VirtualCam Plugin (obs-virtual-cam)

After installing the obs-virtual-cam plugin and starting OBS Studio, you click the 'Start Virtual Camera' button (now natively built into OBS Studio as of version 26+) to broadcast your OBS scene as a webcam feed. In Zoom or Microsoft Teams, you then select 'OBS Virtual Camera' from the camera dropdown in your video settings. The plugin creates a virtual device that video conferencing apps treat as a standard webcam input.

As of OBS Studio version 26.0, released in 2020, virtual camera functionality was natively integrated into OBS Studio on Windows, making the third-party plugin unnecessary for most users on that platform. The built-in version provides the same core feature of outputting OBS scenes as a webcam source. The original obs-virtual-cam plugin may still be useful on older OBS versions or for specific advanced configurations.

On macOS, OBS Studio includes native virtual camera support starting from version 26.1, so no separate plugin is needed. On Linux, virtual camera output typically requires additional setup with v4l2loopback, and the implementation depends on your distribution and OBS version. The Windows experience has been the most streamlined since the native integration was added.

Yes, once OBS Virtual Camera is active, Discord will detect it as a camera input that you can select in your Voice & Video settings under the camera device dropdown. This lets you share OBS scenes, overlays, and composited video in Discord calls and Go Live streams. Note that Discord does not transmit virtual camera audio—you need to configure audio routing separately if you want OBS audio to reach Discord.