If you like playing games, it’s always cool to let people watch you play online. I still don’t understand why that is, but people love watching other people play stuff. Here’s how to stream your PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 4 Pro gameplay over YouTube, Twitch, or even Dailymotion.
First things first: you need to be playing a game. So fire something up and let’s do this thing. I’ll be testing on a PlayStation 4 with The Last of Us Remastered, because it’s the best game of all time.
Once your game is up and running, jump into the Share menu. You can do this by pressing the Share button on the controller, though if you’ve set up Easy Screenshots in the past, you’ll have to long-press this button.
From here, scroll down to “Broadcast Gameplay,” then click it.
The Broadcast menu will open, and you’ll immediately choose which network you’d like to share your stream on. For simplicity, we’re going to use YouTube in this tutorial, but the process should be basically the same for Twitch and Dailymotion, as well.
Once you have your network selected, it’ll ask you to sign in to that service. This is the part that can get pretty cumbersome, because you’re going to have to do all this with your controller. Ugh.
Go ahead and get started with the whole log in thing. Typing with controllers is fun!
If you’re using YouTube as I am, you’ll also have to move over to the YouTube website to accept a few settings. Here’s the fun part about that: you’ll have to log in again. Yeah, it doesn’t remember your stuff. I am incredulous.
Basically, you’ll just have to prove that you’re actually a person and you are who you say you are. I had to verify my account via text message—this may or may not be something you have to do, too. If you’ve previously verified your account for other reasons, then this step may be omitted for you.
Once your account is verified, you can go back to the Broadcast screen.
There are a few options here, like whether or not to include mic audio—if you have a headset and want to respond to comments or just talk over the game, tick this box. Similarly, you can do the same if you have a PS4 camera and would like to show off that pretty mug of yours.
You can also elect to show other people’s comments if you’d like, as well as change the title of your stream, add a description, and change the quality. Keep in mind that the latter will be limited by your internet connection, so try not to choose something that’s going to be laggy for your viewers. At the same time, you also want to keep the stream resolution high enough that it’s not too pixelated—it’s all about finding that balance.
A little further down the screen, there’s also an option to share your stream on Facebook. If you’ve already connected your PlayStation Account with your Facebook account, this is a simple box. Otherwise, you’ll be logging in and connecting the two. That means more controller typing. Yay!
If you do decide to share over Facebook, you can also opt to share with just friends or make the stream public.
At that point, you’re pretty much finished. Click the “Start Broadcasting” button.
If you’ve chosen to show user comments, they’ll show up on the right side of the screen. Note that this displays in your stream—it’s not just for you to see.
If, at any point, you’d like to make changes to your broadcast—like showing comments, for example, just click the Share button again and choose “Broadcast Settings.”
In this menu, you can end your broadcast once you’re finished playing, but the Advanced Settings section will let you disable showing comments, modify the display message, change audio settings.
I ended up getting caught up in The Last of Us for almost an hour after settings this up, so here’s a look at what my stream looked like. Also, I died once, which was just stupid.
Warning: This game contains violent and strong language, so it may not be appropriate for some viewers.
Now that you’ve gone through the terrible process of logging into everything, streaming should be a bit smoother next time you do it. Enjoy!