Can I automate giveaways and chat messages on Whatnot?

A host does the same five things dozens of times a show: start the next giveaway, thank the tipper, welcome the raid, call out the winner, answer the same question in chat. None of them need judgement, and every one of them takes your eyes off the item in your hand. Those are the jobs to hand to rules.

Deciding who gets removed from your room is different. It needs judgement, and it is the kind of automation that gets a seller into trouble. Keep it manual.

LiveStreamPro runs giveaways through one queue that is on whenever you are live:

• On a timer. Turn the schedule on and a giveaway starts from your prize pools every few minutes, for the whole show, without anyone remembering to do it.
• When something happens. A rule can start a giveaway when someone tips you or when your show is raided.
• One at a time. Whatnot runs a single giveaway at once, so when two land together the second waits its turn in the queue instead of failing.

The giveaway itself is a normal Whatnot giveaway, started in your show and drawn by Whatnot. LiveStreamPro presses start for you. It does not pick winners. When someone wins, a rule can congratulate them in chat by name and print the label for their prize.

A LiveStreamPro rule has three parts: when this happens, and these conditions hold, do that. The things it can react to in a live show include an item selling at Buy It Now, an auction ending, a giveaway being won, a tip, a raid, a word said in chat, and a payment failing. Depending on the event, a rule can:

• announce it in chat, in words you wrote once
• send the buyer a private message, or a coupon with a private message
• show you an alert on screen, or play a sound
• print a label

Rules run on LiveStreamPro's servers during your show, and a live feed in the extension shows each one as it fires, so you can see what was sent in your name. The automation page lists every event and action.

LiveStreamPro puts block, ban, and moderator controls in the chat panel, and every one of them is a click you make. There is no rule that removes a viewer, and no bot that talks to your room on its own outside the rules you wrote. The chat and audience page covers what the panel shows you about each viewer before you decide.

Whatnot publishes its own giveaway rules, covering who can enter and how winners are drawn. Automating when a giveaway starts does not change them. Read the current version before you plan a show around giveaways, and see the giveaway strategy guide for which formats are worth the inventory.