When Mixer initially announced their re-brand from Beam, they also mentioned the Mixer Create app and launched a limited beta. The Mixer Create app was Microsoft’s own option to stream anywhere with your phone’s cameras alongside the possibility of mobile games, all with the FTL protocol enhancing your interaction. Now three months on, the public release is here so let’s we take a look at it.

The most obvious part we should examine in the Mixer Create app is the “create” part. Being able to broadcast all the time and stream on the go is something more and more broadcasters want to do and Mixer’s tool here is very good. If all you want to do is use your phone’s cameras, the Mixer Create app does that with a convenient chat overlay. Mixer has built in chat-based alerts for new followers and subscribers so if you’re worried about doing call outs you can still see that information right on screen. I’ll probably mention this more than once here but streaming on mobile with FTL is very unfamiliar. It actually feels like magic to wave to my phone and see it on stream with almost no delay. Your mileage will vary based on your data usage or wifi availability but if you can get it, it’s nice.

Mixer mentions up front that you can stream mobile games from the Mixer Create app and this was the part that really caught my attention. On Android, anything is fair game with the Mixer Create app but iOS is much more limited, as only games that have ReplayKit functionality can be streamed and even then, support for streaming of this kind is hit or miss. Finding games that have ReplayKit in the first place is difficult and they might not support the actual streaming to Mixer. In the handful of apps I downloaded that had ReplayKit features, most of them used ReplayKit to record gameplay sessions. Only one had the options to stream the gameplay to Mixer. Interestingly, that game was not Minecraft, which is what Mixer featured in their blog post.

From there, the Mixer Create app has more basic features that tie into the rest of the service. You can accept invites to co-streaming on mobile with the ability to initiate co-streams coming in the future, the app includes a chat viewer for your channel, and you can edit some basic settings directly in the app. One minor problem I have with the chat viewer is that it doesn’t keep my phone awake. I could change my phones settings to not go to sleep at all but I really only need to situations like this.

Mixer’s app serves as a great companion to the service. As streaming IRL has become more in demand, an integrated app with the right features becomes more important. The normal Mixer app is still available for people that watch streams but if you’re on Mixer and need a companion app to potentially stream while you’re out and about, the Mixer Create is a good option. For more info on the Mixer Create app, you can check out their full blog post. The Mixer Create app is available on iOS and Android.