Kamcord, YouTube, and Twitch(?) — how to livestream smartphone and tablet games

It’s 2016, which means it’s time to build your personal brand. And if you have a newer smartphone or tablet, you can get started with that right now by livestreaming some mobile games.

If you’re on Android 5.0 or higher, livestreaming or recording your gameplay is simple. On iOS, things are a little bit more complex, but it isn’t impossible. Things are also different depending on whether you’re wed to the idea of broadcasting to Twitch, YouTube, or elsewhere.

Let’s do this.

Android

Download YouTube Gaming, Kamcord, or Mobcrush

If you have at least Android 5.0, you can start broadcasting gameplay right now by using one of the following apps:

• Kamcord
• YouTube Gaming
• Mobcrush

Kamcord is a Twitch-like experience built specifically for mobile games. Its app can record gameplay or broadcast it live, and it’s the home of some of the most popular streams for games like Clash of Clans and Boom Beach.

Mobcrush is similar — although it’s still in a beta that you can only get from the Mobcrush website.

YouTube Gaming is an app that enables you to record or livestream gameplay directly to YouTube. But, unlike Kamcord, you’ll have to compete with livestreams for traditional platforms like console and PC.

What about Twitch?

The world’s most popular gameplay-broadcasting website doesn’t have an easy way of getting mobile games on to its site. It’s built its tech into one or two games as a test, but Twitch focuses most of its resources on PC and consoles.

That hasn’t stopped third-party apps, like Screen Stream Mirroring, from offering Twitch streaming. This app will cost you $5, but you can try out a free version to see if it will even run on your device. But this isn’t really for beginners — you’ll need to know things like your RTMP server and stream key. And maintaining those settings can cause problems.

At the same time, you could also livestream directly to Twitch if you own certain smartphones and tablets. The Nvidia Shield and certain Sony handsets have built-in solutions for broadcasting. Of course, if you own those devices, you probably already know that. And if you don’t, you’ll have to decide whether it’s worth it to drop a few hundred bucks on new hardware to have a Twitch option.

But I’m a power user

If you really want the best-quality stream from mobile, you should probably buy the appropriate cable for your phone or tablet to capture direct-feed footage. For example, I can connect my tablet with an HDMI cord to a capture card connected to my PC.

If you go this route, you’ll want to try one of the following capture cards:

• Elgato HD60
• AverMedia Live Gamer HD

These products range in price from around $160 to $180. Combine them with software like OBS or Xsplit, which can capture multiple audiovisual inputs, and send them to sites like Twitch or YouTube.

iOS

Capturing footage from an iPhone or iPad is simultaneously easier and more difficult than Android. That’s because iOS doesn’t have the capability to enable third-party livestreaming apps. Instead, Apple has added something called ReplayKit, where developers can choose to add recording to their games on a case-by-case basis. But that won’t work for livestreaming.

This means no streaming from the iOS Kamcord or YouTube Gaming apps.

But Apple does make acting as a power user a bit easier if you also own a Mac computer. That’s because connecting a newer iPhone or iPad with the included Lightning cable will give you the option to record footage from your device. You can then capture that footage using OBS or Xsplit to livestream it.

At the same time, we’ve heard from Kamcord that it’s hoping to bring livestreaming to iOS in the future, so things may get easier over time.