Frequently asked questions

ShowPrompt is a browser-based cue and prompt system for live production. A small Node.js server runs on one laptop and sends countdown timers, cues, running orders, and presenter notes to any screen — a TV, a tablet, a phone, or a monitor — without any installation on those devices.

No. The Free tier requires no account whatsoever. Just download and run. Pro and Venue users receive a licence key by email and activate it once in the app. No login, no password, no cloud account.

Yes — there is a fully functional Free tier with no time limit. It includes countdown timers, flash warnings, and one output screen. Pro and Venue tiers add more modes, more screens, cue lists, presenter notes, and venue-specific features.

A Windows 10/11 or macOS 12+ computer with Node.js installed (free, from nodejs.org). The ShowPrompt server runs there. Any device with a modern browser (phone, tablet, TV, monitor) on the same network can be an output screen — nothing needs to be installed on them.

Not during your show. ShowPrompt runs on your local network — a venue WiFi outage won't affect anything. Internet is only needed for the one-time setup (installing Node.js, and the first run of Start ShowPrompt, which sets itself up automatically) and for occasional licence validation on paid tiers (roughly once a month, never during a show).

ShowPrompt has six modes: Conference (countdown, cues, speaker notes, running order), Broadcast (TX clock, camera tally, production state, graphics cues), Music & Live (setlists, set & curfew timers, MD/bandleader cues and silent per-member cue lights — for bands, DJs, solo artists, function bands and comedy), Matchday (score, match clock, kick-off countdown — supports Football, Rugby, Cricket, Basketball, American Football and more), Worship (pre-service countdown, sermon timer, tradition-specific cues for Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and Multi-faith services), and Theatre (show state, department cue lights for LX, Sound, Flys, Stage, and FOH) — plus a Talent presenter display. Conference, Broadcast and Music & Live are included in Pro; Matchday, Worship and Theatre are Venue (as is the Music festival / multi-stage profile).

Yes on Venue tier. Advanced screen assignment lets you send different content to different output screens. On Free and Pro, all connected screens show the same output.

Yes on Pro and Venue. Save your running order, cue list, timers, and settings to a show file and reload it next time.

Yes on Pro and Venue. Type notes in the controller and push them to the talent display in real time.

Free tier: 1 output screen. Pro tier: up to 4. Venue tier: unlimited. Any device with a browser on your local network can be a screen.

Yes. Output screens are just browser pages — open the URL shown in ShowPrompt on any device. The display automatically scales to fill the screen. The controller is best used on a laptop or desktop.

Yes if all your devices are on the same local network. ShowPrompt doesn't need internet — it uses your local network (WiFi or wired) to communicate between the controller and output screens.

Yes. The Conference controller has a direction toggle — switch between Count Down and Count Up before starting. Count Up is useful when you want to track elapsed time rather than a fixed duration. The timer display turns amber at your warning threshold and red at zero in either direction.

Guide mode is a built-in hover-help system. Click the ❓ Guide button in any controller header to turn it on. With Guide mode on, controls that have built-in explanations get a dashed orange highlight, and hovering them shows a small tooltip describing what the control does. It's designed for training new operators. The setting is remembered per browser.

ShowPrompt auto-saves your full show state to a recovery file every 30 seconds in the background. If the server restarts, a banner appears on the dashboard offering to restore the last auto-saved state. This covers timers (reloaded paused), cues, running orders, scores, teamsheets and all mode settings. You can pick up where you left off within seconds. Save Show also lets you manually snapshot the whole show to a named file at any time.

Yes — Pro and Venue tier includes custom event logo upload. Go to Settings → Event Logo and upload a PNG, JPG, or SVG file. The logo appears discreetly on every connected display. It's designed for event branding or sponsor logos. Removing it is instant via the same settings page.

Matchday supports nine sports: Football, Rugby, Cricket, Basketball, American Football, Ice Hockey, Netball, Field Hockey, and Tennis. Switching sport adapts the whole controller — period names, clock direction (count-up for football and rugby, count-down for basketball and hockey, no match clock for cricket and tennis), score-step buttons, and preset cue messages all change automatically.

Worship mode supports six traditions: Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and Multi-faith. Switching tradition adapts the controller's terminology, the preset cue chips (for example: ADHAN and IQAMAH for Islamic services, TORAH READING and HAVDALAH for Jewish services, MEDITATION and DHARMA TALK for Buddhist services), and the run-of-service item presets. Scripture references also update — Quran, Torah, or sutra reference as appropriate.

Producer Mode is a read-only show-overview display for producers, directors and show callers. It auto-detects whichever mode is active and shows the current and next segment, all live timers across every mode, the smart-timing drift indicator, a list of connected displays, and a live activity feed of cue messages. No controls — purely informational. Available on Pro and Venue tiers.

Six recovery actions on every controller, built for when shows go sideways. HOLD freezes every running timer in the current mode and shows a HOLD banner on all displays. DELAY +X pushes the schedule back by 1, 2, 5 or 10 minutes. SKIP advances the run order one segment. EXTEND +X adds time to the current segment. BLACKOUT sends a clean black screen to every display in the mode. CLEAR ALL wipes every active message. Destructive actions (Blackout, Clear All) require a 1.5-second press-and-hold to fire — prevents misclicks during a live show.

Add a planned duration to each item in your run order, advance into the first segment, and ShowPrompt tracks drift in real time. A banner above your run order tells you On track, Running 4 min late or Running 2 min early, plus the projected end time of the show — recomputed every 5 seconds. Works on Conference, Broadcast, Matchday and Worship runs. Shown live on operator controllers and on Producer Mode. Backwards compatible — if you don't add planned durations, the banner stays hidden.

Each item in a run order can carry an optional planned duration in seconds. The Smart Timing engine compares the sum of planned durations for completed segments against actual wall-clock elapsed time to compute drift. Items without a planned duration are simply skipped in the calculation. Setting a value of zero or omitting the field both behave the same way — invisible to the engine.

Open Settings in ShowPrompt and scroll down to Display QR codes. There's a scannable QR code for every display type — Conference, Broadcast, Talent, Matchday, Worship, Theatre. Point the phone or tablet's camera at the QR and tap the link that appears. The display opens straight away, no typing the IP address. The device must be on the same WiFi network as the ShowPrompt laptop.

Yes — click the 📋 Import from spreadsheet button on Conference, Broadcast, Matchday or Worship controllers. Paste rows straight from Google Sheets, Excel or a CSV file. Expected columns are label, duration (mm:ss or seconds, optional), and notes (optional). Header row is optional — ShowPrompt detects whether the first row contains column headers. You get a live preview of the parsed items before importing, and a warning if any rows can't be parsed.

Yes. ShowPrompt maintains a server-side log of every cue message, timer start/stop/reset, segment advance, score change and recovery action — all with timestamps. Open Settings → Show log and you can View / Print as PDF (opens a printable HTML page; use your browser's Save as PDF), Download CSV, or Clear log. Useful for post-show reviews, client reports and reproducing what happened if anything went wrong. The log resets when you use the Restart Show button.

Yes — every controller has a 📺 Preview displays button in the bottom-right corner. Click it and a modal opens showing live thumbnails of every relevant display for that mode (e.g. Conference + Talent for the Conference controller). Each thumbnail is the actual display rendered in miniature, so you see exactly what your presenter, backstage and crew screens are showing. Read-only — the operator goes to the actual display URL to control it.

Yes — through Bitfocus Companion. ShowPrompt ships with a Companion module exposing 30+ actions (timer start/stop, run-order next/prev, cue presets, recovery hold/skip/blackout, plus broadcast/matchday/worship/theatre controls), live state variables you can put on button labels, button-colour feedbacks (timer running, blackout active, show late, etc), and two ready-made preset button sets — Stage Manager and Recovery. Drop the module into Companion's modules-dev folder, configure the ShowPrompt host and port, and your Stream Deck becomes a physical control surface for live show recovery. Available on Pro and Venue tiers.

Free tier: £0, always. Pro: £12/month or £132/year. Venue: £29/month or £319/year. Annual plans save you one month versus paying monthly. See the Pricing page for full details.

When you subscribe, you receive a licence key by email. Enter it once in ShowPrompt under Settings → Licence. The key validates periodically in the background. ShowPrompt will continue working for up to 35 days without internet access (a 30-day window plus a 5-day grace period).

Your licence remains active until the end of your current billing period. After that, ShowPrompt reverts to the Free tier. Your show files and settings are not deleted.

Yes. You'll be charged the difference for the remainder of your billing period and gain Venue features immediately.

Yes — 14-day refund on first-time subscriptions if ShowPrompt doesn't work for your use case. Contact support within 14 days of your first payment.

Prices shown on the website exclude VAT. VAT is calculated and added at checkout based on your location. ShowPrompt uses Lemon Squeezy as its Merchant of Record, which handles all tax obligations.

Yes. To license another machine, activate the same key on that machine too — the licence is stored locally, so you only activate once per computer. Keep a backup copy of your licence.json file from the ShowPrompt folder so you can restore it on another machine in seconds if needed.

Yes — annual plans save you one month versus paying monthly. Pro is £132/yr and Venue is £319/yr.

On first run, Windows Firewall will prompt asking if you want to allow Node.js to receive incoming network connections — click Allow access. This is needed so other devices on your local network can reach the ShowPrompt display pages. You only need to do this once.

Because ShowPrompt isn't notarised by Apple yet, macOS blocks it on first launch with a box titled "Start ShowPrompt.command Not Opened". It is safe. Click Done (not "Move to Bin"), then go to System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down to the Security section, and click "Open Anyway" next to ShowPrompt; confirm with your password or Touch ID. You only need to do this once. (On older macOS you can instead right-click the launcher and choose Open.)

Make sure all devices are on the same network. Check that Windows Firewall has allowed ShowPrompt network access (it prompts on first run). On Mac, check System Settings → Network. If using a corporate network, IT restrictions may block local device communication — a personal hotspot or separate network will work.

Refresh the output screen browser. If the issue persists, check that ShowPrompt is still running on the controller computer. Local network dropouts can cause brief disconnections — the display reconnects automatically.

Not by design. ShowPrompt is built to run on a local network. Remote operation is not currently supported and is not planned for the core product.

Any modern browser — Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge. The output display is a standard web page. Older browsers may not render correctly; recommend Chrome or Safari.

Each instance of ShowPrompt runs one mode at a time. You can open multiple ShowPrompt windows on the same machine to run multiple modes simultaneously.

ShowPrompt shows the local network URL in the controller (e.g. 192.168.0.10:3000/conference-display.html). Type or QR-share this to any device on the network.

ShowPrompt works on standard local networks. Managed venue networks with client isolation (where devices can't see each other) will prevent output screens from connecting. Ask venue IT to allow local device communication on the network, or create a separate operator hotspot.

No — a controller computer is always required to run ShowPrompt and serve the display pages. The output screens are passive receivers.

Not currently. ShowPrompt runs in a browser on any device for output screens. A dedicated mobile app is not planned for the current roadmap.