Elgato's new foot pedal makes you a hands-free master of live streaming

Elgato has taken another step towards making your live streams even more seamless. The company, known for its Stream Deck, lighting options, and green screens, just added a hands-free, three-button foot pedal to its lineup of products for content creators.

The new foot pedal is compatible with Stream Deck and was clearly designed for live streamers, giving them the hands-free ability to mute the mic, trigger subscriber animations, switch cameras, or whatever else they want to set it up for. Even though Elgato’s foot pedal will make streamers’ lives easier, it can also be used to record and loop music, simplify workflow for editing, and even provide more accessible options for those with disabilities.

Fully customizable — Elgato’s Stream Deck Foot Pedal has three fully-customizable pedals that can be set up just like its existing Stream Deck product. Through the Stream Deck app, you just drag whatever action you want onto the corresponding pedal. You can even program the foot pedals to chain multiple actions, like quickly snapping a screenshot, opening a folder, then launching Twitter so you can share the image. Or create a macro that cuts your stream’s intro music, switches cameras, and then starts your stream with one press.

Elgato’s foot pedal also allows you to program smart profiles that load up unique abilities depending on what software you’re using. That means you could theoretically have one profile with for streaming, another for video conferencing, and one for music.

Elgato even lets you adjust the hard components of the foot pedal, including four springs each at three different tension levels that adjust how the presses feel. The foot pedal weighs a little more than two pounds and should stay pretty secure with the anti-skid feet on the bottom.

Brand-name quality — All those features and that brand name are going to cost you though, because the Stream Deck Foot Pedal comes in at $90. It’s pretty pricey considering there are a bunch of no-name brand three-step pedals on Amazon for around $40, but you do get the benefit of staying within the Elgato ecosystem with Stream Deck and all of its plugins. If you do decide to pull the trigger on this foot pedal, Elgato is planning to ship them in one to two weeks.

If you already have the Stream Deck and don’t feel like adding on the foot pedal, Elgato still has a serious quality-of-life upgrade for you. The company finally released an official Stream Deck plugin for Discord that mutes the mic, activates push-to-talk, joins voice channels, and switches text channels, so we don’t have to rely on independent developers and their workarounds.