How to Stream From Your Phone to OBS (Step by Step)

Want your phone’s camera to show up live inside OBS on your home PC, even when you’re out in the city or in another country? You can’t send it straight there, but the fix is simple once you see how it works. This guide walks through the whole thing with StreamRelay, an EU-hosted relay, currently at DE-CIX Frankfurt. No tricky router settings, no server to run, and your stream stays yours.

Why you can’t send your phone straight to OBS

Here’s the problem in plain terms. For your phone to reach OBS directly, your home PC would need a fixed public “address” on the internet that the phone can find from anywhere. Home connections don’t give you one, your router keeps the PC hidden (this is normal; it’s called NAT). You could try port forwarding (poking a hole through your router to let traffic in), but it’s fiddly, it breaks every time your internet provider changes your address, it exposes your home network, and on many mobile/cable connections it simply isn’t possible.

The fix: put a relay in the middle. Think of it like a parcel locker with a permanent address. Your phone drops the video off at the relay; OBS picks it up from there. Neither side has to find the other directly, both just connect out to the relay, so there’s no hole to open in your home network. The relay is the StreamRelay endpoint you’ll set up below.

What you’ll need

• A phone with an encoder (an app or device that turns your camera into a stream, e.g. Moblin, IRLPro or Larix). Moblin on iOS, IRLPro on Android, or Larix Broadcaster on both.
• A StreamRelay endpoint, your personal ingest URL plus a stream key. From €9.99/month.
• OBS Studio on your PC.
• A reasonably stable internet connection on the phone (Wi-Fi or a single solid cellular signal). Need to bond multiple connections instead? StreamRelay also supports SRTLA, see the note below.

Step 1: Create your relay endpoint

Choose RTMP or SRT/SRTLA when creating your endpoint. The dashboard provides the matching publish and read URLs. These examples show RTMP and plain SRT; SRTLA uses the SRT/SRTLA endpoint in bonding mode:

# Publish URL: from your phone/encoder (carries your secret publish key):
RTMP:  rtmp://<id>.ingest.stream-relay.eu:1935/live/<slug>?pass=<publishKey>
SRT:   srt://<id>.ingest.stream-relay.eu:4000?streamid=publish:live/<slug>:_:<publishKey>

# Read URL: to pull into OBS / share for playback (carries the read token):
RTMP:  rtmp://<id>.ingest.stream-relay.eu:1935/live/<slug>?pass=<readToken>
SRT:   srt://<id>.ingest.stream-relay.eu:4000?streamid=read:live/<slug>:_:<readToken>

The dashboard hands you both URLs fully assembled (Endpoint → Connection details), you never stitch the credential onto the URL yourself, so copy the whole string. Each endpoint has two separate credentials: the publish key (secret, it authorises sending, keep it private) and the read token (shareable, playback/relay only, it can’t take over your stream). The path always contains your endpoint slug, never the credential; the credential travels in the protocol’s own field (?pass= for RTMP, the last streamid segment for SRT).

Your endpoint is currently provisioned at DE-CIX Frankfurt, one of Europe’s largest internet exchanges, so EU traffic stays low-latency. Other locations on request. It’s also GDPR-compliant.

Step 2: Choose and configure a phone encoder app

Pick the app for your platform. Each has a dedicated walkthrough:

• Set up Moblin (iOS)
• Set up IRLPro (Android)
• Set up Larix Broadcaster (iOS & Android)

In the app, create a destination that matches your endpoint protocol and enter the StreamRelay connection details shown in the dashboard.

Step 3: Enter your relay’s ingest URL and key on the phone

In the encoder app’s connection settings, choose the destination that matches your endpoint: RTMP or SRT/SRTLA. Enter the connection details shown in the dashboard. Set the video bitrate to match your connection, see the bitrate notes below.

Step 4: Start the connection from your phone

Hit Go Live in the encoder app. The app now sends over RTMP or SRT/SRTLA to your StreamRelay endpoint. Nothing is public-facing on your home network, the phone is simply publishing to the relay.

Step 5: Add the relay as a source in OBS

On your PC, open OBS and add a source that pulls from the relay.

Using SRT in OBS (Media Source)

1. Sources → + → Media Source → Create new.
2. Untick Local File.
3. In Input, paste your SRT read URL, e.g. srt://<id>.ingest.stream-relay.eu:4000?streamid=read:live/<slug>:_:<readToken>.
4. Set Input Format to mpegts. Lower the Network Buffering to taste for latency.

Using RTMP in OBS

Add a Media Source, untick Local File, and paste the RTMP pull URL for your endpoint. RTMP is the simplest paste-and-go option; SRT gives you lower latency and better recovery on shaky networks.

If your phone published over SRTLA (bonded connections), OBS doesn’t need anything different: pull the stream the same way as plain SRT, using the same read URL and mpegts input format. The bonding happens between your phone and the relay, so by the time OBS picks it up, it’s just a regular SRT feed.

Full details in the OBS setup guide.

Step 6: Go live to Twitch or YouTube from OBS

Your phone feed is now a normal OBS source. Compose your scene, then stream from OBS to Twitch, YouTube, Kick or anywhere else as usual. OBS is doing the platform output; StreamRelay only carries the phone-to-OBS leg.

Recommended bitrate and latency settings

Bitrate is how much data your video uses per second, higher looks sharper but needs a stronger connection. The golden rule: set it for your weakest moment, not your best, or the stream will stutter when your signal dips. For 1080p (full HD) at 30fps over good 5G or Wi-Fi, 4,000 – 6,000 kbps is comfortable; on a weak signal, drop to 2,500 – 3,500 kbps.

Prefer SRT when your connection is shaky. SRT can quietly re-send the little bits of video that get lost on a wobbly mobile signal (it’s called ARQ), so a brief drop doesn’t freeze your scene the way it can with RTMP.

SRT or RTMP for phone-to-OBS?

RTMP is widely supported and simple to configure. SRT can recover lost packets on cellular connections. Compare both in SRT vs. RTMP.

Why route through Frankfurt (DE-CIX)

Your relay endpoint is currently hosted in Frankfurt with DE-CIX connectivity. Distance to your sender and OBS computer, routing and buffering affect the delay. You can request other locations.

Troubleshooting

• OBS shows nothing: confirm the phone is actually live (encoder shows “streaming”), and that the OBS pull URL matches your endpoint and key/stream-id.
• Stuttering: lower the phone bitrate; switch the encoder to SRT; raise OBS Network Buffering slightly.
• High latency: reduce OBS Network Buffering, and use SRT with a modest latency value rather than RTMP.

Need to bond multiple connections? Use SRTLA

Everything above uses a single connection (Wi-Fi or one cellular link), plenty for a phone, drone, encoder, or a second OBS over one solid signal. If you’re moving through dead zones, tunnels, or a driving vehicle where no single connection holds up, use SRTLA bonding: it combines multiple links (e.g. two or three SIMs) into one resilient stream, so if one drops the others carry on. Use the same SRT/SRTLA endpoint in bonding mode; RTMP is a separate endpoint mode.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use my phone as a camera in OBS over the internet? Yes. Send RTMP, SRT or SRTLA from a phone encoder app to a relay, then add the relay as a Media Source in OBS. The phone and the PC do not need to be on the same network.

Do I need to open ports or run a server? No. The relay has the public address; your phone and OBS both connect outbound. No port forwarding, no Linux, no VPS.

Is RTMP or SRT better from a phone? RTMP is simplest and is widely supported; SRT is lower-latency and recovers better on unstable cellular. Use SRT when your signal varies.

Keep reading

New to IRL streaming? Start with the complete IRL streaming guide.