Text slides

A text slide is a text screen you make inside the program. Captions, titles, running orders and name captions are all this. You make them in Edit mode.

Text boxes are not only for captions. They sit on top of video and image slides too.

Entering and leaving Edit mode

The status bar at the bottom of the window has a Show / Edit toggle. Press Edit.

Way in	Slide that opens
Edit in the status bar	the first slide of the playlist you were looking at
Right-click a slide card → Edit	that slide
The pencil button in the playlist header	the first slide of that list

In Edit mode the playlist sidebar on the left hides and the editor takes the whole window. To leave, press Show on the toggle.

Esc backs out one step at a time

If you are typing, the typing ends first, then the selection is cleared, then the editor closes. Nothing is wrong when one press does not close it.

YouTube streaming slides can’t be edited

The canvas is covered with YouTube streaming slides can’t be edited. Download the video and switch it to Downloaded, and you can put text boxes and shapes on it. What you already made is not deleted, only hidden, so it comes back as it was when you switch back.

The four areas

Area	What
Left column	the slides in this playlist
Center	the canvas — the same aspect as the output screen
Top	three ribbon rows
Bottom	the Background row

The ribbon has three rows.

Row	What is in it
Row 1	Undo · Redo, tools (Select · Text · Rectangle · Ellipse), the Text box group
Row 2	Text — font · size · bold · color · tracking · line height
Row 3	Align · Outline · Shadow · Fit

If what you selected is a rectangle, an ellipse or a line, the group name in row 1 changes from Text box to Shape.

Press the playlist name at the far right of the ribbon to jump to another list. Lists inside a folder are folded into a submenu under the folder name.

Making a slide

Press New Slide below the left column. An empty slide holding one text box is added at the end.

Paste a long script in one go

Paste a script into the slide list with ⌘V in Show mode and it is broken up on its own, one screenful at a time (Split into … slides). You never have to make one slide at a time and copy the text across.

The slide name is taken from the first 40 characters of the first line of the first text box. Edit the text and the name is overwritten again. If there is no text yet, the slide carries a placeholder name instead.

Click a card in the left column and that slide opens on the canvas. When you pick several with ⌘ or Shift, the slide you are editing does not move — that selection is for operations that apply to several slides at once, like delete and duplicate. The slide you are editing is marked with a border, and the slides picked with it get a blue overlay.

Right-click a card and you get Duplicate slide · Split into slides · Merge with previous · Delete slide. If you picked several, these become Duplicate … · Merge … into one · Delete ….

Deleting a slide does not ask

Because ⌘Z brings it back. See Undo below.

Adding a text box

Way	Result
Add text box in ribbon row 1	placed in the middle of the screen, ready to type in
Pick the Text tool and click the canvas	the point you pressed becomes the center of the box
Pick the Text tool and drag	the size you drew
Right-click an empty part of the canvas → Add text box	placed in the middle

Draw one with a tool and the Select tool comes back on its own. Press an existing box while holding the Text tool and you go straight into typing in that box.

Shapes are drawn with the Rectangle and Ellipse tools. Shapes can hold text too (double-click).

There is no line tool in the ribbon right now

There is no way to draw a new line. Lines you made earlier, or lines read in from a file, still show and can be changed in the Weight field.

Selecting · moving · sizing

Action	What it does
Click	select only this
⌘ + click	add and remove one at a time
Shift + click	add
Drag from an empty spot	rubber band — touching a box is enough to catch it
⌘A	every text box if you were on the canvas, every slide if you were on the left column

Drag a box to move it. Select it and eight handles appear; drag a corner with Shift and the proportions hold. Arrow keys move it 1% at a time, Shift + arrow keys 5%. To set it by number, use X · Y · W · H in the Place popover.

Position and size are all % of the screen

A caption you set up on a 1080 screen goes out at the same place and the same proportion on a 4K projector. The number fields are clamped as well, so nothing leaves the screen.

Leave the magnet button in ribbon row 3 on (Snap guides, on by default) and boxes stick to the screen edges and center and to the left, center and right of other boxes as you drag, with a guide line drawn where they stick. When moving they also stick at equal spacing, and when sizing they stick at the point where the box becomes the same size as another box.

Changing a value with several boxes selected hits all of them

The ribbon shows the values of one reference box. But when you change a value, every selected box changes. To touch only one, press an empty spot first to clear the selection.

Typing and styling

Double-click a text box and you type in place. Esc leaves. While you type, the letters already look finished — outline, shadow, tracking and all.

The font is the first field in ribbon row 2, the weight family the field next to it. At the top of the font list there is a Search fonts… field, and fonts with several families open their family list to the right when you hover. Default font on the first row of the list is the font the program uses.

Every number field is handled the same way.

• Drag the label left and right
• Press the number and drag the track in the popover that opens
• Type the number in
• Up and down arrows, or the wheel (⇧ = 10×, ⌥ = 0.1×)

What the number is a percentage of differs from field to field.

Value	% of what	Starting value
Font size	screen height	7
Tracking	font size	0
Line height	the height of one line (100 and below has no effect)	130
Glyph scale width and height	the original size	100
Outline width	font size	8
Shadow distance and blur	font size	5 · 6
Border Width · Radius	screen height	0
Text inset	screen height	0

While you drag, only the screen changes; the value is saved once when you let go, and that is one step of ⌘Z.

Bold · Italic · Underline · Strikethrough land in different places depending on the situation.

State	Where it lands
Text is selected	that run only
Only the cursor is placed	the letters you type from now on
Only the box is selected	all the text in the box
Several boxes are selected	all of those boxes

Superscript and Subscript can only be pressed when text is selected.

The button looks off but the text is bold

It means the selected run has bold and normal text mixed in it. The first click always turns it on.

Press a color chip and the color picker opens — a saturation and brightness square, a hue bar, direct HEX entry, the colors you used recently, and Pick from screen (the eyedropper). Fill, border and background color have a No fill swatch drawn with a red diagonal line.

Opacity is in two places

Opacity inside the color picker is the strength of that one color. Opacity in ribbon row 1 is the whole object, text included. Set both and they multiply, so it comes out far fainter than you expect.

Outline and shadow

Two things that keep text from disappearing on stage.

A new text box is made with Outline on (width 8%, black). The ▾ next to it (Outline options) is where you set the width and the Outline color.

Shadow is off by default. Turn it on and it starts at distance 5% · angle 135° · blur 6% · opacity 85%, and the ▾ (Shadow options) is where you change Distance · Angle · Blur · Shadow color. For the angle, 0° is to the right and it turns clockwise.

When both are on, that whole group in the ribbon takes on a blue tint — you can tell without opening it.

Leave the outline on when you do not know what the background will be

White text with a black outline survives a bright sky and a dark stage alike. Distance and blur are % of font size, so the proportion follows along when you make the text bigger later.

Aligning and placing

Center appears twice in one row

The first four (Left · Center · Right · Justify) align the text inside the box. The Center button standing on its own further along sends the box to the middle of the screen. The names are the same, so press one and check what moved.

Button	What it does
The first four	horizontal alignment of the text in the box
The next three	vertical position of the text in the box
Align across popover	put the box at the Left · Center H · Right of the screen
Align down popover	put the box at the Top · Center V · Bottom of the screen
Center (on its own)	send the box to the middle of the screen
Distribute H · Distribute V	spread evenly (with three or more boxes)

Putting boxes against the screen applies to every box on the slide when no box is selected. They sit flush against the screen edge with no margin, so drag them afterwards if you need one. Distribute works from every box on the slide, whatever you have selected.

When text overflows the box

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

Choice	What it does
Expand box to fit text	makes the box bigger
Shrink text to fit	makes the text smaller

To decide in advance, use Word wrap (on by default) and Shrink to fit (off by default) in the Fit group.

Overflow is cut off at the bottom

Even with vertical alignment set to middle or bottom, the moment it overflows it shows from the first line and the bottom is cut off. Turn Word wrap off and the text runs on one line, and what overflows is cut. In rehearsal, scan once for slides showing this blue + badge.

The last button in the Fit group is Same text size across slides. It keeps the text size from jumping as you move through slides. Shrink to fit has to be on for it to be pressable.

Consecutive slides that have it on form one group, and they all use the size that the tightest slide in the group fits at. One slide with it off in the middle splits the group there — use that to divide by song or by section. One unusually long slide (one that would have to go below 45% of its own size) drops out of the group.

Turning Shrink to fit off turns the size matching off with it

If it cannot shrink, there is nothing to match.

Text inset

Press the inset button in the Fit group and a popover opens with Top · Left · Right · Bottom laid out in a cross. With the link button on (Link all sides), touching any field moves all four sides together; turn it off (Unlink sides) and you set them separately. Reset to 0 clears them.

If even one value is set the button is tinted, so you can tell without opening it. The left and right insets are based on screen height too — so that the same number looks the same to the eye on 16:9.

Background

You handle this in the Background row under the canvas.

Item	What it does
Color chip (Background color)	a solid color background
Import image or video	lays a file down
Paste background	lays down the image in the clipboard
The four scale buttons	Fit · Fill · Stretch · Fit + blur bg
Background fit	opens the same sheet as Slide settings
Remove background	takes away what you laid down

Laying a background down changes the kind of slide

Put an image or a video on a text slide and at that moment it becomes an image or video slide. Take it away with Remove background and it goes back to being a text slide with only text boxes.

The checkerboard on the canvas

It is on the editing canvas only, to tell ‘transparent’ from ‘black’. It does not go out to the output screen or the preview.

Splitting and merging

Split when one slide has too much text, and put the scattered pieces back together.

Where	Action
While typing	⌘Enter — splits in two at the cursor and moves to the following slide
At the very start of the text	⌘Backspace — merges with the previous slide
At the very end of the text	⌘Delete — appends the following slide
Right-click a card in the left column	Split into slides · Merge with previous · Merge … into one

Right-click Split into slides splits at blank lines, and if a piece still does not fit one screen it splits further inside it (words are kept whole). If there is nowhere to split, Nothing to split — it already fits appears. When merging, text boxes in the same place on the screen are joined to each other.

Merging keeps only the look of the first slide

The backgrounds and shapes of the slides being absorbed are gone. So it asks first — Backgrounds and shapes on the other slides will be lost. Continue? It also asks first when you split a slide that is on air.

Passing style along

Ways to put the same look on several slides.

What	Where
Copy style · Paste style	right-click a text box, or ⌥⌘C / ⌥⌘V
Set as default style	right-click a text box — new text boxes from now on get this look
Reset default style	the same menu
Clear formatting	far right of ribbon row 2

The style clipboard runs separately from the system clipboard — text you put there with ⌘C stays. Position, size and the text itself are not carried over. Formatting given to individual runs of text is not carried over either.

Set as default style does not save position, size or text. New boxes always come out empty in the same place. It does not rub off on shapes (rectangle, ellipse).

Clear formatting leaves the text, position and size alone and returns only the styling to its starting values.

To put it on several slides at once, go out to Show mode. Right-click a slide card → Copy style, pick the slides to apply it to with ⌘ and Shift, then right-click again → Paste style. The style taken from a card is that slide’s first text box.

One ⌘Z undoes it even across many slides

This exists so that when rehearsal tells you ‘the text is too small’, you do not have to open twenty slides one at a time. Even applied to twenty slides at once, one undo is enough.

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

Sending to the stage

Action	What it does
Show on output at the top left	sends out the slide you are editing
Double-click a card in the left column	sends out that slide

For layers and fades, see The main window.

If editing is locked, your changes are not saved

If you turned on Lock editing while live in Settings › Stage, editing is locked the moment output starts. Inside the editor it then looks as if the values roll back, with no message. Unlock it with the padlock at the right of the status bar (Unlock editing) and then make your changes.

Undo

⌘Z undoes and ⇧⌘Z redoes. The two buttons at the far left of ribbon row 1 do the same. They listen while you are typing too.

• History is kept per slide, up to 80 steps
• Touching the same item again within 1.2 seconds merges into one step — drag a slider for three seconds and it is still one ⌘Z
• When there is nothing left to undo on that slide, it moves on to undo for the whole list, so splits, merges and slide deletions come back too

Shortcuts

Key	What it does
Double-click (text box)	start typing in place
Esc	back out one step at a time — end typing → clear selection → close the editor
⌘A	every text box (every slide if you were on the left column)
⌘ click / Shift click	add and remove one at a time / add
Arrow keys / Shift + arrow keys	move 1% / move 5%
Delete or Backspace	delete the selected text boxes (the slide is not deleted)
⌘D	duplicate the text box — offset by 2.5%
⌘C / ⌘X / ⌘V	copy / cut / paste
⌥⌘C / ⌥⌘V	copy style only / paste style
⌘Z / ⇧⌘Z	undo / redo
⌘Enter	split the slide at the cursor
⌘Backspace / ⌘Delete	merge with the previous slide / append the following slide
Shift + drag a corner handle	resize keeping the proportions
⇧ / ⌥ in a number field	change the value 10× / 0.1×
Double-click a card (left column)	send that slide to the stage

⌘V goes different ways depending on what is in the clipboard.

Clipboard	How it lands
Text boxes from this program	as text boxes (Pasted boxes)
An image	as this slide’s background (Pasted as background)
Plain text	as a new text box (Pasted as text box)

Text boxes only paste in Edit mode

Press ⌘V on a text box in Show mode and Paste text boxes in edit mode appears.

Starting values

The values of a newly made text box.

Item	Starting value
Font	Default font (no weight family)
Font size	7% (of screen height)
Text color	white
Tracking · line height	0% · 130%
Glyph scale width and height	100% · 100%
Alignment	horizontally centered · vertically centered
Outline	on — width 8%, black
Shadow	off (turned on: distance 5% · angle 135° · blur 6% · opacity 85%)
Text inset	0 on all sides
Word wrap	on
Shrink to fit · size matching	both off
Fill · border	none
Opacity · Rotation	100% · 0°
Box position and size	x 8 · y 55 · width 84 · height 37 (% of screen)

The editor itself starts with the Select tool, Snap guides on and the inset link on.

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If this is your first time here, read The main window and Your first show in five minutes first. If something is not working, see Help or tell us at [email protected].