Crow

A terminal chat client for live streaming — Twitch and YouTube — with built-in OBS overlays for chat and stream alerts.

Three things in one binary:

• A TUI for reading, sending and moderating chat, with tabs for multiple channels. Click a username for a moderation card, click an emote for a preview, Tab-complete names and emotes, type /commands.
• A chat overlay at http://127.0.0.1:7788 to point an OBS browser source at, rendering chat on stream with a transparent background.
• An alerts overlay at http://127.0.0.1:7788/alerts (a second browser source) popping follows, subs, bits, members and superchats.
• A now-playing overlay at http://127.0.0.1:7788/nowplaying showing the song your local player is on — cover, title, artist, album and progress.

Emotes from 7TV, BetterTTV and FrankerFaceZ render everywhere — as images in the overlay, and inline in the TUI on terminals that speak the kitty graphics protocol (kitty, ghostty, WezTerm).

Chat with inline badges and emotes, and a /poll running — the block updates live and shows the final numbers when it closes.

Click a name: account info, recent messages, mod actions, p to pin.	Alerts (follows, subs, bits, members, superchats) highlighted in the feed.

The two OBS browser sources (shown here on a dark preview background, ?bg=<color>; they're transparent in OBS):

Chat overlay.	Alerts overlay.

Features

• Twitch IRC (tags, badges, emotes, reconnect) and YouTube live chat (cookie or OAuth auth), including combined tabs merging both
• Sending messages, with Tab completion for chatter names (@name) and third-party emote names
• Slash commands: /timeout /ban /unban /delete, chat modes (/slow /followers /emoteonly /uniquechat + off variants), /announce /poll /prediction /raid, /vip /mod — see /help
• Moderation card on click: timeouts, ban/unban, delete, account info, and p to pin the message (a fixed row in the TUI, and Twitch's real chat pin where the API allows)
• Stream alerts — Twitch follows/subs/gifts/bits, YouTube members/gift-memberships/superchats — on the alerts overlay and highlighted in the chat feed, along with messages that mention you
• Live viewer count and uptime in the status bar
• Now playing on the /nowplaying browser source, read from whatever media player is running locally (Linux/MPRIS: Spotify, mpv, VLC, browsers, Rhythmbox — no login, no per-player setup); cover size, text size, panel opacity, progress bar and text scrolling are all in Ctrl+S › now playing
• Settings menu (Ctrl+S): overlay options, alert toggles, now-playing options, chat scale, YouTube cookie login, test alerts

Channels and tabs

crow -channel yourname                  # one Twitch channel
crow -channel a,b,c                     # three tabs
crow -channel yt:@handle                # YouTube (@handle, channel ID, or URL)
crow -channel 'yourname+yt:@handle'     # one combined tab, both chats merged

Tabs: Ctrl+T new, Ctrl+W close, Ctrl+N/Ctrl+B (or Ctrl+←/→) switch, Ctrl+1–9 jump.

Login

Reading chat and the overlays need no login. Sending and moderating do.

crow login             # Twitch device-code flow: approve in your browser
crow whoami
crow logout
crow login youtube     # optional: YouTube OAuth (or paste cookies in Ctrl+S)

Tokens are stored owner-only under your OS config dir (~/.config/crow on Linux, ~/Library/Application Support/crow on macOS). Twitch expires the refresh token after 30 days idle — run login again. Adding new scopes (e.g. after crow gains commands) also needs a logout/login.

Keys

When logged in, the input line at the bottom is focused, so letters type.

Key	Action
type + Enter	send a message, or run a /command
Tab	complete emote/chatter name; again to cycle (@ for names only)
mouse wheel / PgUp / PgDn / ↑ / ↓	scroll chat
click a username	open the moderation card
click an emote	large preview and details
1–5	timeout presets (in the card)
b / u / d	ban / unban / delete message (in the card)
p	pin / unpin the message (in the card)
Esc	close a popup, or jump back to live
Ctrl+S	settings
Ctrl+C	quit

Not logged in, chat is read-only: j/k/g/G/PgUp/PgDn scroll and q quits.

Install

Requires Go 1.26+.

go install github.com/Nyxnix/crow/cmd/crow@latest
crow -channel <name>

Then add OBS browser sources for http://127.0.0.1:7788 (chat) and http://127.0.0.1:7788/alerts (alerts). -headless runs the overlay server without the TUI.

License

MIT