Help

Only the symptoms that actually come up on stage are collected here. Find yours and follow it. The full explanation of each area is in Playlists · Slides · Output · Music.

If you are in a hurry, remember these three

F1 (⌘1)	Clear All — takes every layer off the audience screen
⌘.	Stop Output (press it in the main window)
The lock at the right of the status bar	Where you unlock editing when it is blocked
:::

When nothing goes out to the screen

You pressed Output and nothing happened

If all you get is the message No external screen is connected, the screen you chose is not plugged in right now.

What to check	Where
Which screen you chose	The field next to the monitor icon in the status bar — whether not connected follows the name
Whether the cable or adapter is plugged in	The moment you plug it in, it comes back to that screen
Whether you only chose it	Choosing a screen decides where output will go, nothing more

Choosing a screen and sending it out are two different things

Choosing a monitor in the status bar sends nothing to the audience screen. To actually send something out, press the blue Output under the preview.

When the screen you chose is missing, output does not fall back to the laptop screen instead. That is deliberate. If the screen you work on gets covered completely, you can no longer do anything.

The control screen is covered completely

You chose the laptop’s own screen as the output target and sent output to it.

The output window does not take focus, so ⌘. pressed on the covered screen does nothing.

Way out
Move the mouse and a round ✕ appears at the top right for 2.2 seconds — press it
⌘., if there is anywhere the main window is still visible

Once you are out, change the output target in the status bar to the external screen.

The projector resolution changed on its own

When Settings › Stage › Set output display to 1:1 is on (on by default), the app actually changes that monitor’s system resolution.

Turn it off on gear that is not yours

The main screen is never touched, whatever happens. The resolution is put back when you quit the app (and if it dies suddenly, logging in again puts it back).

But it does not go back the moment you turn the switch off. It goes back when you choose the output screen again · when a new screen is connected · when you quit the app.

When something went out by mistake

You pressed it to check it and it went straight to the audience screen

One click on a thumbnail is output.

What you meant to do	The right move
Check it without sending it out	Option + click, or click the name line under the card
Load it into Slide settings on the right	Same as above
Actually send it out	Click the thumbnail · right-click → Present · Enter

That is what Option + slide to load next to the Slide settings heading means.

You scanned with the arrow keys and the audience screen followed

Arrow keys take the output with them. So do Home End PageUp PageDown.

When you look around during the event itself

Hold Option and use the arrow keys. Only the cursor moves; the audience screen stays as it is. To widen the selection, use Shift + arrow keys.

The overlay will not turn off

Pressing it again does not turn it off. In an app where a click is output, that is blocked so nothing disappears by accident.

Way to take it down
The small X next to that layer chip (Clear this layer)
F4 (⌘4) — all five overlay slots at once
F1 (⌘1) — everything, foreground and background too

The video does not go back to the start

Pressing the very slide that is already going out does nothing. That keeps a video people are watching from suddenly rewinding. To rewind it, double-click.

When you changed something and nothing changed

You changed the fade and today’s list stayed as it was

The same value lives in two places.

Where you changed it	What changes
Crossfade · Fade out · Auto-dismiss in Settings › Stage	The default for playlists you make from now on
The same values in Playlist settings	That list, right now

The answer is written under the row

Under those values in the Settings window it says Existing playlists keep their own value. To change the list you are using today, right-click its row in the sidebar → Playlist settings, or open the gear at the far end of the list’s title row.

Background fade (0.5s) and Overlay fade (0.3s) are different — those two apply to the whole app at once, whatever the list.

Values go back on their own · nothing happens when you press

Editing is locked. Look at the lock at the right of the status bar.

Where you touched it	If it is locked
Adding · deleting · reordering slides, assigning layers	The message Editing is locked while presenting appears
Crop · Scale · Anchor inside the Crop & fit sheet	They are dropped with no message
Text boxes in caption editing	Saving itself is blocked
Selecting · copying · output · volume	These still work while locked

Why it is locked

When Settings › Stage › Lock editing while live is on, editing locks automatically as output starts (off by default). You can unlock it at any time with the lock button — Unlock editing.

⌘Z does nothing

Cause	Fix
A small window such as Rename is open	Close it and press again
Your hands are not on the slide list	Select a slide once, then press
What you deleted was a playlist or a folder	⌘Z does not bring those back (see below)

Undo stacks up to 50 steps. When you undo, whatever was out on stage at that moment comes back with it. The button on the notice is labelled Undo.

When a file will not show up or will not go in

That video is not in the file picker

mpg · mpeg · ts · wmv are left out of the media file type in the picker. Switch the file type to all files and they show up, and they go in as video without trouble.

You picked music and it did not go into the list

.aif and .opus are listed in the picker, so you can select them, but they do not go in. There is no message at all, so it is easy to think you missed the click. Convert them to mp3 or wav in advance.

What does go in: mp3 · m4a · aac · wav · flac · aiff · ogg.

The track you dropped went into the wrong folder

Wherever you drop it, music goes into the folder that is open. Dropping it on a folder bar does not put it in that folder. Open the folder you want first, then drop.

Only one folder is open at a time.

A card is covered in red and says File missing

The original file was not found. The name differs from place to place, so watch for it.

Where	Menu name
A slide card	Locate file
A music row (the name goes red)	Relink file

Do not delete music and add it again

Delete and re-add it and the range, the end action and the speed you set on that track are all lost. Relink file swaps the file and leaves those values as they were.

A bundle arrived and every video says File missing

This is not a fault. A bundle (.pplistx) does not carry video or music — those files are heavy, so only their paths are written into it.

What goes in	What does not
The list name and its settings, every slide, images, the thumbnails you chose	Video · Music

Move those videos onto the receiving computer, then reconnect each card with Locate file.

Do this before the event, without fail

There is no time to reconnect them one by one on stage. As soon as a moved list arrives, run through it from beginning to end once and check that there are no red cards.

It worked in rehearsal and breaks up at the event

The originals are files on an external disk or in a cloud folder. If the disk drops out or the sync lags, playback breaks on stage.

Look at Settings › Files & YouTube › Import external files. The line underneath says how many files live outside the media folder, and pressing the button copies them all inside. When everything is already inside, it says Every file is inside the media folder.

YouTube

The download button is dimmed and will not press

The YouTube tool (yt-dlp) was not found. In Settings › Tools, check whether the version reads Not found, and press Update to fetch it.

A YouTube link that worked yesterday fails today

A message starting with YouTube download failed — appears. YouTube changes all the time, and that is what causes it.

In Settings › Tools › YouTube tool, press Check → Update. If the update itself causes trouble, Revert takes you back.

Before you walk into the venue

With Check once a day on, you only get a message when a new version exists; it installs only when you press. An update window opening right before an event is itself the accident, which is why it works that way. Press it once the day before.

YouTube will not go on the background, crop will not open, and text boxes do not show

These are the limits while YouTube plays as Streaming. There is only one web view to go around.

While Streaming	As a Downloaded file
The background is off limits (foreground · overlays work)	The background works too
Can’t crop this kind (download YouTube first)	Crop opens
YouTube streaming slides can’t be edited	You can put text boxes and shapes on it

Fetch it with Download and two chips stand side by side in the preview: Streaming and Downloaded. Press Downloaded and it is handled like any ordinary video.

The text boxes you put on it are not gone

Switch back to streaming and they are only hidden. Change to Downloaded and they are there again.

The preview inside the app is covered when YouTube goes out

That is normal. What you get in its place is a translucent cover reading Presenting fullscreen · ⌘. to return, the Quality now going out, and Chapters if the video has any.

YouTube uses a single web view. Start output and that one view crosses over to the stage — it moves rather than reloads, so nothing stutters. Only the cover is left inside the app, and it keeps the same video from running twice with the sound doubled.

How to change the quality is in Output.

Sound

There is no sound at all

Work down in order. The further down, the easier it is to miss.

Where to look	What it is
The mute at the far right of the control row	Mute all — it applies to every layer
The mute and volume at the left of the control row	The sound of the layer you have selected
Slide volume on the right	That slide’s share (0–100%)
Whether that slide is on the background	Move it to the background and its sound closes to 0%
The thin bar at the right of the music panel	Music has its own volume

Sound going to 0 on the background is deliberate

Backgrounds are usually laid down for atmosphere. Move it back to the foreground and it returns to 100%, and a value you set by hand after that is left alone.

Playing a video makes the music quiet · inaudible

Settings › Stage › Music › Music while video plays is set to Lower or Mute. The default is Keep. The music drops only while something with sound is on stage, and it comes back on its own when that ends.

The preview in Track settings is silent

While the stage music is playing, the preview is muted. That keeps the same track from playing out of step in two places. It is not the file’s fault.

The preview deliberately runs past the end point and keeps playing. The end point is kept on the stage side.

The track ended and it did not move to the next one

Play next carries on inside the folder you have open, and nowhere else.

If the music must not break in that stretch

It does not cross into another folder, and around the last track in a folder it sometimes stops instead of carrying on. Check it once in rehearsal, and for an important stretch set Repeat one, or press the next track yourself when the time comes.

The track length is missing and it says Format unknown

Length, format and the tag title are read with an external tool called ffprobe. On a computer without it, the length badge is empty and the format line says that. There is no warning window, so it is easy to read it as “something is wrong with this one track”, but playback itself is unaffected.

When you deleted something

What you deleted	Can you bring it back
A slide	Yes — Undo on the notice, or ⌘Z (up to 50)
A playlist · a folder	No — the confirmation says This cannot be undone.
A music row	No — there is not even a confirmation

If you deleted a playlist

The saved file is not erased outright; it goes to the Trash. If you are in a hurry, look in the Trash first.

1. Find that .pplist file in the Trash
2. Put it back into Playlists, in the program’s folder in your Documents folder
3. The app picks it up as a list again right away

If you deleted a folder, the playlists that were inside it are not deleted. They are all out of the folder now, so look at the bottom of the sidebar.

Lock editing does not protect playlists

The edit lock during output blocks slide operations only. Creating, renaming and deleting playlists and folders still works while it is locked. During the event itself, do not touch the sidebar.

When you delete music

Delete music only before the event

There is no confirmation and no undo. And the music list counts folder header rows as rows too, so in this version a track other than the row you pressed is sometimes the one that goes.

• Do your tidying before the event, without fail
• After deleting a row, look over the list once
• To empty a whole folder, right-click the folder bar → Delete folder — the tracks go with it — which is the safe way

What disappears is only the row in the list; the file in the media folder stays as it is.

When captions look wrong

Text looks cut off

If some text does not fit in the box, a blue + badge appears under the box (Text is hidden). Press it and you choose between two things.

What you choose	Result
Expand box to fit text	Leaves the text as it is and grows the box
Shrink text to fit	Leaves the box as it is and shrinks the text

To decide in advance, turn on Word wrap and Shrink to fit in the Fit group on the ribbon.

Overflow shows from the first line and cuts off the bottom

That holds even if you set vertical alignment to center or bottom.

Text size jumps from slide to slide

Use the last button in the Fit group, Same text size across slides. Shrink to fit has to be on for it to be pressable. Consecutive slides form one group and use the same size. One slide with it off in the middle splits the group there.

You want to apply caption formatting to twenty slides at once

Do it out in Show mode.

1. Right-click a card you like → Copy style
2. Pick the slides to apply it to with ⌘ and Shift
3. Right-click a card → Paste style — it goes into every slide you picked

It goes into every selected slide at once, and one ⌘Z takes it back

Even if you applied it to twenty slides, one undo is enough. Position, size and the text itself do not travel — only the style.

What cannot be undone is Apply style to all text slides inside the caption Edit screen. Under that button it says Changes to other slides cannot be undone with ⌘Z.

When an update will not download

The notice says Couldn’t download it and, underneath, why — a timeout, a signature that did not check out, and so on. Press Try again: a fresh connection usually gets through where the old one stalled.

If it fails twice, use Get it from the site. A browser handles a stalled connection better than we do, and you end up with the same file.

This is not about your internet being slow

A download that crawls to a halt is usually one connection that went bad, not the line itself. That is why trying again works — it makes a new one.

What this version does not have

Things you will not find however hard you look. They are not faults.

Slide build effects and animation	Not there
Search for playlists	Not yet — group them into folders and they are easy to find
Opening .pplist · .pplistx by double-clicking	There is no file association yet — bring them in with Settings › Files & YouTube › Import bundle
Setting the volume per track	Music has one volume for the whole panel
Folders inside folders, reordering folders	Folders are one level deep, and they sit in the order you made them
The Line tool on the ribbon	Hidden for now (lines already drawn can still be edited)

One more pass before the event

Check these five and almost nothing goes wrong

1. That the output screen does not say not connected
2. That there are no red cards (File missing) — especially a list that arrived as a bundle
3. If there is YouTube, that the internet works; if it does not at that spot, that you fetched it in advance
4. Sound — the four places: overall · layer · slide · music, one at a time
5. Run through it from beginning to end once (overlap timing and music transitions are caught by eye and ear only)

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If it still will not work

Write to [email protected]. Include the following and it gets solved much faster.

What to include	Example
What you were trying to do	“I was trying to send a YouTube slide to the background”
The message on screen, word for word	“YouTube download failed — …”
Your macOS version and model	macOS 15 · Apple silicon
Whether it repeats or happened once

If an urgent event is riding on it, include the date and time as well.