Start other programs when starting OBS

The goal of this example is to show how to automatically start additional applications unrelated to OBS when starting OBS.

For this we will need to set up a macro which runs exactly one time on OBS startup.
The "Macro" condition type can be used for this purpose as it offers an option to check how often a macro was executed.

In the following example VLC will be automatically opened when starting OBS:

If you want to make sure the conditions for the "Run once example" macro are not checked anymore after executing it a single time - e.g. when adding a lot of additional conditions or conditions which are resource intensive to check like the "video" condition - you can add the additional pause action to the end of the macro:

To automatically unpause the "Run once example" on OBS startup you will have to add another macro:

Note:
You might be tempted to use the "Plugin state" condition type in combination with "OBS is shutting down" to unpause the macro. This will not work as at the stage where macros are run with the "OBS is shutting down" condition it is no longer possible to save any settings changes and thus the change regarding the pause state of the "Run once example" macro will not be persisted.