A major update has been released for the OBS Studio Snap package, which is now based on Core24 and utilizes a new source code base. This shift is necessary because the latest version of OBS Studio, version 31.1, has discontinued support for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, as noted by Canonical’s software engineer, Vanda Hendrychová. She stated, "Until now the snap has been running on core22; however, official builds of OBS Studio version 31.0 and subsequent releases are only available for Ubuntu 24.04 and later. We have upgraded the base snap to core24 to ensure close alignment with upstream."
The core serves as a base snap that provides a runtime environment containing essential system libraries and dependencies necessary for all Linux distributions. Furthermore, the OBS Studio Snap package is now built from the official source code of the OBS Project PPA, moving away from the earlier reliance on the unofficial OBS Studio Portable project, which is no longer actively maintained.
While this change simplifies maintenance, it eliminates the inclusion of popular third-party plugins that were previously bundled with the OBS Studio Portable. Users can still manually install plugins, but they must be built to match the specific library versions contained within the snap. To facilitate this, Hendrychová suggests employing an Ubuntu 24.04 LXD container for the building process.
The new build also enhances Intel GPU acceleration by incorporating packages from the Intel Graphics PPA and mentions future plans to include AI plugins optimized for Intel hardware.
Users are encouraged to test this updated version by installing it from the candidate channel. If you have a stable version already installed, you can switch by executing snap refresh obs-studio --channel latest/candidate. If testing goes smoothly, the updates will be rolled out to all users on the stable channel in the coming weeks.
For further support or to report issues, users can visit the Snapcrafters GitHub page dedicated to the OBS Studio Snap package.