Stream Channel Setup: Panels, Art Sizes, Descriptions and the Privacy Rules Nobody Tells You
·13 min read
Your channel page is what people see when you are not live, which is most of the time. This covers the whole job in one pass: every art size for Twitch, Kick and YouTube, how panels actually work on each platform, what to put in them, where to get artwork without paying, and — the part usually skipped entirely — which personal details you must keep off the page and why.
The Setup Checklist, In Order
Do these in sequence. Several of them are annoying to change later, which is exactly why they come first.
- 1Pick a handle you can keep. Search it first — on Google, on the platform, on old forums. You are checking what a stranger finds, and whether it is already attached to something you would rather not carry.
- 2Create a dedicated channel email. Not your personal one. Unique password, 2FA on immediately.
- 3Turn on two-factor authentication on the streaming account itself. Twitch requires it for monetization anyway, and an account with a following is worth stealing.
- 4Set the avatar. It renders tiny — in chat it is a circle a few dozen pixels wide — so test it small before you commit.
- 5Upload the profile banner, keeping text away from the edges where different devices crop.
- 6Write the bio. Short, specific, no personal details. This is the text search engines read.
- 7Build the panels. Five to eight, matched heights, live links.
- 8Make an offline screen. Most visitors arrive when you are offline.
- 9Link your socials through the platform's own fields rather than only in panel text — they render as proper icons and survive redesigns.
- 10Do a stranger pass: open your channel in a private window and read it as someone who wants to find where you live.
Every Art Size, Three Platforms
| Slot | Twitch | Kick | YouTube |
|---|---|---|---|
| Profile picture / avatar | 256×256 (upload 800×800) | Square, 800×800 works | 800×800, renders at 98×98 |
| Profile banner | 1200×480 | 1280×700 minimum | 2560×1440, safe area 1546×423 |
| Offline screen | 1920×1080 | 1920×1080 | n/a — uses a trailer instead |
| Panel image | 320 wide, height up to you | 320 wide behaves the same | n/a — no panels |
| Overlay canvas | 1920×1080 | 1920×1080 | 1920×1080 |
The YouTube banner is the tricky one. It renders wildly differently on TV, desktop, tablet and phone. Upload at 2560×1440, but keep every logo and word inside the central 1546×423 safe area — that rectangle is the only part guaranteed to survive on all devices. Max file size is 6 MB.
What Streamers Actually Put in Panels
Panels are the information blocks under the player. There is no rule about what goes in them, but a convention has settled, and it is the same on Twitch and Kick — Kick's own branding documentation recommends nearly the identical list, which is a decent sign it is worth following.
About me
Two or three sentences. Who you are, what you play, why someone should stay.
Schedule
With the time zone spelled out. The single most useful panel and the one most often left stale.
Chat rules
Gives your mods something to point at. Short and specific beats a wall of legalese.
Socials
One panel, all links. Not one panel per network — that pushes everything else off the screen.
Discord
Where the community actually lives between streams.
Setup / gear
Answers the question people ask most, and carries affiliate links if you have them.
Support / donations
Tips, subs, merch. Keep it to one panel and do not lead with it.
Sub perks
What a subscriber actually gets — emotes, badges, sub-only chat, Discord role.
FAQ
Your specs, your accent, your setup, whatever gets asked six times a stream.
Sponsors
Only if you have real ones. An empty sponsor panel says more than no panel.
A stale panel is worse than no panel. A schedule from six months ago or a dead Discord invite tells a visitor the channel is abandoned — which is the exact opposite of what the panel was for. If you cannot keep the schedule current, delete the schedule panel.
How to Set Up Panels on Twitch
- 1Open your own channel page and scroll to the About tab.
- 2Switch on the Edit Panels toggle. The page turns into edit mode.
- 3Click the large plus icon, then choose Add a Text or Image Panel.
- 4Give it a title, upload the image (320 px wide), and set the Image Links To field so the whole panel becomes clickable.
- 5Use the description box for text. It supports Markdown, so links and bold work.
- 6Drag panels to reorder. Order matters — the first two are what people see without scrolling.
- 7Switch Edit Panels back off to leave edit mode.
How to Set Up Panels on Kick
Kick's flow is shorter and the wording is different, which is why people who move over often cannot find it. There is no toggle — panels live behind their own button.
- 1Go to your Channel Page and click the About tab.
- 2Click Edit Panels.
- 3Enter the information you want on the panel, then click Add.
- 4For an image-only panel, leave both the title and description blank.
- 5To remove one: same screen, find the panel, click Remove.
- 6To reorder: click and drag them into the order you want.
Kick also offers pre-made avatars and banners in the editor if you have nothing of your own yet — worth using as a placeholder rather than leaving the default empty state.
YouTube Has No Panels — It Has Two Descriptions
This trips up everyone arriving from Twitch. YouTube has no panel system at all. The equivalent work happens in two separate text fields, and they do different jobs.
Channel description — 1,000 characters
Lives in the About section. This is your panel stack condensed into prose: who you are, what you stream, when you go live. It is indexed, so write it for a human who has never heard of you and let the keywords fall out naturally.
Stream description — 5,000 characters
Per broadcast. Only the first ~150 characters appear before the Show more button, so the hook and the essential link go at the very top. Chapters, socials, gear and disclosures go below the fold.
Links belong in the dedicated Links field rather than pasted into the description — they render as proper buttons on the channel header. And unlike Twitch, YouTube has no offline screen: the closest equivalent is a channel trailer that autoplays for non-subscribers.
Setting up YouTube streaming from scratch? Start with how to go live on YouTube — the requirements differ between PC and mobile.
Offline Screens and Be Right Back Screens
Two different things that people conflate.
Offline screen — 1920×1080
Shown in the player when you are not live, on both Twitch and Kick. Since you are offline far more hours than you are live, this is statistically the most-viewed image on your channel. Put the schedule and your socials on it, not just a logo.
Be right back screen — a scene, not an upload
This one lives in your streaming software, not on the platform. Build it as a dedicated OBS scene at 1920×1080 that you switch to during breaks. Add music and a timer if you like — what matters is that the stream keeps running, because ending and restarting drops everyone watching.
Scenes and switching are covered in the OBS setup guide.
Where to Get the Artwork
You do not need a designer to start. What you do need is a set — one banner that does not match its panels looks worse than plain defaults.
CanvaFree tier
The pragmatic starting point. Templates for banners, panels and offline screens, browser-based, no design skill required. Set a custom canvas at the exact pixel size and export PNG.
StreamlabsFree + paid
Overlay and panel themes bundled with the alert and widget stack. Convenient if you are already using their alerts, since the whole set matches.
StreamElementsFree + paid
Free overlay themes and a browser-based editor. Note that Razer acquired StreamElements in August 2026 — the product is in transition, so check what is still included before building your whole identity on it.
Nerd or DieFree + paid
Long-running designer of overlay and panel packs, with genuinely usable free sets. Strong when you want a coherent kit rather than one banner.
OWN3DPaid + free samples
Large marketplace of ready-made packs. Fast if you want something polished today and are not precious about being unique.
Visuals by ImpulseFree + paid
Free packs on the higher end of quality, plus custom work. Good middle ground between templates and hiring a designer.
Whichever route you take, lock a palette of three colours and one typeface first, then apply them everywhere. Consistency is what reads as professional — not detail, and definitely not gradients.
The Part Most Guides Skip: What Not to Publish
Setting up a channel means filling in a lot of fields, and the interface never once mentions that you are publishing to the entire internet, permanently. Doxxing and swatting are not hypothetical risks for streamers — they are recurring ones, and they almost always start with small pieces of information that seemed harmless on their own.
The mechanism to understand is aggregation. No single detail identifies you. Your first name plus your city plus your university plus a photo of your street is a home address. Each field you fill in is a piece.
Treat everything on the page as permanent and public
Panels, bios and descriptions are indexed by search engines and scraped by third-party trackers. Deleting a panel does not delete the copies. Assume anything you publish once stays available.
Do not publish your legal name
A full name is the key that unlocks everything else — voter rolls, property records, people-search sites, old social accounts. Use your handle. If you need a real name for business, that belongs in contracts, not a panel.
Be vague about location, and be consistent
Country is usually fine. City is where it gets dangerous, because it combines with everything else you leak — a window view, local weather talk, a bus going past, your time zone, a sports team. Pick a level of detail and never go finer than it, even in chat.
Use a separate email for the channel
Never your personal address. Make a dedicated one, and note that a business email in a public profile is exactly that — public. It is also the account attackers will try to reset first, so give it a unique password and 2FA.
Never link a wishlist to your home address
Gift registries and wishlists have leaked home addresses for years, sometimes through the order confirmation rather than the list itself. If you accept physical gifts, use a PO box or a forwarding service — not the flat you sleep in.
Strip metadata from images you upload
Photos taken on a phone can carry GPS coordinates and a device identifier. Most platforms strip EXIF on upload, but not every one and not every route. Export from an editor rather than uploading the camera file directly.
Do not reuse an old username
If your handle also belongs to a forum account from 2013, everything on that account is now attached to your channel. Search your own handle before you commit to it — you are looking for what a stranger would find.
Assume your background is evidence
This is a channel-setup point because your offline screen and banner often use the same photos. A visible street, building number, school badge or delivery label narrows you down faster than anything you would ever say out loud.
Run the stranger test before you go live
Open your channel in a private browser window and read every panel, the bio, the banner and the offline screen as if you were trying to find the person behind them. Then search your handle. If you can narrow yourself down to a city, so can anyone — and it takes them minutes, not effort.
None of this means being anonymous or cold. Plenty of large streamers are warm and personal without ever publishing a surname or a postcode. The line is not between open and closed — it is between sharing yourself and sharing your data.
Where To Go Next
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I add panels to my Twitch channel?
Go to your channel page, open the About tab, and switch on Edit Panels. Click the plus icon to add one, choose Add a Text or Image Panel, then set the image, title, description and link. Drag panels to reorder them, and switch Edit Panels back off when you are done.
How do I add panels on Kick?
Go to your Channel Page, click the About tab, then Edit Panels. Enter the panel information and click Add. To remove one, find it in the same screen and click Remove. To reorder, click and drag. If you only want an image with no caption, leave the title and description blank.
What size should a Twitch panel be?
320 pixels wide. Height is your choice — most panels sit between 100 and 160 pixels tall, and a consistent height across all of them is what makes a channel look designed rather than assembled.
What should I put in my Twitch panels?
The reliable set is About me, Schedule, Chat rules, Socials, Discord, Setup and Support. Five to eight panels is plenty. Kick's own branding documentation recommends almost exactly the same list, which tells you it is a platform-agnostic convention rather than a Twitch quirk.
Does YouTube have panels like Twitch?
No. YouTube uses a channel description of up to 1,000 characters in the About section, plus links, and a separate description of up to 5,000 characters on each stream. Only the first 150 characters of a stream description show before the Show more button, so front-load anything that matters.
Where can I get free stream overlays and panels?
Canva for building your own at exact pixel sizes, and Nerd or Die, Visuals by Impulse, Streamlabs and StreamElements for ready-made free packs. A matched set of banner, panels and offline screen beats one impressive banner surrounded by mismatched parts.
Should I put my real name on my streaming channel?
No. A legal name is the single most useful piece of information for anyone trying to find where you live, because it unlocks public records and people-search databases. Use your handle publicly and keep the legal name for contracts and payout paperwork.
What is an offline screen and do I need one?
It is the image or looping video shown on your channel when you are not live — 1920×1080 on both Twitch and Kick. Yes, you need one. It is the first thing most visitors see, since most of the time you are not streaming. Put your schedule and socials on it.