Clatasha HUD - Status Overlay 0.2.0

Clatasha HUD is a Windows OBS Studio plugin that adds a compact, always-on-top status HUD for the streamer and a five-slot browser overlay manager for HUD-only, stream-only, or combined overlays.


The plugin runs inside OBS Studio. It does not require a separate Python process.

Current features​

Compact local HUD​

• 145 × 50 frameless, always-on-top, click-through HUD.
• Actual foreground game/application FPS through the Clatasha DXGI ETW helper.
• OBS renderer FPS shown beside the game FPS.
• Game FPS is blue while idle and red while recording or streaming.
• Desktop Audio and Mic/Aux segmented level meters with separate monitor and microphone icons.
• Recording/streaming session timer.
• Recording-drive free-space display.
• Recording/streaming activity spinner.
• Adjustable HUD opacity and corner placement.
• Visibility watchdog that restores the main HUD if Windows unexpectedly hides or drops its topmost state.
• Windows capture-exclusion request for local HUD windows where supported.

If game FPS cannot be read, Clatasha HUD displays -- rather than substituting OBS renderer FPS.

Browser Overlays​

Clatasha HUD includes five configurable overlay slots. Each slot has:

• Enable/disable control.
• Friendly name.
• URL or local-file input.
• HUD, VIDEO, or HUD / VIDEO output mode.
• Preview/Edit placement tool with drag and resize handles.
• Separate source resolution and displayed size, so resizing scales the overlay instead of changing/cropping the browser viewport.
• Lock Ratio for HUD and VIDEO placement, enabled by default.
• Independent saved HUD and VIDEO placement/size.
• Apply confirmation toast.

Supported overlay inputs​

Remote browser widgets such as Streamlabs alert boxes can be pasted directly into a slot.

Direct image URLs are automatically placed on a transparent canvas instead of Chromium's built-in image-viewer background. Supported image types include PNG, APNG, GIF, WebP, SVG, JPG/JPEG, BMP, and AVIF.

Local files can be selected with Browse Local…. Local transparent images use the same alpha-preserving path as remote images. Local HTML/HTM files use OBS Browser Source local-file mode.

Output modes​

• HUD — shown locally as a desktop HUD overlay.
• VIDEO — created as a Clatasha-managed OBS Browser Source in the current scene.
• HUD / VIDEO — shown in both places.

HUD browser overlays render through an off-screen OBS browser_source so transparent alert widgets stay invisible until they actually draw content.

Game display mode compatibility​

Clatasha HUD uses normal Windows desktop overlay windows for its private HUD and HUD browser overlays.

• Windowed games — supported.
• Borderless / borderless fullscreen games — supported and recommended for the most reliable HUD overlay behavior.
• True exclusive fullscreen games — may appear above normal desktop windows and prevent Clatasha HUD overlays from being visible.

Clatasha HUD periodically reasserts its HUD windows as topmost to recover their position when a game launches or changes focus. If a game still covers the HUD while running in exclusive fullscreen, switch that game to Borderless or Borderless Fullscreen mode.

This limitation applies to the private desktop HUD overlays. It does not prevent VIDEO overlays from being rendered as normal OBS scene sources.

Game FPS backend​

Game/application FPS is collected by clatasha-fps-helper.exe using the Windows DXGI ETW provider. The helper is launched elevated because starting the ETW session normally requires suitable Windows tracing permissions.

Current limitations:

• The FPS path is DXGI-focused. Vulkan/OpenGL titles may show --.
• The current target is the non-OBS foreground process.
• A UAC prompt may appear when the helper starts.
• The game FPS display intentionally holds the last valid sample briefly to prevent flicker during short ETW/state-file gaps.

Requirements​

• Windows 10 or Windows 11 x64.
• OBS Studio with Browser Source/obs-browser installed and enabled for browser overlays.
• Current development/testing is on OBS Studio 32.2.2.
• CI currently uses the OBS plugin-template dependency set pinned to OBS 31.1.1.

Windows installation​

The Windows ZIP uses the OBS installation-root layout:

obs-plugins/
64bit/
clatasha-hud.dll

data/
obs-plugins/
clatasha-hud/
clatasha-fps-helper.exe

locale/
en-US.ini

Close OBS Studio, then extract the ZIP directly into the OBS installation directory, normally:

C:\Program Files\obs-studio<br>

After extraction, the main files should be:

C:\Program Files\obs-studio\obs-plugins\64bit\clatasha-hud.dll
C:\Program Files\obs-studio\data\obs-plugins\clatasha-hud\clatasha-fps-helper.exe
C:\Program Files\obs-studio\data\obs-plugins\clatasha-hud\locale\en-US.ini

Restart OBS and open the Clatasha HUD controls from the Tools menu.


AI use disclosure

ChatGPT was used during the development of Clatasha HUD. It helped write, modify, and debug code for the FPS display feature. I directed the feature, tested builds in OBS, reported problems, and requested changes based on those tests. ChatGPT also helped draft this resource description and some of the tooltips for some features, which I reviewed before posting.