InstantClone 0.1.16: Stream delays up to 1 hour, Twitch alerts and smart lights

Hey everyone, s1moscs here.

0.1.15 was about surviving a crash. This one is about everything around the delay itself: it goes a lot further, it tells you the truth about what it can do, and your stream can now react to what happens on Twitch.

A one hour delay. Alerts for follows, subs and raids with seven themes. Lights in your room that follow the stream. Two InstantClones on one PC without them fighting. Let's go through it.

Delays up to 1 hour

The delay used to stop at 10 minutes, however big your buffer was. It now goes up to 1 hour, and the buffer size is the only thing that decides how much of that you can use.

• The range above the delay field is yours. It used to read "0 - 600s" for everyone. It now shows what your buffer holds at your bitrate.
• Need more? Raise the buffer in System. A 15 minute delay at 6 Mbps needs about 690 MB. A full hour needs about 2.7 GB.
• Nothing arms a delay it can't hold. The dashboard, the OBS dock, hotkeys, MIDI, chat commands and the HTTP API all refuse a delay that doesn't fit, and tell you the size it would need. Before, some of them armed it anyway and quietly ran short.
• The big number shows what viewers really get. If the buffer can't hold the delay you armed, it shows the real one in amber.
• !setdelay answers with the real limit: "The buffer holds up to 412s right now".

Tip

The estimate uses the bitrate OBS is actually sending, so it gets exact about 10 seconds after you go live. Before that it plans for 10 Mbps to stay on the safe side.

Twitch events and alerts on stream

Integrations can now start from what happens on your channel: follows, subs, resubs, gifted subs, bits, raids, channel point rewards and ad breaks, each with its values ({user}, {tier}, {bits}, {viewers}, {reward}...).

And there's an alerts page to show them on stream. You add it to OBS once, in one click, and that's it.

• Seven themes, each its own build: Island (a phone-style live island), Signal (an esports HUD), Banner (a broadcast lower third), Bubble (a sticker speech bubble with confetti), Minimal (just type), Paper (a scrapbook clipping) and Cinema (a film title card).
• Change any part of it: where cards sit, size, font, colours, corners, how they come in, the sound, and custom CSS for the rest. OBS follows as you change it, with no new address to paste.
• Ten built-in sounds, plus your own. Upload sounds and pictures (GIFs play), up to 10 MB each.
• Show it on stream puts the alert you're editing on your real alerts page, so you see and hear it exactly as viewers will.
• Share it. A recipe with alerts brings its theme, sounds and pictures along.

Note

Logged in to Twitch before this version? Raids work right away. For the rest, Twitch needs your OK once: the Integrations tab shows an Allow button that logs in again as the same account.

Smart lights and plugs, no hub needed

A new Smart light step turns a light or plug on your network on or off, colours it, or flashes it. No account, no cloud, no hub.

• Find lights on my network finds WiZ, LIFX, Govee and Yeelight (with LAN Control on), older TP-Link Kasa, Shelly and WLED in a few seconds. Flash shows you which one is which.
• Chat can pick the colour (!light blue). Chat can never pick which light.
• The On-air light by your door now works with these too. Home Assistant and Philips Hue are still there.

Note

I can't test every brand on real hardware. If yours doesn't answer, tell me on Discord with the model and I'll sort it out.

Two InstantClones side by side

Two channels, or two PCs' worth of scenes on one machine? Put each copy in its own folder and run both.

• Each keeps its own settings, ports, buffer file, login and "Start with Windows" entry. They used to step on each other's.
• Pick each copy's tray colour in System → Behavior. The dashboard tab icon matches, so every tab pairs with its tray icon at a glance.
• OBS stays pointed where you left it. A copy never takes OBS away from the other one, and the OBS tab says which copy OBS points at.
• Opening the same copy twice is safe now. The second launch just opens the dashboard of the one already running. Before, it offered to move its ports, and you ended up with two copies and OBS streaming into the wrong one.

Chat games and points

Added in the October 12 build. Your chat can now have its own points, and games that use them, built from steps.

• Viewers hold points. A Viewer value step gives, takes or spends coins or points for a viewer, and keeps them between streams. A leaderboard and each viewer's rank come with it.
• Steps to build games with: Maths (sums, percentages, a random number), a chance check in If, Wait for chat (waits for someone's answer, like !accept or !hit), and blocks of steps you reuse.
• Your values. Set something once (what a coin is called, how often a game is won, a list of forfeits) and every message and step uses it. They are listed under the integration that reads them.
• Channel points rewards, made and managed in the app. Make a reward, switch it on or off, edit or delete it, and pick which rewards start an integration. Needs an Affiliate or Partner channel; log out of Twitch and in again once under Connections.
• Chat message triggers can match whole words, so "nt" no longer fires on "want".
• Cooldowns that answer. A command can tell the viewer how long is left, and long cooldowns survive a restart.

Destinations say why they fail

A wrong stream key used to read "Connecting..." forever. The card now says what went wrong in plain words ("Stream key rejected. Check the key in Edit"), counts down to the next try, and has Retry now and Details.

Updates you actually hear about

• Checks on its own, shortly after start and once a day, with a quiet tray notice. No dashboard needed.
• Shows what an update brings before you install it, and what changed after.
• Spots a re-published build. If I fix something under the same version number, the app now notices and offers "Install the new build". No more "download it again by hand".

More in Integrations

• OBS steps do much more: start or stop recording, save the replay buffer, take a screenshot, mute a source, switch a filter, play media, press any OBS hotkey. And OBS events (recording, replay saved, a source muted) can start integrations.
• Drag and drop builder. Drag blocks into place like building blocks, with If / Otherwise as two lanes side by side.
• Why a run failed: every failed run opens to show its steps, with Copy run log.
• Check OBS: !mic can answer whether your mic is muted, and an If step can act on it.
• Unfinished builds save as drafts instead of failing.

Integrations are still experimental: everything works, but screens may keep changing. Report it in the tab is the fastest way to reach me.

Fixes

A few you might have hit:

• Saving a destination no longer empties OBS's stream settings. With the InstantClone service picked, OBS could open with no stream service at all.
• A delay switched on while the buffer fills now starts by itself. The hotkey said it would, and then it didn't unless auto-activate was on.
• An overlay can be called "Reset". Saving one with that name wiped every overlay in the Studio.
• Every Twitch event is listened for after a long break. With an expired login, follows could stay off until the next restart.
• !delay says "off" with no delay on air, instead of "1s".
• No more console window flashing when the dashboard opens from the tray.
• The Logs tab fits the window, tabs switch smoothly, and deleting a saved delay, an integration or an idle destination gives you Undo instead of a question.
• Twitch VOD audio is no longer marked Experimental. It has earned it.
• Linux: systemctl stop shuts down cleanly, and closing the terminal no longer stops a stream.

Plus a long polish pass: every checkbox is a switch, the app has its own colour picker, the dock matches the dashboard and can change the delay on air, the header fits a phone, and Copy diagnostics in the Logs tab gives me everything I need for a bug report with every secret removed.

The full list is in the changelog.

Updating

The update prompt picks it up as usual, and your settings, destinations and integrations come along.

Warning

Going back to 0.1.15? It can't read integrations that use something new here (a Smart light step, the new OBS steps, Twitch events), and it removes them the next time it saves. Export them as recipes first.

Thanks

To everyone who sent logs, screenshots and "this confused me" messages on Discord. The two-copies fix, the clearer destination errors and the honest delay range all started that way.

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, 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.