StreamHelper user guide
StreamHelper is a desktop application whose main purpose is to provide notifications when the streamers you follow on Twitch goes live or switch games.
Furthermore it makes it easy to launch your browser to the channel, or opening the stream in your video player of choice (for example MPC-HC or VLC) if you have Streamlink installed.
Because of recent changes, only streams you favorite in StreamHelper will get notifications. We will see at the possibility to send notifications for all streams again in the future.
StreamHelper runs in your system tray. It is how you interact and use the application.
Without configuration it does nothing, so the first step is to click the icon in the system tray:
Go click on Settings to start setting things up.
A quick explanation of the first tab:
- How often the application updates, downloads new data from the sites.
- Speaks for itself.
- Used for debugging. Can generate a lot of data so leave it off unless you actually need it.
I suggest leaving these at the default settings. Except #2. Use autostart as much/little as you want.
Twitch requires you to login. Click the button, follow the directions, etc.
Notice that StreamHelper doesn't request any permissions and thus can only access public data.
Either wait, or click "Refresh" in the tray menu to immediately start getting data. Progress is shown by the tray icon changing to a "T" (for Twitch) and finally turning back to normal.
("blob" notification when first starting)
("normal" notification)
Clicking the notification itself does not do anything. Maybe in the future it can launch the stream.
- Left click to open stream in browser (or Streamlink if installed).
- Ctrl+click to mark as favorite "| F |" (send a notification when they come online or switches game). Ctrl-click again to reset.
- If you have Streamlink you can shift-click to get a dialog where you can watch in other qualities and even start downloads. Use the "Play from clipboard" button if you have copied a link and want to watch/download it.
- Dealing with the different way autostart works.
- Moving configuration and logs out of the application directory.
- Don't check for and notify when a new version of StreamHelper is available for download (let the Microsoft Store deal with this 😉).
- Real actionable notifications instead of the balloon tips that Win10 just happens to display nicely (imagine clicking a notification and the video opens)!
- Chatting. I imagine either as a built in web component or by supporting a desktop chat application. Unfortunately I've yet to find a decent one that would work for this.
- A replacement for the tray menu list. I would like to be able to show thumbnails, how long the streams have been going, status text etc. in a nice way. Initial work on this has started. On ver 1.5.0.0 and later, enable "New UI (Beta)" in the settings.
