In terms of coding, as you are essentially just writing HTML there isn’t much to be aware of when writing an extension. I also found that there were a number of differences between the locally hosted version of the extension compared to when it was run on a server, most noticably in that the local version allows the external loading of assets which the hosted version does not 1.

The setup process for the developer rig is fairly arduous, especially on macOS, and I found myself having to run a fair few more npm install commands than I would like that weren’t documented. It is recommended that you download the developer rig that Twitch provides which allows you to run and test your extension on a localhost such that when you load your profile page from you can see your extension loaded in. This is all loaded into an iframe with some restrictions and you can choose to make use of the Extension Backend Service (EBS) which is essentially a NodeJS instance that sends notifications via PubSub. To start with, a panel extension is basically a website comprising of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Suffice to say, the process was a lot more difficult than I initially anticipated! That said, if you have any specific queries, do feel free to get in touch and I’ll try and help as best I can. This post isn’t going to be a complete tutorial on how to build an extension as I didn’t expect it would be that complex and so didn’t write down the instructions on how to get everything working as I was going along. I also added the ability to provide a URL for a website such as, , or which is then screen-scraped to provide the information automatically. Thus the “ Currently Drinking” extension was born which allows users to add a name, type, location, price, ABV%, description, notes, and an image about the drink they are currently enjoying.

I was spending some time adding the type of wine I was drinking on each stream in a text-based panel and decided it would be more efficient to build a simple panel extension to display this information in a more customised format. For those that aren’t aware, your Twitch profile can be customised with a number of text or image based panels along with a relatively new “extension” panel which is essentially an iframe. A couple of months ago I started streaming some of the many video games I play on Twitch.

How to make panels for twitch