How To Create A Mixer Account

How To Create A Mixer Channel

Last Updated: August 31, 2019

Mixer is a Twitch alternative owned by Microsoft. Until they managed to poach streamer Ninja, few people had either heard of it or given it any real thought. Twitch was the place to be and nowhere else mattered. Now Mixer is firmly in our consciousness thanks to that one slick move from Microsoft. If you want to join Ninja on the platform, this tutorial will walk you through the basics of creating a Mixer channel.

Gaming

Mixer is very similar to Twitch in that it is a live broadcasting platform that lets gamers stream their gameplay. It has similar playback, chat and reward functions as Twitch and does most of the things Twitch does. It is primarily about gaming but isn't exclusively about gaming. There are other interests and channels on there too.

One key area where Mixer improves upon Twitch is in latency. When you see gameplay on Twitch, what you see on screen is already several seconds old. Whatever you say in chat is already out of date so if you see a threat in game and want to warn the streamer, you can't as it has already happened. Mixer is much, much faster. At least from my experience anyway.

Setting up a Mixer channel

Mixer has similar setup requirements to Twitch but also has an advantage. If you game on Windows 10 or Xbox One, the broadcast capability is built in. If you use Mac or Linux, you will need to use OBS or other streaming program to do the heavy lifting. As I use Windows 10, I'll describe setting up a Mixer channel on that.

First you will need a Mixer account. Then we will need to set up your computer to stream. You will need a webcam, microphone and game to play for all this to work. A decent internet connection will obviously be useful too.

Navigate to the Mixer website and select Sign In at the top right.
Select Create Account on the popup.
Complete account signup or sign in with your Microsoft account. It helps if it's the same one you're signed into Windows with.
Agree the terms and you're ready to stream.
Select Manage Channel if you're not taken there automatically.
Select Broadcast and name your stream.

Your Mixer account is ready to go and you have created a channel ready to accept the stream. Now we need to set up your computer to broadcast.

Right click the Windows Start button and select Settings.
Select Gaming and Broadcasting.
Turn on 'Record audio when I broadcast' and 'Turn on mic when I broadcast'. Leave audio quality at 128kbps.
Scroll down and enable 'Use camera when I broadcast'.
Enable auto echo cancellation and play around with the microphone and system volume until the levels are where you like them.
Set 'Broadcast game audio only' to your preferred setting. If you're adding commentary or want music playing in the background, disable it. If you just want game audio on your stream, enable it.
Enable or disable 'Capture mouse cursor in broadcasts' to show the mouse, or not.

That's all the setup you need to do to begin your broadcast. Each setting is optional and will be situational depending on your style of broadcasting. You can go back and change these settings at any time if you need to.

Broadcasting on Mixer in Windows 10

Now you're set up and ready to go, we can start broadcasting. Assuming you have a camera, microphone and game set up and ready to go, everything is in place to go live.

Select the Windows Key + G to open the Game Bar.
Open your game and get it ready to stream.
Select the satellite dish Broadcast icon or hit Windows Key + Alt + B.
Check your channel details, Xbox Live name and check the camera and microphone settings in the blue popup window that appears.
Select Start Broadcast at the bottom to begin streaming.

To share the stream URL with friends, select the Your Channel text link at the top of this screen. Copy the URL and send it to your friends. They can click it and land on your Mixer channel page.

As you play, you will see a small blue status box on your screen. This is not visible on the stream and tells you how long you have been live, show chat messages, the number of viewers and stream controls.

Setting up streams on Mixer is the easy part as most of the work is done for you. The difficult part is making the stream interesting and getting your gameplay and chat up to scratch. That's something we cannot help you with!