By default, Windows always limit the maximum resources a program can get to prevent one program sucking too many available resources, crashing important system programs. It’s recommended to run your OBS as administrator to bypass this limitation
This guide is only applicable for Windows 10 and Windows 11. Mac OS has stricter resource allocation rules and less support for games, so you can’t use this trick
How to run your OBS Studio as an administrator
- Click Windows start menu
- On the search bar, search OBS
- Right Click on OBS Studio (64bit)
- Click Run as administrator
You can now run OBS as an administrator on Windows 10 and Windows 11 easily
But, if you don’t want to bother to run as administrator each time you open OBS, you can easily create a shortcut for it
Create an administrator shortcut in OBS
To easily run OBS as administrator, we can create a shortcut that automatically runs as administrator if you click the shortcut
- From Start Menu, search OBS. Select Open File Location
2. Left-click once on OBS Studio (64bit) and then right-click to choose the properties
3. Choose the Shortcut tab and click Advanced
4. Check the box on the “Run as administrator” option
5. Don’t forget to click OK to apply the change
Now every time you run the OBS from Start Menu, it will run in administrator mode.
How to automatically run OBS as administrator on startup
If you want to run OBS every time you start your PC, then you can use the Windows task scheduler to make the task easier.
- From the start menu, search task scheduler and click the search result
2. Click Task Scheduler Library and choose to create Task
3. Type the task name. Let’s name it: OBS admin
4. Check “Run only when user is logged on” and “Run with highest privileges” options
5. Click the Triggers tab and choose New …
6. On Begin the Task, you can choose between “At log on” and “At startup”. At log on means, if you log on, wake up from sleep, restart and starting after shutdown, the task will be scheduled.
For the “At startup” option, you need to restart or shut down your PC first before the task is scheduled
7. Click the Action tab and choose “New ….”
8. On the program/script, click browse and open
C:\Program Files\obs-studio\bin\64bit\
Choose obs64.exe
For argument, fill with –startreplaybuffer –minimize-to-tray.
Separate with space, don’t separate with a comma
9. Click the Setting tab and uncheck Stop the task if longer than 3 days, to prevent the scheduled task from automatically closed
10. Click OK to save your scheduled task
11. Try to restart your PC to check the result
You can create a scheduled task using any app besides OBS. I suggest you to using the shortcut method to prevent the danger of abuse of administrator privilege.
Should you run OBS as an administrator?
OBS need GPU resource, even if you use x264 as a streaming encoding. If there is not enough GPU resource, you can experience dropped frame on your OBS. The game will take most of your GPU resources, and Windows can recognize that. So you should run OBS as an administrator to get a higher FPS for free
That’s why when Windows detect a game, it will give the most allocation to the game. This will bring a good result for most gamers, but not for streamers since OBS will be bugged at 95% GPU utilization.
By running OBS with administrator privileges, windows can allow extra priority to give additional GPU resources to OBS. Higher FPS means higher stream quality, making your Twitch stream better for viewers
In October 2019, OBS studio v24 already released the fix to prevent frame rate issues appearing when 95% GPU utilization is used. But, you can still gain extra performance by running OBS as an administrator.
Beware that running a program as an administrator will bring a security risk. If you accidentally run a malicious program as an administrator, it can access and edit all your system and private file.
Make sure you download OBS from the official website and use the officially released plugin. Never use any cracked plugin on your OBS, especially if you need to give your OBS administrator privilege.
You can download OBS here: https://obsproject.com/download