readout are the places to watch.

Tips & troubleshooting

• USB device not found (Windows): make sure iTunes is installed — it provides the driver the plugin needs — and tap Trust on the phone when prompted.
• Source shows as "iOS Camera" / updates don't seem to apply: an old pre-1.0 copy of the plugin (ios-camera-source.dll) is still installed and wins over the current one (the OBS log shows "Source 'ios_camera_source' already exists"). Delete obs-plugins\64bit\ios-camera-source.dll and data\obs-plugins\ios-camera-source\ from your OBS folder, then restart OBS. The installer now removes it automatically.
• The app stops working after a week (sideloaded only): free Apple IDs expire sideloaded apps every 7 days. Re-install it with Sideloadly to refresh (settings are kept) — or switch to the TestFlight build, which doesn't have this problem.
• "Hey Siri, start streaming with LensLink" isn't recognized (sideloaded only): re-signing tools rewrite the app's bundle ID for free Apple IDs, which orphans the compiled Siri phrase data — Siri answers with a generic refusal even though the same action works from the Shortcuts app. Use the TestFlight build for working Siri phrases, or drive it through a Shortcuts automation (lenslink://start works everywhere). Also make sure the app has been launched once and "Use with Siri" is on in Settings → Siri & Search → LensLink.
• Control Center's Video Effects (Portrait, Studio Light…) are missing or greyed out while streaming: those system effects are toggled by you in Control Center while an app uses the camera — but iOS only offers them on certain cameras and capture formats: mostly the front camera, at moderate settings (think 1080p at 30 fps, not 4K/60), on hardware that supports each effect. Center Stage is iPad-only. LensLink picks an effect-capable format whenever your resolution/frame-rate choice allows one; if the panel is still empty, drop the frame rate or resolution, or switch to the front camera. Apple's Camera-app filters and Photographic Styles aren't available to any third-party camera app — for creative looks, add filters to the source in OBS instead (right-click the source → Filters).
• Screen broadcast won't connect (sideloaded only): re-signing can silently break the broadcast extension. In the app, open Screen mirror tools → Check broadcast link while a broadcast is running — it verifies the extension is alive on-device, independent of OBS.
• Two sources, same phone: one phone can feed one source at a time. A second source aimed at the same device will say it's already in use. Exception: with Disconnect when this source isn't shown anywhere enabled, a hidden source releases the phone — so a Camera source in one scene and a Screen source in another can share it.
• Wi-Fi latency spikes when zoomed in: heavy digital zoom is harder to compress; use the Telephoto lens for clean magnification, or switch to USB.
• The stream is unencrypted on your local network — intended for trusted home/studio networks.

Contributing

Start with CONTRIBUTING.md. Architecture, the wire protocol, and the build/release setup are documented in docs/DEVELOPMENT.md. Planned improvements and recommended future work live in docs/ROADMAP.md; performance ground rules in docs/PERFORMANCE.md.

License

LensLink is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL version 2 or later — the same license as OBS Studio.