Spout (Windows) and Syphon (macOS) share live video between applications on one machine

Spout and Syphon are frameworks for sharing real-time video between separate applications running on the same computer. Spout is the Windows framework; Syphon is its macOS counterpart. Instead of screen-grabbing a window or routing through a capture card, they hand a live video texture directly from one app to another, which is the standard way to build a multi-application AV rig locally. Typical routes: send a TouchDesigner output into OBS for streaming, or pipe Resolume visuals into TouchDesigner for further processing. Knowing which framework applies to your OS (Spout on Windows, Syphon on macOS) is a prerequisite for wiring together tools that don’t natively talk to each other.

Examples

TouchDesigner → Spout → OBS for streaming (Windows); TouchDesigner → Syphon → VDMX for mixing (macOS); Resolume output → Spout → TouchDesigner for post-processing.

Assessment

You are on macOS and need to route a live visual feed from one app into another without a capture card. Which framework do you use, and what is the Windows equivalent?