How to Crop and Resize Sources in OBS Studio

Managing your visual layout in OBS Studio is essential for creating professional streams and recordings. This guide provides a straightforward, step-by-step tutorial on how to quickly crop and resize any camera, window, or media source directly within the OBS Studio preview window using simple keyboard shortcuts and mouse controls.

How to Resize a Source in OBS Studio

Resizing a source changes its overall scale while maintaining its original aspect ratio.

  1. Click on the source you want to resize in the Sources dock or directly in the Preview window. A red bounding box will appear around it.
  2. Hover your mouse over any of the red circular handles on the corners or edges of the bounding box.
  3. Click and drag the handle inward to shrink the source, or outward to enlarge it.

Tip: If you want to stretch or distort the source and ignore its original aspect ratio, hold down the Shift key while dragging any of the handles.

How to Crop a Source in OBS Studio

Cropping allows you to cut off unwanted edges of a source, such as the background of a webcam feed, without changing the scale of the remaining image.

  1. Click on the source in the Sources dock or the Preview window to select it.
  2. Hold down the Alt key (Windows/Linux) or the Option key (macOS) on your keyboard.
  3. While holding the key, click and drag any of the red handles on the edges of the bounding box inward.
  4. The border of the cropped side will change from red to green, indicating that the source has been cropped.

To undo a crop, hold the Alt or Option key again and drag the green border back outward.

How to Reset Transformations

If you make a mistake and want to restore your source to its original size and shape:

  1. Select the source in the Preview window or Sources list.
  2. Press Ctrl + R (Windows) or Cmd + R (Mac) to reset the source transform.
  3. Alternatively, right-click the source, navigate to Transform, and select Reset Transform.