Getting started.
Turn the bot on, make it a moderator, and pick your command prefix. Three small steps and your chat is covered.
The shared bot account
OverlayThing runs a single shared bot account that joins your chat to post replies, run timers and moderate. You do not create or manage a separate bot login. When you enable the chatbot, that account joins your channel; when you disable it, the account leaves and says nothing.
Turn it on
Open the Chatbot page
In your dashboard, go to Chatbot. The big switch at the top is the master on/off for everything the bot does.
Flip the master switch
Turn it on. The bot account connects to your chat. The status row shows the bot name, whether it is connected, your prefix, and its mod status.
Make the bot a moderator
On the same status row, click Make moderator. Twitch requires the bot to be a mod so its messages are not rate-limited and so it can time out or remove messages.
Twitch heavily rate-limits non-mod accounts. Without mod, replies can be dropped or delayed and chat moderation will not work. The Make moderator button does it for you in one click.
The command prefix
The prefix is the character viewers type before a command. The default is the exclamation mark, so a command called uptime is run by typing !uptime. You can change it to any of these from Bot settings:
| Prefix | Example |
|---|---|
! | !uptime (the default) |
& | &uptime |
~ | ~uptime |
- | -uptime |
Your commands are stored without a prefix, so changing it instantly applies to every command at once. You do not have to rewrite anything.
Starter commands
The first time you enable the bot it seeds a set of ready-to-use default commands like !commands, !uptime, !followage and !so. Edit them, disable the ones you do not want, or delete them. They are only ever added once, so deleting one sticks.