Test mode on donation integrations
Every donation integration page has a test mode switch. It lets you send the same test donation over and over while you build your alerts, and it cleans up after itself when you turn it off. Here is exactly what happens on both sides of the switch.
On this page
When you want it
You are setting up a Ko-fi alert, or a donation goal bar, and you want to see it fire before a real supporter does. Every service has a way to send a fake donation to your webhook: a test button on the page where you pasted your Overlabels webhook URL, or a test donation from its dashboard.
Press that button twice without test mode and only the first one shows up. Press it with test mode on and every press lands, exactly like a real donation would.
What turning it on does
Repeats are accepted. Normally, if a service sends the same donation twice (they retry when a delivery looks slow), Overlabels keeps the first and quietly drops the rest, so a retry can never double-count a supporter. A test button sends the same donation every time, and without test mode that protection eats every press after the first. With test mode on, each press is stored as a new event.
Everything else behaves like a real donation. Alerts fire. Controls like
[[[c:kofi:latest_donor_name]]], [[[c:kofi:donations_received]]] and [[[c:kofi:total_received]]]
update. The event shows up in your recent events. This is the point: you are looking at the real
thing, not a preview.
Nothing counts toward your usage. Events received while test mode is on are not metered.
What turning it off does
Every control that service manages goes back to its starting value. Counts go to zero, the latest donor, amount and message are cleared, and the running total goes back to your starting total if you set one, or to zero if you did not. Test donations never reach a real stream, because the moment you switch test mode off they are gone from your overlays.
Turn test mode off before you go live. While it is on, a real donation is treated the same as a test one: it arrives and shows, but when you later switch test mode off it is reset along with everything else.
The stored events stay in your recent events feed. Only the control values are reset.
The starting total
Each donation integration page has a starting donation total, for streamers who raised money on
the service before connecting it to Overlabels. Set it once and your total_received control starts
from that number instead of zero.
Test mode respects it. When you turn test mode off, the total goes back to your starting total, not to zero. The starting total itself is never touched by test mode.
Which services have it
Ko-fi, Buy Me a Coffee, Fourthwall, StreamLabs and Throne. The switch works the same way on all five and only ever affects that one service's controls: turning test mode off on Ko-fi leaves your Throne controls alone.
Overlabels GPS has no test mode. It carries location, not money, and there is nothing to reset.