Test your stream

A test stream is a real stream that goes nowhere public. Your camera, your Cloud Studio scenes, your alerts, your chat overlay and your sound all go through Pyre exactly as they would on a real broadcast, and instead of Twitch, YouTube or Kick they land in a private player only you can see. It is the way to check a new setup without an audience finding your mistakes first.

There are three ways in, and they suit different people:

You stream from	Use
The phone app	The Test button on the Camera tab
pyre.stream or the desktop app	The Test stream button on the Stream Manager
OBS or anything else you start yourself	The Test mode switch on Destinations
A real stream, with a private copy alongside	The Pyre test destination

Test from the phone

1. Press Test on the Camera tab, next to Go Live. The phone goes live at once, privately, with whatever setup you have chosen in How you go live.

2. Watch the status row. It carries a TEST badge, the time, and the time your test has left, for example Private · 27:46 left in portrait, or Only you can see this · 27:46 left in landscape.

3. Look at What viewers see. A small player above the dock plays the private stream back to you. It is just the video, nothing around it. Tap it to make it bigger (the full width of the screen in portrait), and tap again to shrink it.

4. Press End test when you are done. The phone shows Test ended.

Use headphones to listen

The player starts muted, and it says why: Use headphones to listen. Your phone’s microphone is live during a test, so playing the stream through the speaker would pick itself up again and echo into the very thing you are checking. Plug in headphones, then unmute the player.

The link button in the dock, where Chat on camera sits on a real stream, shares the private link through Android’s share sheet, so someone else can watch your test on their own screen.

A test keeps running in Picture-in-Picture if you leave the app, just like a real stream.

Once you are live for real, the Preview button on the Camera tab opens the same kind of player for your real stream (app version 1.5.4). See Live preview.

Test from pyre.stream

1. Press Test stream on the Stream Manager, next to Go Live.

2. Start streaming the way you normally do. The button arms a test and says so: Test armed: start streaming from your phone, OBS or the desktop app. The next stream from any of your sources becomes the test. Cancel disarms it. An armed test that never gets a stream is dropped after an hour, so a forgotten press can never turn tomorrow’s real stream into a test.

3. Watch the test player. While the test runs, the Stream Manager shows a TEST badge, Only you can see this, the time left and an End test button, plus a player card with the stream itself.

The player card is there to answer the questions you actually have:

• Stats: the Resolution, Frame rate and Bitrate that are arriving, and an estimated Delay (Estimate: the player buffer plus the usual relay delay.).
• Audio: a level meter, so you can see your mic and your music are in the mix even with the sound off. Browsers start the player muted: Sound is off in this browser until you unmute.
• Private link: the address of the test player, with Copy link.

Test mode, for OBS and your PC

If you start your stream from OBS, there is no Pyre button in the way to press. Test mode is a switch on the Destinations page for exactly that case:

Your next stream from OBS, the desktop app or your phone goes only to a private test player. Turns itself off after that test.

1. Turn Test mode on on the Destinations page. Pyre confirms it: Test mode is on: your next stream goes only to your private test player.

2. Start streaming from OBS, the desktop app or the phone, as you normally do. Your enabled platforms are skipped. The stream goes only to the test player on the Stream Manager.

3. Stop the stream when you have seen enough. Test mode turns itself off when that test ends, so the stream after it is a real one. You never have to remember to switch it back.

The desktop app shows the same Destinations page, so the switch is there too.

The Pyre test destination

Sometimes you want to watch your real stream as viewers get it, while it is going out. Pyre test is a destination for that. It sits in its own Private test group on the Destinations page, under the platform cards:

Pyre test sends a private copy you can watch on pyre.stream while you stream to the others. Same 30-minute limit.

Switch it on and go live as normal. Your platforms get the stream, and the private copy plays on the Stream Manager beside it. When the copy reaches 30 minutes, only the copy ends: your real stream carries on. If Pyre test is the only destination you have switched on, nothing goes to a platform, and the stream behaves like a test.

See Set up your destinations for where it sits.

Share the private link

Every test has its own private link on pyre.stream. Anyone with the link sees the player and nothing else: no chat, no dashboard, no account. It Works until the test ends. Then the page says This test has ended. and the link is dead for good. Opened before the stream has started, the page says The test has not started yet. This page updates by itself.

The link plays in Chrome, Edge and Firefox. A browser that cannot play it says so rather than showing a black box.

The 30-minute limit

A test lasts at most 30 minutes, counted from when your stream reaches Pyre. Five minutes before the end you get one warning: Your test ends in 5 minutes. At 30 minutes Pyre ends the test for you, and the phone and the Stream Manager both say Test ended.

To test for longer, start another one.

What a test does not trigger

A test is private all the way down. Pyre knows it is a test and keeps it out of everything that acts as if you really went live:

• No go-live notifications to your followers.
• No Discord go-live announcement or status.
• No analytics. A test is not a stream in your stats.
• No clips or VODs.
• No ad breaks, and the bot does not treat you as live.

On the Pyre test destination, your real stream is real, so it does all of these as normal. Only the private copy is invisible.

If something is not right

• The Test button is not there. On the phone it only shows while you are Ready, not while you are live or starting.
• The player says it is waiting. Waiting for your stream to reach Pyre. means the test is armed and nothing has arrived yet. Start streaming from your source.
• The player lost the stream. It retries by itself: The test player lost the stream. Retrying.
• You hear an echo on the phone. The player is unmuted through the speaker. Use headphones.