So, you managed to set up your Twitch channel. Now, you want extra engagement or ways to display information in your panels or on screen. There are hundreds of Twitch Extensions to discover.

You can find the Twitch extension page here.

What are extensions?

Twitch Extensions are blocks that hold information, forms, embeds, or other interactable buttons. They can be from Twitch, your social media, or the games you play.

They can communicate with each other by using what they call an API (application programming interface). Don’t worry too much about what this odd-looking thing is; that’s for another post.

Why use them?

There are various reasons why you would use Twitch Extensions. Let’s explore them further, and I’ll give some examples per category.

Engage Your Audience

Twitch Extensions allows you to create a more interactive and engaging streaming experience for your audience. Whether you’re a gamer, artist, or musician, extensions allow viewers to participate in polls, quizzes, and other interactive elements during your stream. There even used to be a Twitch Sings extension.

Game Connections

In the gaming category, we’ll find many interactive extras that can help your audience to play or immerse with you. Make sure to search for your favourite games on the extension page. Here are some examples:

• Cult of the Lamb and the Companion of the Lamb: Players can recruit viewers from their audience to join their cult.
• Destiny 2 and the Destiny official Extension: When enabled and actively streaming Destiny 2, your viewers can complete weekly Bounties for in-game rewards, inspect the stats, mods, and perks of your Guardian’s current loadout, view your Trials of Osiris stats for the week/season/lifetime, and track your active Trials of Osiris Passage.
• League of Legends and Mobalytics: The Mobalytics extension enhances your stream’s viewing experience by giving your audience interactive access to your stats, rune pages, builds, and insights on your play style and matchup. 

Minigames and Pets

You can also run your minigames or let your viewers raise their pets using extensions. Here are some examples:

• Dragon Pets and the extension: This one displays a dragon pet on your stream, and your viewers can interact with it to make it stronger and care for it!
• 2048: If you have ever played this game on your mobile, you understand how fun it can be to have this side by side on your stream. 

Monetization Opportunities

This is what you’re here for — cash, money, the dough. Numerous extensions allow your audience to use bits, donations, or gifted subs to affect your game or stream. This generates revenue and keeps your viewers busy. 

• Pay to Play: Several extensions allow donations to play sounds, clips, or images on screen. These are great for jumpscares, memes, or other entertaining factors: Soundalerts, Blerp, Viewer Attack, and Crowd Control.
• Prime Gaming Benefits Reminder: The Prime Gaming Benefits Reminder adds an icon as an overlay to the video, reminding viewers that they have a Prime channel subscription to claim and showing them other benefits of Prime Gaming.

More Branding

You can also use extensions to extend your branding and give more information. Some include listing your schedule and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds. These use, you guessed it, API to connect to your social media app.

• Chrono Channel: Displays your schedule in a nicely coloured panel. 
• Throne Wishlist: Gets your wishlist from your Throne account and puts it in a friendly panel.
• Xeke’s Simple Emote Panel: This one displays the possible emotes and badges your viewers can unlock.
• Schedule from Videos: This panel uses past broadcast information to estimate your next streams.

Viewer Retention

Keeping viewers engaged is vital to a successful Twitch channel. Extensions can help improve viewer retention by offering loyalty point systems, rank lists or other incentives that encourage your audience to stay and interact with your content. Here are some examples:

• Streamrate: Give your viewers a say about you and your content. This helps everyone. Don’t feel bad if they leave a negative review; it’s considered constructive criticism, and you can use it to improve your next stream.
• Leaderboards: Streamelements, Wizebot, Throne, Community Members, Most Valuable Viewer
• And More

There are too many extensions to cover in one post, and I do not want to overwhelm you. Pick the right ones for you, your brand and your community. Especially if certain games are your main content, those extensions are trivial.

Important Notes

There are a lot of good ones, but also bad ones. Here’s a list of things you need to pay attention to.

• Malicious extensions: Always review an extension before adding it. Extensions can access your Twitch information if you allow them to, and like anywhere else on the internet, this can result in problems.
• Hate Speech or Spam Generators: Some extensions automatically add text to the panel. Avoid these since you have no control over them.
• Unwanted ads: Avoid extensions that make their logos too visible. This clutters your panels and turns your channel into a billboard for the companies—credit where credit is due, however.
• Viewer location and IP grabbers: Some extensions show you where your viewers are from. Please do not use these, as they discourage people from staying around.

My word is not law. Use the extensions you think are good for you. Feel free to comment on some extensions you believe should be included in this post below!