InstantClone 0.1.15: Crash protection: OBS crashes, your stream stays live

Hey everyone, s1moscs here.

This is the biggest InstantClone release so far, and it's built around one idea: when something goes wrong mid-stream, your viewers shouldn't be the ones who find out.

OBS crashes? Your stream stays up. A platform drops? Discord knows before you do. Chat clips a hype moment? It clips what viewers actually saw, not what's live on your end. Let's go through it.

Note

Updated on October 5: the reconnect screen now also plays on 2K (HEVC) channels, which showed a frozen frame instead. Downloaded v0.1.15 before that? Download it again: the version number didn't change, so the update prompt won't tell you.

Crash protection: OBS crashes, the stream doesn't

Until now, when OBS crashed, froze or lost its connection, every destination went offline with it. By the time you were back, half your viewers had left.

Turn on System → Crash protection and your destinations stay live on a reconnect screen instead, for up to the time you pick (30 s to 5 min). When OBS comes back, the stream picks up on the same connection. No reconnect on the platform side, no "stream ended" for viewers.

• Five styles: Whisper, Beacon, Orbit, Studio and Arcade. Pick your own colours, headline and subline, and preview each one live in 16:9 and 9:16.
• A frozen OBS counts too. Still connected but no video for 3 seconds opens the same screen, and the next frame closes it.
• Delay-aware. With a delay on, the screen stays up until the delay has rebuilt, so viewers never get a glimpse of live.
• Enhanced Broadcasting is covered. Every Twitch track gets its own screen at its own resolution, and OBS reconnecting is handed the same Twitch session.
• 2K channels too. Twitch sends 2K channels' tracks in HEVC, and they get the screen in HEVC, just as light as the H.264 one. (10-bit HEVC and AV1 still hold the last frame.)
• End it early from anywhere: the dashboard, the OBS dock, the tray, a hotkey, a MIDI pad or a Stream Deck.

Stopping the stream in OBS still ends it right away. Only a drop without a goodbye opens the screen.

Tip

After a crash, OBS asks whether to start in Safe Mode. Pick Run in Normal Mode, or OBS comes back without your scripts and plugins (the VOD audio script too).

Integrations (experimental): InstantClone talks to Discord, Twitch chat, your phone and your tools

There's a whole new Integrations tab. It's the part I'm most excited about.

Start from the catalog and add one in a click:

• A crash alert on Discord that posts "OBS dropped" with a live countdown, then edits that same message to "back after 38 s". One message per drop, not a wall of them.
• !delay, !cut, !setdelay 30 for you and your mods.
• Tell chat when OBS drops, only after 20 s, so short blips never reach chat.
• VOD markers at every crash and cut, and a phone push if you're away from the PC.
• A highlight button. One key or Stream Deck press clips the moment once it has aired, so the delay never makes it clip the wrong seconds. Then it marks the VOD and posts the clip to Discord.
• Hype clip. Chat decides when to clip. When chat gets busier than normal for your channel, it clips once, then waits for things to calm down.
• Chapters. Mods type !chapter Boss fight, and when the stream ends you get a YouTube chapter list ready to paste.
• Scene delay. Your OBS scene runs the delay: on in game, back to live in the lobby.
• An on-air light by your door through Home Assistant, WLED or Philips Hue: red when live, amber with the delay on, flashing if OBS crashed.
• !uptime, !followers, !accountage, !game and more, working in one click.

Or build your own. Pick a trigger (a chat command, a crash, a timer, a hotkey, a MIDI pad, a Stream Deck button), add steps, checks and waits, and click Test to watch every step run without touching the stream. Already have commands in Nightbot, StreamElements or Fossabot? Paste them in and the address, the reply and their variables come across.

Twitch login is a code you approve on twitch.tv. No password goes through the app, and it refreshes itself.

Share what you build as a recipe, a line of text you can paste in Discord. A recipe never carries your keys or links, and before you add one, it shows who can start it, every step it runs, and the exact settings. Anything that runs a program or writes a file is flagged in red and needs your yes.

Note

Integrations are experimental. Everything works, but how the screens look and how you set things up may still change between versions. If something breaks or confuses you, hit Report it in the tab. That's exactly the feedback I need.

Vertical (9:16) without Twitch

TikTok, Shorts and Kick mobile used to need a Twitch destination, because Twitch's Dual Format was the only 9:16 canvas InstantClone knew about. Now OBS's Additional canvas (Aitum Vertical, for example) feeds vertical destinations directly. Twitch 2K channels feed them too, and a destination that's waiting tells you why.

Enhanced Broadcasting on your own settings

With no Twitch destination on, InstantClone used to invent its own encoder settings, and the result could look worse than EB off. It now copies what you set in OBS: your encoder, bitrate and rescale. A vertical track is only encoded while a destination wants one, so it costs no GPU otherwise.

⚠️ Using the Twitch VOD audio script? Download it again

With Enhanced Broadcasting off, OBS was quietly throwing away the script's VOD audio track right before going live, so your VOD had no separate audio. It's fixed, but the fix lives in the script itself.

Grab it again from System → Twitch & OBS → Twitch VOD audio (or optional-vod-unlocker.lua below) and replace the old one in OBS under Tools → Scripts.

Safer by default

• Websites can't reach your dashboard any more, not even through DNS-rebinding tricks.
• Running programs and writing files needs a dashboard password whenever the dashboard is open to your network. On this PC only (the default), nothing changes.
• Chat can't run commands through a program step. What viewers type stays plain text, and stays one argument.
• Overlays run sandboxed, so an overlay file can draw but can't act as your dashboard.
• Secrets stay hidden on stream. Webhooks, web addresses with keys, and your phone topic only show when you click Show.

Fixes

There are a lot. A few you might have hit:

• Stopping in OBS no longer cuts the end of a delayed stream. The last seconds of the delay used to vanish, so viewers never saw your goodbye. Now the rest of the delay airs and then the stream ends, with a countdown on the dashboard and the dock.
• A delay is never shorter than you set. Short delays could count as "close enough", so viewers saw live while the dashboard said delayed.
• An OBS restart mid-delay never puts viewers on live, and no longer leaves a destination offline for up to 30 s.
• "Track 2" destinations only get Track 2. If you route music-free audio to YouTube, copyrighted music was leaking into it.
• Your settings survive a config file that can't be read. Notepad with an accent, antivirus, or OneDrive briefly locking it used to wipe every destination.
• Discord webhooks work. The HTTPS client was refusing Discord's certificate.
• A deleted destination stays deleted, and a malformed video frame can no longer close the app.
• Integrations say so when OBS wants a WebSocket password you haven't saved, instead of failing with an unclear error.

And a long list of polish: System is sorted by topic and has a search box (press /), destination cards say what they're doing in plain words, platform logos, a roomier destination editor, a readable log, a delay panel that answers back, and an OBS dock reworked for mid-stream use.

The full list is in the changelog.

Coming from rc.1?

Thanks for testing it. On top of the RC you get Integrations, the "Stopping in OBS cuts the end" fix, the faster reconnect after an OBS restart, a fix for video replaying after a freeze, and the security work above. The update prompt picks it up as usual.

Thanks

• fashion on Discord, for reporting vertical being greyed out without Twitch, plus the logs that tracked it down. That report turned into this release's vertical rework. And again for catching the frozen frame on 2K channels, which is why this release got updated.
• adTexaz on Discord, for the VOD script report and the logs that tracked it down.

Keep them coming. Most of what ends up here starts as someone telling me something is annoying.

InstantClone is open source and the build isn't code-signed yet, so Windows Defender may show a false positive on first download OR even block it. You can verify the file against SHA256SUMS.txt, scan it on VirusTotal, or build it yourself. A signed build is on the way.