Control OBS from outside your network

OBS Blade normally talks to OBS over your local network - that's what the phone setup guide walks through. But sometimes you want more: start the recording from the garden, check the stream from the office, help a friend fix their scenes from your couch. This guide is about doing that without opening a security hole.

Why not just port-forward the WebSocket?

The obvious idea is to forward port 4455 on your router to the streaming PC and connect to your home IP from anywhere. Please don't - and it's worth understanding why:

• obs-websocket has no TLS. Traffic between the app and OBS - including the authentication handshake - is not encrypted. On the open internet, anyone in a position to watch the traffic can watch yours.
• A password is the only barrier. Once the port is public, every scanner on the internet will find it within days. The only thing between them and full control of your OBS is one password, and they can try as many as they like - there's no lockout.
• It's remote control of your PC's production tool. Whoever gets in can switch scenes, stop streams and fire any hotkey OBS exposes.

The safe path: a mesh VPN

A mesh VPN puts your phone and your PC on the same encrypted, private network no matter where they physically are. Once both are in, connecting OBS Blade works exactly like it does at home - same app, same port, same password - except the traffic is encrypted end to end and invisible to the public internet. Nothing on your router changes, and no port is ever exposed.

The two well-known options are Tailscale and a self-hosted WireGuard setup. WireGuard is excellent but means running your own server; Tailscale is built on WireGuard, is free for personal use, and takes minutes because it handles the key exchange and NAT traversal for you. If you already run WireGuard, use that - the OBS Blade side is identical either way. The steps below use Tailscale because it's the easiest path for most people.

Tailscale step by step

1. Install Tailscale on the streaming PC.

   Download it from tailscale.com for Windows or macOS, install and sign in (it uses your existing Google, Microsoft, Apple or GitHub account - no new password to invent). Your PC now has a stable Tailscale IP in the 100.x.y.z range, visible in the Tailscale menu or admin console.

2. Install Tailscale on your phone or tablet.

   Get the Tailscale app from the App Store or Google Play and sign in to the same account. Both devices are now on your "tailnet" - your private mesh.

3. Connect OBS Blade to the Tailscale IP.

   In OBS Blade, add a manual connection: the PC's Tailscale IP, port 4455, and the same WebSocket password you use at home. With the Tailscale app running on the phone, it connects from anywhere - mobile data included.

The risky option, honestly

If you absolutely cannot run a VPN - some managed or older devices make it hard - port-forwarding is the fallback people reach for. If you go that way, at minimum: use a long, random, unique password in OBS's WebSocket settings; forward a non-standard external port to 4455; and restrict the forward to source IPs you actually use if your router supports it. Understand that this reduces, not removes, the risk - the traffic is still unencrypted and the port is still public. It's the option we'd talk a friend out of.

Good to know

• OBS Blade has no cloud relay - by design. There's no "OBS Blade account" that could broker a connection for you, because your stream controls shouldn't route through our servers. A mesh VPN gives you the same convenience with the privacy model intact.
• Live preview uses bandwidth. The scene preview is a stream of images; over mobile data it adds up. The dashboard works fine without watching it constantly.
• Everything else is unchanged. Scenes, mixer, stats, chat - the app behaves exactly as it does on your LAN, just a few milliseconds later.