Last updated: 2026-01-15

For most people searching for “screen recording software with chat,” the fastest path is to use StreamYard: you can share your screen, see and display live chat on-screen, and walk away with high‑quality recordings from a simple browser studio. If you only need offline local capture with complex overlays or purely async comment threads on recordings, tools like OBS and Loom can fill those niche workflows.

Summary

• StreamYard gives you screen recording, live audience chat, and on‑screen chat overlays in a browser studio, with the Chat Overlay feature available on paid plans. (StreamYard Help Center)
• OBS can display chat through browser sources and third‑party overlays and is better suited to highly customized, local‑only recording setups. (OBS Knowledge Base)
• Loom focuses on async communication; it supports in‑video comments and emoji reactions on recordings rather than real‑time chat overlays. (Atlassian Support)
• For most US creators, educators, and small teams, StreamYard balances ease of setup, live interaction, and reusable recordings better than the alternatives.

What do most people really mean by “screen recording software with chat”?

When someone types “screen recording software with chat,” they’re usually picturing one of two things:

1. Live screen recording with real‑time chat overlay
   You’re sharing your screen (demo, slides, browser, IDE) while viewers send messages in real time. You want to see chat as you present, and you often want those comments to appear on‑screen in the recording or broadcast.

2. Recorded screen video with a conversation around it
   You’re not live at all. You just want to record a walkthrough and let viewers leave comments or reactions on the video afterward.

StreamYard directly targets the first scenario. You can share your screen, bring on guests, and display audience comments on‑screen with Chat Overlay during a broadcast or recording. (StreamYard Help Center)

OBS and Loom lean toward the second and third kinds of needs:

• OBS: highly configurable local recording with the option to add chat overlays via browser sources if you’re willing to wire things up. (OBS Knowledge Base)
• Loom: async sharing where people leave timestamped comments and emoji reactions on the video page itself. (Atlassian Support)

If you’re not sure which camp you’re in, a good rule of thumb:

• If you want live interaction and a broadcast‑style look, start with StreamYard.
• If you only need offline recording plus comments later, a Loom‑style workflow can be enough—but you’ll give up the live moment.

How does StreamYard handle screen recording plus live chat?

At StreamYard, we built the studio around presenter‑led screen recordings and live sessions that feel like a show, not a raw screencast.

Here’s what that looks like in practice.

Screen recording that feels like a studio

Instead of a bare desktop capture, you enter a browser‑based studio where you can:

• Share your screen while staying on camera. Screen sharing is available for hosts and guests, so you can walk through a product demo, code review, or slide deck while viewers still see your face. (StreamYard Help Center)
• Control layouts in real time. You can switch between “screen dominant,” “picture‑in‑picture,” or more balanced layouts so the recording stays easy to follow.
• Control screen audio and mic audio independently. Need to mute system sounds but keep your voice? Or vice versa? You can keep the mix clear without digging into an audio mixer.
• Capture both landscape and portrait from the same session. This matters if you want a widescreen recording for YouTube and vertical clips for shorts or stories later.

Local multi‑track recordings for reuse

For teams that care about post‑production, we support local recordings with separate audio and video files for each participant, which are captured directly in the browser and then uploaded. (StreamYard Help Center)

That means:

• You can clean up audio for a single speaker without affecting everyone else.
• You can reframe or crop an individual camera for different platforms.
• If someone’s internet drops, the local file still preserves clean footage on their side. (StreamYard Help Center)

Live chat that you can see—and show—while recording

When you connect your destinations, such as YouTube, Facebook, or other supported platforms, incoming viewer comments appear inside the StreamYard studio. With Chat Overlay on paid plans, you can display those comments directly on‑screen in your layout. (StreamYard Help Center)

Practically, that gives you three “layers” of chat:

• Presenter‑visible chat: You monitor questions and reactions in the studio, even if you don’t show them on‑screen.
• On‑screen chat overlay: You selectively bring comments into the recording/broadcast, which is great for Q&A, shout‑outs, or polls. (StreamYard Help Center)
• Platform‑native chat archive: Your viewers still see and use the native YouTube/Twitch/Facebook chat on their side.

This combination—screen sharing, multi‑participant video, and live chat overlay—covers the core of what most people are asking for when they say “screen recording software with chat.”

What about layouts, branding, and presenter experience?

Once you move beyond a quick one‑off recording, how the session looks and feels starts to matter.

Branded, readable recordings without post-production

In StreamYard, you can apply:

• Branded overlays and logos while you present, so your screen recordings already look aligned with your brand.
• Lower‑thirds and name tags that help viewers keep track of who’s speaking during multi‑guest demos.
• Chat overlays that match your visual style while still being easy to read on both desktop and mobile. (StreamYard Help Center)

Because all of this happens live in the studio, you often need little to no editing afterwards. For many teams, that’s the difference between a recording that ships the same day and one that gets stuck in a backlog.

Presenter comfort: notes and multi‑participant screen sharing

The experience for the person leading the session matters just as much as specs.

With StreamYard you can:

• Keep presenter notes visible only to you in the studio, so you stay on script without exposing your talking points.
• Let multiple participants share their screens in turn—useful for collaborative product reviews, pair programming, or stakeholder walk‑throughs.
• Give guests a simple browser link instead of a heavy install, which helps when you’re dealing with locked‑down corporate laptops.

These details don’t show up on a feature checklist, but they have a big impact on whether your team actually uses the tool every week.

How does StreamYard compare to OBS for chat overlays while recording?

OBS comes up often in this search, so it’s worth looking at how it fits.

OBS Studio is a free, open‑source application for video recording and live streaming on Windows, macOS, and Linux. (OBS Studio) It runs locally on your machine and gives you deep control over scenes, sources, and encoding.

How OBS handles chat

OBS itself doesn’t have built‑in cross‑platform chat like a browser studio. Instead, it relies on browser sources, which let you load web pages as layers in a scene. These are commonly used to add third‑party chat overlays or widgets. (OBS Knowledge Base)

For example, you might:

• Use a Twitch or YouTube chat overlay service to generate a URL.
• Add that URL to OBS as a Browser Source.
• Position and style the chat box manually inside your scene.

This approach is powerful, but it assumes you’re comfortable with juggling overlay services, URLs, and custom CSS. If you enjoy tinkering and you’re already running a powerful machine, OBS can give you a lot of flexibility.

Where StreamYard is usually a better starting point

For most US‑based creators, teachers, and business teams, the trade‑offs look like this:

• Setup and learning curve
  OBS expects you to configure scenes, sources, and encoding settings. StreamYard opens in a browser with sane defaults and a guided studio.

• Live chat integration
  OBS relies on third‑party overlays via browser sources. In StreamYard, you see comments from connected destinations natively and can display them with Chat Overlay on paid plans, without wiring up extra services. (StreamYard Help Center)

• Hardware dependence
  OBS leans entirely on your local CPU/GPU and disk; performance depends on your machine. (OBS System Requirements) StreamYard runs in the browser and offloads heavy lifting to the cloud, with local recordings acting as a safety net when connectivity blips. (StreamYard Help Center)

Where OBS can make sense is when you specifically want:

• Fine‑grained control over codecs, bitrates, and file formats.
• A purely local setup with no cloud dependence.
• Complex, multi‑layer scenes that go beyond what a browser studio offers.

If you don’t have a strong reason to manage all of that yourself, StreamYard’s built‑in chat, layouts, and recording options will usually get you to a reliable outcome with less effort.

How does Loom fit in if you only need comments on recorded videos?

Loom is a different kind of tool. It focuses on quick async screen + camera recordings that you share by link, usually inside tools like Slack or Jira.

On a Loom video page, viewers can:

• Leave in‑video comments pinned to specific timestamps.
• React with emojis as they watch; the video player displays a recent list of these reactions. (Atlassian Support)

This is closer to “a comment thread on a video” than it is to live chat.

Loom’s strengths

Loom works well when:

• You’re sending one‑to‑one or one‑to‑few walkthroughs instead of hosting a live session.
• You want a lightweight way to collect feedback without scheduling a meeting.

Paid Loom plans offer longer recordings and higher resolution, while the free Starter tier caps regular recordings at 5 minutes and 25 videos per person in a workspace. (Loom Pricing)

Why many teams still default to StreamYard

For this specific keyword—screen recording with chat—the differences matter:

• StreamYard gives you real‑time audience interaction plus a recording you can reuse across platforms.
• Loom gives you post‑recording feedback, but not a live chat overlay or live Q&A.

A number of teams end up using both:

• StreamYard for live demos, launches, webinars, and multi‑participant trainings with chat overlays.
• Loom or similar tools for quick follow‑ups, bug reports, or internal check‑ins.

If you have to pick one starting point and live interaction is even a possibility, StreamYard covers more ground.

How do pricing and total cost compare for teams?

Pricing can be confusing because these tools are billed differently.

• StreamYard uses per‑workspace pricing, not per‑user pricing. Multiple teammates can collaborate under the same subscription instead of each paying individually, which is often cheaper for teams over time.
• Loom prices most plans per user per month, so cost scales with headcount. Paid business plans are billed per seat, while the free Starter plan limits you to 25 videos per person and 5‑minute recordings. (Loom Pricing)

For a small team in the US, that difference in pricing model is practical:

• With StreamYard, you pay once at the workspace level and everyone participates in the same studio environment.
• With per‑user billing, adding more people to recording and review workflows can increase your subscription total quickly.

If your core need is team‑wide screen recordings with live chat and reuse across social channels, per‑workspace pricing tends to align better with how you actually work.

Does StreamYard display chat overlays in exported recordings?

This is a common follow‑up question and a smart one.

When you use the Chat Overlay feature, you’re placing viewer comments as a visual layer in your layout during the live session. Because overlays are part of the video layout, anything you show on‑screen during the session—comments, lower‑thirds, logos, and so on—can be captured in your cloud or local recordings, just like any other visual element in the studio. (StreamYard Help Center)

A practical way to think about it:

• If a comment is visible to your viewers during the session, it will also be visible in the recording of that session.
• If you keep a comment only in the backstage chat list and never bring it on‑screen, it will not appear in the video layout.

This lets you curate which parts of the chat become part of the permanent record—a small but important detail for repurposing your content.

Which free tools can display chat overlays while recording?

Not everyone is ready for a paid subscription on day one, and that’s okay. The question is what you want to learn and manage along the way.

Two realistic free‑tier paths:

1. A free‑plan browser studio path (StreamYard free + upgrades later)

   • You can test the core studio experience—screen sharing, layouts, guests—without a subscription.
   • As your needs grow, you can move into paid plans to unlock Chat Overlay and more generous recording/storage options while keeping the same workflow. (StreamYard Pricing)

2. A fully free local path (OBS)

   • OBS is “100% free forever” software for recording and streaming, and you can add chat overlays by combining browser sources with third‑party widgets or web pages. (OBS Studio)
   • You’ll be responsible for configuring everything yourself and ensuring your hardware can handle encoding. (OBS System Requirements)

If you mainly care about time‑to‑value and don’t want to maintain a local stack, starting in a browser studio and upgrading when you’re ready tends to be easier than going deep into OBS scene and encoder settings.

What we recommend

• Start with StreamYard if you want live or pre‑recorded screen sessions where people can chat with you in real time and see their comments featured on‑screen.
• Consider OBS if you’re comfortable managing local encoders, scenes, and third‑party overlays and you specifically want a free, hardware‑centric setup.
• Layer in Loom‑style async tools later if you find you need quick one‑off walkthroughs with timestamped comments rather than live interaction.
• For most US teams who care about speed, reliability, and reusable content, using StreamYard as the primary screen recording and chat hub—and then repurposing those recordings elsewhere—delivers the best balance of effort and outcome.