Profiles: one set of settings and scenes per show

A profile is everything that describes one show: its settings, its outputs, its streaming-service accounts with their stream keys, its hotkeys and MIDI bindings, its scenes and layers, and its crawl presets. Keep one profile per show or per channel (a Friday show on one Twitch account, a weekday stream on another) and switch between them in Settings ▸ Profiles or from the File menu.

What belongs to the computer stays the same in every profile: remote control (on or off, port, password), the default audio input and the monitoring device, the MIDI ports, the web overlays’ memory limit, the set-up wizard’s state and the licence.

The Profiles page

Profiles is its own page in Settings, first in the list, in every version of the app (the Mac app, Windows, Linux and the egui app). File ▸ Manage Profiles… opens Settings on it.

Under the title one line says what a profile holds (its settings, streaming services and their keys, outputs, scenes and layers) and what stays the same in every profile (the monitor output and the MIDI ports). Below it are your profiles, by name; the one the app runs with is marked Current. Select a profile, then:

Switch switches to the selected profile (see Switching). It is off for the current profile.
New… makes a profile. Name it, and tick Copy the current profile to start from the current one as it is now (settings, outputs, accounts with their keys, scenes); untick it to start empty. The new profile is not switched to.
Duplicate… copies the selected profile under a new name, keys included.
Rename… renames the selected profile. Its folder keeps its first name.
Delete deletes the selected profile, with its settings, keys and scenes, after you confirm. The current profile cannot be deleted: switch to another one first.
Export… saves the current profile to a .scprofile file (see Moving a profile).
Import… adds a profile from a .scprofile file, then offers to switch to it.

The File menu has the profile commands together, after a separator, next to Export and Import Scene Collection:

Save Profile As… saves the current profile to a .scprofile file, as Export… does; the file is named after the profile.
Open Profile… adds a profile from a .scprofile file, as Import… does, then offers to switch to it.
Switch Profile lists your profiles with a check mark beside the current one. Choosing another switches to it, asking first while you are live.
Manage Profiles… opens Settings on the Profiles page.

These commands have no keyboard shortcuts. While a switch is loading, only Manage Profiles… can be chosen.

The window’s title shows the current profile: stream-concern — Friday Show.

Switching

Switching saves the current profile, then loads the other one’s settings, outputs, accounts and keys, hotkeys, MIDI bindings, scenes and crawl presets. Its canvas size and frame rate come with it. While it loads, the Profiles page shows a spinner and its buttons wait. Undo history starts empty, and Studio mode is as the other profile left it.

While you are live, the app asks first, naming what runs: “Streaming to Twitch and recording. Switching profiles stops them. Switch?” Switch stops those outputs and switches; Cancel keeps everything running.
Not now: a switch waits while Settings applies a change, while a scene collection is being imported or exported, and while the scenes are still loading at start-up. In Studio mode, publish or discard your Preview edits first.

The first start of a version with profiles makes your existing settings and scenes the Default profile; nothing is lost and nothing changes until you make a second one.

Moving a profile to another computer

Export… writes the current profile to one .scprofile file: its name, settings, outputs, accounts, scenes and crawl presets. It leaves out every stream key and ingest key, and the computer’s own settings listed above. Import… on the other computer adds it as a new profile (its name made unique if it is taken). Enter the stream keys again in Settings ▸ Streaming Services before you go live with it.

Image and media layers keep their file paths. A file that is not on the other computer shows as a missing source until you pick it again.

Stream keys

Each profile keeps its own keys, so two profiles can stream to two different Twitch accounts without one ever seeing the other’s key.

In this alpha, a profile’s keys are stored in its own settings file on your computer (on macOS and Linux readable only by your user account), as they were before profiles. They are not in the system keychain (macOS Keychain, Windows Credential Manager, the Linux secret service) yet. Export leaves them out.

Where profiles live

Each profile is a folder in the configuration directory (see Where your files live):

File	What it holds
`global.toml`	The computer’s settings, and which profile is current
`profiles/<name>/profile.toml`	The profile’s settings, outputs, accounts and keys
`profiles/<name>/scenes.toml`	Its scenes and layers
`profiles/<name>/crawl-presets.toml`	Its crawl presets

The profile.toml and scenes.toml at the top of the configuration directory are the files from before profiles. The app copied them into profiles/default/ and no longer changes them.