How to Recover Disappeared OBS Sources

When sources vanish from OBS Studio, the cause is usually one of a few things. A different scene collection may be loaded, a source may be hidden or moved off the canvas, the Sources dock may be closed, or a plugin may have stopped loading. In rarer cases, the collection file was damaged during a crash. This guide works through these causes from the safest checks to file-level recovery.

Before you start

OBS Studio stores scenes and sources locally in scene collection files on your computer. Recovery does not require an online service. If you sync your settings folder with a cloud tool or use a portable copy of OBS, keep that in mind. A portable install and a regular install keep separate configuration folders, so the sources may be in the other copy.

• Note which OBS version you are running. Menu layout changed between major versions.
• Do not create new sources or scenes yet. Saving over the current collection can make recovery harder.
• Know the location of your configuration folder. On Windows it is usually %APPDATA%\obs-studio, on macOS ~/Library/Application Support/obs-studio, and on Linux ~/.config/obs-studio. Scene collections are in the basic/scenes subfolder.
• Before editing anything, close OBS and copy the whole scenes folder to a safe place. This lets you undo any step.

Step-by-step instructions

Work through these steps in order. Stop as soon as your sources return.

• 1. Check the Scene Collection menu. Open it and look for a collection with the name you expect. Picking the wrong collection is the most common reason everything appears gone. Switching collections does not delete anything.
• 2. Select each scene in the Scenes list. Sources belong to individual scenes, so a source may still be in a scene you are not viewing.
• 3. Look at the visibility icon (the eye) next to each item in the Sources list. A hidden source stays in the list but does not show on the canvas. Also check the lock icon, which can stop you from selecting or moving a source.
• 4. If a source is listed but not visible, right-click it and open Transform. Use Reset Transform or Fit to Screen to bring it back if it was moved or scaled off the canvas.
• 5. If the Sources panel itself is missing, restore it from the docks menu. In older versions this is under View, then Docks. In newer versions Docks is its own top-level menu. The same menu has an option to reset the interface layout.
• 6. Open Help, then Log Files, and view the current log. Look for plugins that failed to load. Sources created by a third-party plugin may disappear or stop working after an OBS update until you install a compatible plugin version.
• 7. If none of this helps, restore a backup collection. With OBS closed, open the basic/scenes folder. Find a file with the same name as your collection ending in .json.bak. OBS keeps this backup of the previous save. Copy it, rename the copy to a new name ending in .json, then start OBS and use Scene Collection, then Import to load it as a separate collection.
• 8. If you exported a collection earlier, or have a system backup of the scenes folder, import that file the same way. Importing as a new collection keeps your current one untouched.

Check the output

After recovery, look at each scene in the preview and confirm that every source appears where you expect. Check the audio mixer for microphone and desktop audio meters. Then make a short test recording and play it back. This confirms that the capture source, audio and layout are correct. Your settings for encoding, bitrate, frame rate and recording format are stored in the profile, not the scene collection. If those changed too, check the Profile menu to see whether the right profile is active.

Restoring a collection file brings back the scene and source definitions only. It does not restore media files, images or videos that were deleted or moved on disk. If a restored source points to a missing file, OBS may show a missing files dialog where you can locate the file again.

Common problems and next steps

• The source is listed but shows a black or empty frame: the source itself is fine, but its input is not available. For window capture, reselect the window. For game or display capture, check that the right display or application is chosen and running.
• On macOS, screen or camera capture went blank after an update: check that OBS still has screen recording and camera permission in system privacy settings, then restart OBS.
• A webcam source is empty: make sure no other app is using the camera, then open the source properties and pick the device again.
• The .json.bak file is also empty or outdated: try a copy of the scenes folder from a system backup or an earlier export. OBS cannot recover sources that were never saved to any file.
• Sources disappear again after every restart: check that OBS can write to its configuration folder and that you are not switching between a portable and an installed copy. Also check that a sync tool is not replacing the files with older versions.
• Once your sources are back, export the collection from the Scene Collection menu and keep that file somewhere safe for next time.