Settings

The values you set once and then carry with you everywhere live in this window. Click the gear at the far right of the status bar at the bottom of the window (its tooltip says Settings) and it opens.

Opening and closing the window

Five panes stand in a column on the left. Click one and the body on the right changes.

Pane	What is in it
General	Language · slide card size · remember window layout · remember master volume
Stage	Resolution · edit lock · the fade values · music
Overlay names	Naming the five overlay layers
Files & YouTube	Media folder · import bundle · YouTube downloads
Tools	Updating the YouTube tool (yt-dlp)

There are three ways to close it — Esc, clicking outside the window, and the X at the top right (Close). Values save the moment you touch them, so there is nothing to confirm.

There are four ways to work a number field

Click the number and a small window with a slider opens. The up and down arrows at the right of the field move it one step at a time (hold one down and it keeps going), and you can roll the wheel over the field. Hold ⇧ and it moves 10×; hold ⌥ and it moves 0.1×.

General

Language

Click one of the three pills — 한국어 · English · 日本語. Menus and messages change on the spot; you do not have to restart the app.

If you have never chosen one, the app goes by the system language — Korean gives 한국어, Japanese gives 日本語, anything else gives English. Names you typed in yourself under Overlay names are never translated.

Slide card size

The size of the slide cards in the middle. There are three ways to set it.

Where	What you can do
Settings › General	S · M · L — 170 · 210 · 260 pixels
The small slider at the right of the status bar	130–340 pixels, in steps of 10
⌘+ / ⌘−	20 pixels at a time (when your hands are on the slide list)

All three change the same value, and it saves when you let go, so it is still there the next time you open the app. The size you set holds no matter how big the window is. It is here to cut down on hitting the slide next to the one you meant in a dark booth and sending that out.

Remember window layout

On by default. It writes down the window size and position and whether the sidebar was collapsed when you quit, and opens the same way next time. The working layout you set up in rehearsal opens the same way at the event.

If your display setup changed

If the saved position would be off-screen with the displays you have now, the position is ignored and only the size comes back.

Remember master volume

Off by default. The master volume under the preview starts at 100% every time you open the app.

There is a reason the default is off

If you left the volume at 0 at the end of the last show and this switch were on, the next show would start silent. That is the accident people find last on stage. The master volume multiplies the audio of every layer — slide, background and overlays.

The volume in the music pane is always remembered, whatever this switch says.

Stage

What these values do is covered in Output and Music. This page only lists where they are and what the defaults are.

Value	Default	Range
Set output display to 1:1	On	—
Lock editing while live	Off	—
Crossfade (default for new playlists)	0.8 seconds	0–5 seconds
Fade out (default for new playlists)	0.8 seconds	0–5 seconds
Background fade	0.5 seconds	0–3 seconds
Overlay fade	0.3 seconds	0–3 seconds
Background loop crossfade	0 seconds	0–5 seconds
Music fade in	0.8 seconds	0–5 seconds
Music fade out	1.2 seconds	0–5 seconds
Music crossfade	1.5 seconds	0–5 seconds
Music while video plays	Keep	Keep · Lower · Mute
Lower to	0.25	0–1
Auto-dismiss (default for new playlists)	0 seconds (Off)	0–120 seconds

Two kinds of value share one pane

The values under the heading Defaults for new playlists only go into lists you make from now on. The line underneath saying Existing playlists keep their own value. is how you tell them apart. To change the list you are using today, open Playlist settings.

Background fade and Overlay fade are not per-list — they apply to the whole app right away.

Auto-dismiss lives in two places

The one at the bottom of the Settings window is the default for lists you make from now on. It is an easy place to raise a value, see nothing change in the list you are running today, and go looking for the reason. The value for the list you are running now is in Playlist settings.

Set output display to 1:1

When this is on, the app actually changes the system resolution of the monitor you picked for output. It never touches your main display, in any circumstance.

Turn it off on gear that is not yours

If the projector or monitor is borrowed from the venue, it is safer off.

Turning the switch off does not put the resolution back at that moment. It goes back when you pick the output screen again, when a new screen is connected, and when you quit the app. If the app dies before it can put things back, logging out and in again restores them.

Background loop crossfade

How long the background overlaps when it loops back to the start. At 0 the loop cuts hard.

It plays the clip twice at once

The overlap is made by running the same video on two decks and fading between them. At 4K, or with Fit + blur bg, that can be heavy on an older Mac. If the picture stumbles at the joint, lower the value or set it back to 0.

A single slide can override this — see Repeat · Loop crossfade.

Virtual screens

A virtual screen is a size, not a destination. Choosing one sends nothing anywhere; it only sets the shape that editing and preview are drawn against. That is how you lay a show out for a 4:3 hall or a portrait wall before the projector is in front of you.

Add virtual screen opens two ways in:

Common sizes	FHD 1080p · 4K UHD · HD 720p · 4:3 XGA · 4:3 SXGA+ · 16:10 WUXGA · portrait 1080 · portrait 4K · wide 2:1
Custom	Type a Width and a Height

The order in the list is the order you pick from, and the first one is what a fresh install starts on.

Two things it will not let you do

Adding a size that is already there — That size is already in the list. Removing the last one — Keep at least one virtual screen. With nothing plugged in there has to be something left to draw against.

Lock editing while live

Off by default. With it on, editing locks the moment output starts and Live — editing locked (unlock in the status bar) appears.

The default is off for a stage reason. Fixing the next cue while the show is running is common, and if it were blocked without a word you would have no way to know why. So the app always tells you when it locks.

Stopping output releases the lock you set by hand as well

This is about when the switch is on. Even if you locked it yourself with the padlock in the status bar while live, that lock is released too the moment you stop output.

You can lock and unlock by hand at any time with the padlock at the right of the status bar (Lock editing / Unlock editing). What gets blocked once it is locked is in Output.

Overlay names

Type a name into each of the five fields, 1 through 5 (up to 12 characters). It saves when you leave the field. Leave one empty and it goes back to plain Overlay.

Once a layer has a name, the chips on cards, the menus, the stage chips and Playlist settings all use that name. The number always stays in front, so it reads as 1 Logo.

The numbers cannot be changed

The number is the height of the layer — 1 is on top, 5 sits directly above the foreground. The name is the only part you change.

Files & YouTube

Media folder

The default is ~/Documents/PresentPlayer, split inside into Videos · Music · Images · Slides. The line underneath shows where the folder is now.

• Choose… — move it somewhere else
• Open — opens that folder in the Finder

Import external files

Copies files that live outside the media folder into it.

The line underneath says how many files are outside, and when there are any, the button with the same name lights up in the accent color. Press it and Copying N file(s) appears and the copying starts. If everything is already inside, you get Every file is inside the media folder. and the button is dimmed.

Press it the day before the event

If the external disk or USB stick holding the originals comes loose, playback stops dead on stage. Bring the files in beforehand and there is nothing to worry about.

Import bundle

Press Choose… and pick a .pplistx file exported from another computer. When it comes in, that list is selected right away and Imported appears.

The export side, and what to do once it has arrived, is in Playlists › Moving to another computer.

YouTube

Row	What you can pick	Default
Download quality	Best · 1080p · 720p	1080p
Convert to H.264	When needed · Always · Never	When needed
Default captions	Off · English	Off

Download quality — if the projector is 1080, there is no reason to fetch 4K. It only takes longer and drags a conversion along with it. If the quality you asked for does not exist, the app takes the largest one below it, so a download never fails for that reason.

Convert to H.264 — When needed converts only when what came down is neither H.264 nor HEVC (4K AV1 and the like). Converting one 4K clip takes about 20 minutes; skipping it costs a lot of CPU during playback.

When the conversion does not happen

Converting needs ffmpeg. If it is missing and the codec cannot be read, When needed leaves the file as it is. That is usually the answer to “why is it not converting”.

Default captions — this is here so that captions you turned on in rehearsal are not off again when the event starts. It sets what a slide starts with, nothing more.

The language itself is chosen elsewhere

YouTube offers over a hundred auto-translations. Rather than list them here, you register the ones you use under Manage languages… in the caption picker in Slide settings, and choose from those. It starts with your computer’s language and English.

Downloading first gives you more to work with

Select a YouTube slide and press Download in the preview. Once it is down, two chips sit side by side — Streaming and Downloaded — and you switch by clicking.

While it is on Streaming it cannot go on the background, it cannot be cropped, and you cannot put text boxes or shapes on it. Switch to Downloaded and it behaves like any other video. Text boxes and shapes you already made are not deleted when you go back to streaming — they are only hidden.

Tools

Two versions live here — LayerCue’s own, and the outside tool it uses for YouTube. They fix different things, which is why they sit side by side: when YouTube stops working it is usually the tool that has gone stale, not LayerCue.

LayerCue

The line shows the version you are running. Check asks whether a newer one is out and says so either way; Update opens the same window the notice in the bottom bar opens.

YouTube tool

Downloading from YouTube is done by an outside tool called yt-dlp. The line underneath shows the version you have now and where it came from, and Not found if it cannot be found.

Button	What it does
Check	Only asks whether a newer version exists
Update	Actually downloads and installs it (accent color when a new version exists)
Revert	Deletes what the app downloaded (only shown when there is something to delete)

When YouTube downloads suddenly stop working

YouTube changes often, and a link that worked weeks ago can fail on the day. Press Update to move the tool to a newer version and it usually comes back. The app checks that the new copy actually runs before it puts it in place.

Revert deletes the file the app downloaded. After that it falls back on its own to whatever was already installed on the computer, and if there is nothing, the version line reads Not found and the Download button in the preview goes dim.

Check once a day

On by default. When you open the app, if a day has passed since the last check, it asks quietly, and if there is a newer version it only raises the notice yt-dlp … is available — Settings › Tools, and a wrench with an orange dot stays at the right end of the status bar. Click it and Settings opens on this page. The notice passes; the wrench stays, so you find out even if you were not looking at the time.

It checks; it does not install

Installing starts only when a person presses Update. An update dialog appearing right before an event is itself the accident.

The progress lines in this pane are always in Korean

The lines under the version number — 확인하는 중… (checking) · 내려받는 중… 40% (downloading) · 최신입니다 (up to date) — stay in Korean even when you switch the language to English or 日本語.

Reset

Reset at the bottom of the list of panes on the left brings up a confirmation: Reset every setting to its default. The red Reset carries it out, and there is Cancel as well.

The language is wiped too

Nothing on screen changes language at the moment you press it, but the next time you open the app the language is back to the guess from your system language. If that is not the one you want, choose it again.

Slide card size, on the other hand, is stored somewhere else and survives the reset.

Reset works by deleting the values you saved, so if a later version of the app changes a default, you get that new default.

Shortcuts

Key	What it does
Esc	Close the Settings window (clicking outside closes it too)
⌘+ / ⌘−	Slide card size, 20 pixels at a time (when your hands are on the slide list)
⌘B	Collapse or expand the sidebar
⇧ + a number field	10× at a time
⌥ + a number field	0.1× at a time, for fine adjustment