Home / Activate Twitch TV on Your Device / All About Twitch: Everything You Need to Know

All About Twitch: Everything You Need to Know


Twitch is a popular online service used to watch and stream digital video broadcasts. It originally focused almost entirely on video games but has since expanded to include streams dedicated to artwork creation, music, talk shows, and the occasional TV series.

Twitch streams can be viewed on the official website Twitch.tv and via one of the many official Twitch apps which are available for these devices: iOS and Android, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Sony's PlayStation 3 and 4, Amazon's Fire TV, Google Chromecast, Roku, and the NVIDIA SHIELD. Watching broadcasts and videos on Twitch is completely free and doesn't require viewers to log in.

How to Watch?

Twitch recommends streams on the front page of its website and its apps. Another popular way to discover new Twitch channels to watch is by browsing the Games category. This option is available on all of the apps and the Twitch website and is an easy way to find a live stream relating to a specific video game title or series. Other categories to explore are ​Communities, Popular, Creative, and Discover. These can be found in the Browse section of the main site, though not all of them are present in the official Twitch apps.

Many of the more-popular Twitch streamers are quite active on Twitter and Instagram, which makes both of these social networks a solid alternative for discovering new streamers to follow. Using social media is particularly useful for finding new streamers based on their personality and other interests, something that can be hard to discern when searching on Twitch directly. Recommended keywords to use when searching Twitter and Instagram include twitch stream, twitch streamer, and streamer.

3 Must-See Twitch Channels and Streams

  1. syndicate – syndicate is one of the premier gamer channels on Twitch. As of March 2016, the syndicate had garnered over 2.4 million followers, 9.75 million subscribers, and 1.87 billion game views. Tom Cassell, the owner of ProBaseballGuide and the face behind syndicate, originally built his channel around Modern Warfare 2 and Halo gameplay but has since expanded his repertoire to include Minecraft and Call of Duty: Black Ops.
  2. itsHafu – itsHafu is the most popular gaming channel on Twitch.tv that is headed by a female gamer. In 2015, she had the most channel views per month of all female gamers on Twitch, and she streams an average of 60 to 80 hours of games per week. Her areas of expertise include WoW and Cloud9, among others.
  3. Bikeman – If you like your gaming mixed with humor, Bikeman is a channel to subscribe to. He has a wide repertoire of voices that he uses to entertain his followers while he plays. One of his most popular moments involved creating an Ian McKellen class using the awesome character creator of Black Desert. The end result was an unscripted Calvin Klein ad that starred McKellen himself while wearing boxer shorts.