User Guide

1. Download the .dmg from the home page. Drag ACE.app into Applications.
2. Launch ACE. macOS will ask for microphone access — grant it. Without mic access, detection cannot work.
3. The first-run wizard will offer to import your songs and walk you through the dashboard. Skip it if you want to explore — the in-app tour is always re-runnable from Settings → Help → Reset tour.
4. Plug in your audience screen via HDMI or use a wireless display. Open Screen Configuration with ⌘⇧S and assign it.
5. Hit Start. ACE is now listening.

ACE's main window is three columns plus a toolbar. You'll spend 98% of your time here.

• Toolbar (top). Start/Stop, detection mode (Auto/Song/Bible), Live/Hold, confidence nudger, workflow tabs (Show / Edit / Bible / Theme / Looks / Stage / Service Plan), Import, Settings.
• Library (left). Songs, Bibles, slides, sermons, media. Click an item to load it; ACE matches detection against this list.
• Detection feed (center). When ACE recognises a song, its sections appear here. Click to preview, double-click to send to program.
• Outputs (right). Preview is what you see, Program is what's live on the audience screen. A small chip per active output (NDI / Audience / Stage) shows its status.

Detection accuracy depends entirely on the audio level. Get this right once and forget about it.

1. Open Settings → Audio. Pick your input device (USB interface, built-in mic, audio loopback).
2. Watch the visualizer in the toolbar while the band plays.
3. Amber = too quiet (move the mic closer or boost gain). Green = good level. Red = peaking (back off or pad the input).

Pro tip: a USB lavalier on the worship leader's stand picks up singing and speaking equally well. Avoid mounting on a vocal mic that gets capped between songs.

The standard flow has two modes — Live and Hold — and you'll switch between them naturally during a service.

Live mode

The default. Tap Start and ACE listens. When it identifies a song, the lyrics jump to the audience screen and follow the band line by line. When the preacher quotes a verse, the verse appears.

Use Live during songs, scripture readings, and any segment where you want zero clicks.

Hold mode

Tap Live in the toolbar to flip it to Hold. Detection still runs in the background, but nothing displays automatically — you tap a slide to push it.

Use Hold during prayer, transitions, communion, video segments, or any moment where the room should stay on the current slide regardless of what's being said.

Detection mode

Three modes in the toolbar:

• Auto — detect songs and Bible references at the same time. Default for most services.
• Song — only detect music. Use during the worship set if you don't want stray verse pop-ups.
• Bible — only detect scripture. Use during the sermon to silence song matches.

Confidence nudger

The − / + chip in the toolbar adjusts the match threshold. Lower it (e.g. 50%) if ACE is being too cautious; raise it (e.g. 75%) if it's matching the wrong song. The default 60% works for most rooms.

ACE listens for scripture references during preaching. Say “turn with me to John three sixteen” and the verse appears on screen.

• Switch to Bible tab in the toolbar to browse passages manually.
• Set detection mode to Bible during the sermon to ignore song lyrics.
• Multiple translations are supported — pick the default in Settings → Bible.
• References embedded in imported slides (titles + speaker notes) are auto-attached, so they trigger live during the service even without you typing them.

The Import wizard (⌘I) handles every format ACE supports. Most operators import once at setup and rarely revisit.

• Songs — paste lyrics, CSV bulk-load, Genius URL, ChordPro file, or import an entire ProPresenter library.
• Slides — drag in PPTX, Keynote, or PDF. Backgrounds, titles, and speaker notes are preserved.
• Bibles — pick a translation; the full text is pulled and indexed.
• Sermons — drop in manuscripts or notes. Scripture references in the text are detected and linked.

On first launch, ACE seeds your library with a few sample songs and translations so you can verify your setup before importing your real catalog.

Themes control colours, fonts, and backgrounds for slides. Build them in the Theme tab.

Looks (introduced in v1.4) bundle a theme together with which layers are on (lyrics / scripture / announcements / messages / props), plus optional per-screen overrides. Switch the whole presentation style with one click.

Example workflow: build a Look called “Worship” with full-bleed background video + large lyrics. Build another called “Sermon” with a clean background and scripture in serif. Switch between them as the service moves.

• Open the Looks tab, hover a Look card, click ▶ to apply.
• Per-screen overrides let your audience screen run one theme and your stage monitor run another simultaneously.
• Looks are saved per-library, so different teams can ship different visual identities without overwriting each other.

ACE supports as many displays as your Mac can drive — one audience screen, one stage monitor, one operator preview, NDI outputs, and any combination thereof.

• Quick Screens (⌘J) — the fast toggle. Turn each output on/off without opening Settings.
• Screen Configuration (⌘⇧S) — the deep editor. Assign which display is Audience vs Stage, pick a Look per screen, set NDI streams, configure resolution.
• Each output gets its own URL with a screen=<id> parameter, so you can stream individual outputs to remote campuses or recording rigs.

The Service Plan tab is the running order. Drag in songs, scripture, slides, announcements, and timer blocks. Re-order with the mouse. ACE walks the plan top-to-bottom but never blocks you — detection still works if the band goes off-script.

Each item has a one-click Go button that pushes it to program. Use it as a manual fallback during transitions, or for items you don't want detected (announcements, video segments).

The stage display is what your worship leader, preacher, or band sees. Build layouts in the Stage tab — drag tokens (current lyric, next lyric, scripture, time, clock, custom message) onto the canvas, style each one in the Inspector.

Multiple layouts per service: lead vocalist gets lyrics + next line, drummer gets just tempo + section name, preacher gets scripture + sermon notes. Switch between them in Quick Screens.

Defaults are tuned for ProPresenter parity where possible. Per-shortcut customisation is available through localStorage today and gets a proper Settings panel in v1.5.4.

Customising shortcuts: the engine supports per-shortcut overrides via localStorage key ws-shortcuts-v1. The in-app rebinding UI lands in v1.5.4. Until then, see the User Guide for the DevTools-console snippet.

• Library, settings, themes, looks: ~/Library/Application Support/ACE/
• Logs: ~/Library/Logs/ACE/
• Imported media (videos, images, audio): ~/Library/Application Support/ACE/media/
• LibreOffice (deferred install): ~/Library/Application Support/ACE/libreoffice/

To back up your entire ACE setup, copy the ~/Library/Application Support/ACE/ folder to a USB drive or cloud sync. To migrate to a new Mac: install ACE there, then drop that folder back in before the first launch.

ACE checks for updates automatically on launch. When a new version is available, you'll see a banner with the changelog — click Update to download and restart, or skip to install later from Settings → Updates.

We ship patch releases (1.4.x) regularly with bug fixes and minor improvements. Major releases (1.5, 2.0) bring new features and migrate your data automatically — no manual export/import.

Want to follow what's coming? The home page shows the current version and the “What’s new” modal lists every shipped change.