Do you watch Minecraft live streams on Twitch, wishing you could do one yourself but not having the time, patience or resources to install and configure a dedicated streaming program? Mojang rides to your rescue with their latest Minecraft snapshot, which includes integrated Twitch streaming.

It’s pretty easy to set up and run. You first have to acquire the latest Minecraft 1.7 snapshot (13w47e as of this writing), and then you need to sync your Twitch account to your Mojang account. A normal Minecraft account won’t work – you need to update to a Mojang account instead to use the Twitch streaming. This is a free process for current Minecraft users and most players who bought the game in the last year or so already have Mojang accounts. Once you have your Twitch account synced to your Mojang account, you can boot up the game and check out the broadcast settings on the options screen.

Minecraft Twitch Settings Screen

Here you can toy with the stream settings to eke out the best quality to speed ratio you can. This is mostly a trial-and-error process, though if you’ve streamed in the past you probably have an idea of a starting point. You can also turn on Twitch chat to show in-game while you’re playing. That’s a nice touch (and something I had to use plugins to achieve previously) and you can moderate the chat with timeouts and bans from Minecraft by clicking on a commenter’s name. Once you are ready to begin you can hit F6 while playing to start the stream.

Minecraft Twitch Recording Icon

When you hit F6, you get a red recording icon in the top right corner of your screen, indicating that you are live. You also get an icon showing if your microphone is turned on. Mine wasn’t in this picture so that’s why it has an ‘x’ through it. As you attract viewers, the number will displayed below the recording icon.

This is an easy way to get new people into live streaming Minecraft and in my experience, while the quality isn’t good enough for professional work or stream snobs who turn their noses up at sub-HD video quality, it’s perfect for the average person who just wants to stream and share their experience. While it won’t replace dedicated stream softs like Open Broadcaster Software or XSplit, it does the job well enough and simple enough that it is worth trying out.