Kotbo 4 min read
Discord Twitch and YouTube notifications: announce your streams and videos
Discord doesn’t tell your server when you go live on Twitch or upload to YouTube: you need a bot that watches the channel. With Kotbo, you add the channel on the dashboard, pick the channel to post in and the role to ping, and the announcement goes out on its own
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What Discord does, and what it doesn’t
In Server Settings, Integrations, you can connect Twitch or YouTube. That links a role to your subscribers or channel members, and nothing gets posted when you publish. To post an alert when a stream starts, you need a bot that checks the channel at regular intervals
- The native integration syncs subscriber roles, it posts no message
- No native alert for a new stream, a new video or a new Short
- A webhook alone can’t tell when you go live: something has to check for you
What Kotbo announces
The Social networks page on the dashboard has four tabs. Kotbo checks followed accounts every 5 minutes and posts in the channel you picked
YouTube
Three alert types, each with its own message: Live, Video and Short. Kotbo tells a Short from a regular video, and the alert carries a button that opens it
Twitch
An alert when the stream starts, with the stream title, the game, the viewer count and the thumbnail. The same stream is never announced twice
GitHub
Commits on a branch, releases, pull requests and issues from a public repository, each type on its own toggle. A server can follow up to 15 repositories
Hugging Face
New commits on a model, dataset or space, or new repositories from an author. Up to 25 follows per server
How to set up Twitch or YouTube notifications on Discord
Everything happens on dash.kotbo.fr, no command to type
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Turn the modules on
In Modules, turn on YouTube or Twitch. They are off by default, and the Social networks page warns you until they run
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Add the channel
YouTube tab: paste the URL, the handle or the channel name. Twitch tab: the username or the twitch.tv link
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Pick the alerts channel
Leave it empty and Kotbo posts in the server’s public channel. Make sure it can send messages in the channel you pick
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Pick who gets pinged
The Mention field offers @everyone, @here or any server role. Leave it empty for an alert that pings nobody
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Write your messages
One message per alert type, or none to keep the default. The [title] and [channel] variables insert the title and the channel name
Customizing the announcement
The default message works, but an alert that sounds like you gets more clicks. A few useful rules
- On YouTube, Live, Video and Short each have their own message: a stream can ping everyone while a Short stays quiet
- On Twitch, [game] and [viewers] add the game and the viewer count to the text
- If your message contains [title], it also replaces the title of the embed
- A video title containing @everyone pings nobody: only the mention you set sends a notification
Why an old video isn’t announced
When you add a YouTube channel, Kotbo records the latest upload without announcing it, so your whole back catalog doesn’t flood the server. After that, a video published more than 24 hours ago isn’t announced either. On Twitch, the end of a stream resets the follow, and the next stream gets a fresh alert
An announcement channel members don’t mute
An alert nobody reads is wasted. A few habits keep your announcement channel worth following
- One channel for alerts where only the bot posts, and another one to talk about them
- A notification role members pick for themselves, with Kotbo’s reaction roles, instead of @everyone on every Short
- If you follow several creators, each follow has its own channel and its own mention: a friend going live doesn’t wake the whole server
- A short message that says what’s happening, the title does the rest