Top 10 Twitch Settings You Need to Update Right Now

Default settings on Twitch are not neutral. Some of them actively throttle your reach, kill your chat interaction, and leave your content unprotected. Others get quietly reset by platform updates or OBS installs without any warning. If you have never audited your Twitch settings, or if you set them up once and assumed they stayed put, this list is for you.

Ten settings. Some need to be turned on. Some need to be turned off. All of them matter.

1. Latency Mode: Get Off Normal Latency

This is the setting most likely to be silently killing your chat. Go to Creator Dashboard > Settings > Stream and find Latency Mode. Twitch defaults new channels to Low Latency, which is correct. The problem is that OBS updates and account resets can flip this back to Normal Latency without any notification.

Normal Latency introduces 10 to 20 seconds of delay between what you do on stream and what your viewers see. You tell a joke, you sit in silence, and 15 seconds later chat reacts. That is not a stream. That is a voicemail people happen to be watching.

Check that Low Latency is selected. Do not trust that it stayed where you left it.

2. Followers Only Chat: Turn It Off

If you are a new or growing streamer, Followers Only mode is one of the most effective ways to prevent your channel from ever growing. It feels like a safety measure. It functions like a locked door on a store nobody has walked into yet.

Go to your chat window, click the cogwheel icon next to the chat input, scroll down, and confirm Followers Only is off. If a first-time visitor lands on your channel and wants to say hello, forcing them to follow and wait a cooldown period before typing means most of them will leave instead.

Use AutoMod to handle trolls and bots. Go to Creator Dashboard > Moderation > Settings to configure it. Do not punish legitimate viewers for the behavior of bad actors you have not encountered yet.

3. Store Past Broadcasts and Publish Your VODs

Twitch does not save your streams by default. When you end a broadcast without enabling this setting, that content is gone permanently.

Go to Creator Dashboard > Settings > Stream and scroll down to find Store Past Broadcasts. Turn it on. While you are on that same page, also enable Always Publish VODs. Without this second toggle, your archived streams are hidden from viewers by default, which reduces your discoverability without any benefit to you.

Both settings take ten seconds to set and never need to be touched again. Set them now.

4. Raids: Stop Locking the Door to New Audiences

During Twitch's safety onboarding, you may have been nudged to restrict incoming raids to friends only. That choice could be costing you your biggest growth opportunity on the platform.

Go to Creator Dashboard > Settings > Stream and scroll down to the Raids section. Check that you have not blocked incoming raids outright. A larger streamer wanting to send 500 viewers to your channel only needs a single second of friction to decide it is not worth it.

The recommended configuration: enable Allow raids from channels that meet the following requirements and set a minimum follower count (2 to 5 is reasonable). That filters single-account spam raids while keeping the door open for anyone substantial. Leave everything else permissive.

5. Block Terms and Phrases: Filter Bot Spam Before It Hits Chat

If you turned off Followers Only mode, which you should have, you need something else handling bot traffic. This is where blocked terms come in.

Go to Creator Dashboard > Moderation > Settings > AutoMod and Message Filtering, click View Advanced Settings, then scroll down to Block Terms and Phrases. Add the phrases that spam bots repeat constantly: "get famous here," "buy followers," "get cheap viewers," "get big follows," and similar variations.

That short list filters out the majority of bot messages you will ever encounter. Your chat stays clean, you are not manually banning accounts mid-game, and you are not distracted at the wrong moment.

6. Category Tagging: Use the Specific Game, Not Retro

This one is not a toggle but it is a mistake with real consequences. When you update your stream information before going live, confirm that your category matches the actual game you are playing. Playing Fortnite under Just Chatting means nobody searching for Fortnite can find your stream. Playing an older title under the Retro category puts you against an overcrowded bucket with no specific audience.

Find the specific game title, even for older games. A smaller, targeted category with real audiences searching for it will always outperform a broad generic category that nobody is actively browsing with intent.

7. Pre-roll Ads: Disable the Ones That Cost You New Viewers (Affiliates and Partners)

This setting only applies if you are a Twitch Affiliate or Partner, but if you are, it is one of the highest-leverage changes you can make.

Go to Creator Dashboard > Monetization > Ads. Find the Ads Per Hour setting and change it to exactly 3 minutes. This specific configuration disables pre-roll ads, which are the ads that play the instant someone clicks on your stream before they have seen a single second of your content.

A viewer who clicks your stream and immediately gets served a 30-second ad they did not ask for has a straightforward choice: wait, or leave. Most leave. You do not get a second chance at that first impression.

Running mid-roll ads instead is a reasonable trade. Your existing viewers sit through an occasional break. New visitors actually get to see you first. When the ad notification appears in your dashboard, reframe it in your chat as a brief health break: stretch, get water, step away for a moment. Nobody complains. You keep the revenue.

8. Disconnect Protection: Turn It On Before You Need It

Go to Creator Dashboard > Settings > Stream. At the top of the page you will find Disconnect Protection. Enable it.

When your internet drops or OBS crashes, Twitch normally ends your broadcast immediately, clearing your viewer count and ending the session for everyone watching. With Disconnect Protection enabled, Twitch holds your channel live for approximately 90 seconds while displaying a technical difficulty screen. That window is long enough to restart OBS, reconnect your internet, or reboot your router without losing your audience or resetting the stream.

You will not think about this setting until the moment you need it. Enable it now while you are already in the settings panel.

9. Chat Verification: Require a Real Identity to Type

Go to Creator Dashboard > Moderation > Settings, then select Chatter Permissions and click View Advanced Settings. Here you can require verified email or phone number from first-time chatters in your channel.

Set it at a minimum to email verification for first-time chatters. Phone verification provides stronger protection against coordinated hate raids and troll campaigns because most bad actors will not attach a real phone number to a throwaway account just to bother one small streamer.

This single setting blocks the vast majority of bot and troll activity before it reaches your chat. It does not affect viewers who have verified their accounts, which is most legitimate users. The friction is invisible to real people and impassable for throwaway accounts.

10. Clips: Remove the Barrier to Going Viral

Go to Creator Dashboard > Settings > Stream and scroll down until you find Clips. Confirm that Enable Clips is on. Then confirm that the Followers Only restriction is turned off.

When a random viewer catches a genuinely funny or impressive moment in your stream, you want them to clip it and share it immediately. If they have to follow your channel first before the Clip tool is available to them, most of them will not bother. The moment passes. The clip never gets made. The reach never happens.

Your existing viewers are not the audience that makes you grow. Strangers are. Remove the friction between strangers and the ability to share your content.

What to Do Right Now

Open your Creator Dashboard, run through this list in order, and verify every single setting. Do not assume anything is configured correctly from setup or that it stayed put since the last time you checked. Several of these get quietly reset by platform updates and third-party software installs.

This is not optimization. This is baseline. Until these settings are right, everything else you do to grow your stream is running at a fraction of its potential.

- ApexInterfectum Co-Founder, PUG Empire