ACE Presenter — User Manual

A comprehensive reference for ACE Presenter, the worship/church presentation system. This manual covers both the macOS and Windows editions in one place, with a platform-differences appendix and honest status notes wherever a feature exists on one platform but not (yet) the other.

Which app is which. ACE Presenter ships as two native desktop apps that share one design and one underlying document model, plus a companion phone remote:

• macOS — the reference edition.
• Windows — a native port of the macOS app; a small number of features are still in progress (each is marked below).
• ACE Presenter Remote — a phone app (iOS + Android) that controls either edition over your local network.

How to read this manual

Platform conventions. Where a keyboard shortcut differs, both are given as macOS ⌘ / Windows Ctrl. Menu paths use ▸ (e.g. Output ▸ Screen Setup…). Modifier symbols: ⌘ Command, ⌥ Option/Alt, ⇧ Shift, ⌃ Control.

Status notes. Feature availability is flagged inline:

When in doubt, the Platform Differences appendix is the authoritative list of what is and isn't available on each edition today.

The main window at a glance

ACE Presenter is organized around workspaces you switch between (⌘1–⌘6 / Ctrl+1–Ctrl+6), a persistent media tray along the bottom, and an output control panel for taking content live.

• Cue Plan — your service order (the running order of cues) and the song/media library.
• Stage / Program — the live presentation view with preview (PVW) and program (PGM) controls.
• Edit — a non-destructive slide editor.
• Bible — the scripture workspace.
• Theme / Looks — visual styling.
• Top status bar — the LISTENING pill (detection), stream/NDI status, and venue badge.
• Output control panel — CLEAR / BLACK / LIVE / TAKE, per-layer clears, and audience/stage toggles.

Each of these is documented in its chapter above.

Editions & tiers

ACE Presenter has three licence tiers. Sign in from Help ▸ Sign In… (Windows) or Settings ▸ Account (macOS).

See Getting Started ▸ Accounts & Tiers for details and Preferences for where each gated feature lives.

Getting Started

This chapter gets you from installation to your first live slide, and explains the ideas the rest of the manual builds on.

Installing ACE Presenter

macOS

1. Open the ACE Presenter .dmg and drag ACE Presenter to your Applications folder.
2. Launch it from Applications. On first launch macOS may ask you to confirm opening an app downloaded from the internet.
3. When you first enable the phone remote or streaming, macOS will prompt for Local Network and (for detection) Microphone permission — allow these so those features can work.

Windows

1. Run the ACE Presenter installer (.exe) and follow the prompts.
2. Launch ACE Presenter from the Start menu.
3. Windows Firewall may prompt the first time the phone remote or a network camera (NDI) is used — allow access on your local network.

Updates are delivered in-app; see Preferences ▸ Updates and Appendix C.

First run

The first time you launch, a short Welcome tour appears a couple of seconds after the window opens, introducing the library, going live, auto-follow detection, scripture, themes, outputs, and streaming. You can dismiss it and re-open it later:

• macOS: Help ▸ Show Onboarding Tour
• Windows: Help ▸ Welcome Tour (and Help ▸ What's New after an update)

You'll also be asked once about optional, anonymous usage telemetry — this is your choice and can be changed later in Preferences.

Accounts & tiers

ACE Presenter runs fully without an account on the Free tier. Signing in unlocks your paid tier and (on macOS) lets the phone remote adopt your account automatically.

To sign in:

• macOS: Settings ▸ Account ▸ Sign In, or from the Upgrade sheet.
• Windows: Help ▸ Sign In…, or the sign-in prompt, or Preferences ▸ Account.

Enter the email and password for your ACE account. If you were given a licence key instead, you can paste it (macOS offers a "Have a licence key?" field). Cloud transcription (Deepgram) becomes available once you're signed in — see Detection & Auto-Follow.

What each tier unlocks

Upgrade any time from Help ▸ Upgrade ACE Presenter… (macOS) / Help ▸ ACE Plans… (Windows). See Preferences, Shortcuts & Menus for the Account pane.

Free-tier watermark. On Free, a faint diagonal "ACE FREE" mark is drawn across the audience output. It disappears the moment a Pro/Venue licence is active.

The main window

ACE Presenter centers on workspaces you switch between, a media tray along the bottom, and an output control panel for taking content live.

Workspaces (⌘1–⌘6 / Ctrl+1–Ctrl+6)

(Exact tab order and numbering can vary slightly by layout preset; the workspace switcher along the top always shows the current set.)

Persistent elements

• Top status bar — the LISTENING / IDLE pill (detection on/off), a match-confidence pill while listening, stream/NDI status, and the venue badge. See Detection & Auto-Follow and Streaming & Audio.
• Media tray (⌘M / Ctrl+M to toggle) — your images, videos, audio, and slide decks. See Media.
• Output control panel — CLEAR / BLACK / LIVE / TAKE, per-layer clears, and audience/stage toggles. See Outputs & Screens.

Layout presets

The workspace layout can be switched between presets (General, Sermon, Conference, Stream, Custom) to emphasize different tools. On macOS the Stream preset is also where the streaming controls appear; on Windows streaming is reached from Output ▸ Stream… regardless of layout. See Streaming & Audio.

Your first service (quick path)

1. Add songs. File ▸ New Song… (⌘N / Ctrl+N), paste the lyrics, and let ACE split them into sections. See Songs & Arrangements.
2. Build the order. Add songs and cues to the Cue Plan; drag to reorder. Add scripture from the Bible workspace. See Building a Service and Scripture.
3. Set up your screen. Output ▸ Screen Setup… (⇧⌘, / Ctrl+Shift+,) — assign your projector/TV to the audience output. See Outputs & Screens.
4. Pick a look. Choose a theme in the Looks workspace or edit one in the Theme editor. See Themes, Looks & Overlays.
5. Go live. Click a cue to send it live; use → / ← to move between slides, B (Windows) / ⌘B (macOS) to blank, and CLEAR to stop showing content.
6. (Optional) Turn on auto-follow. Click the LISTENING pill so ACE can follow the worship leader and advance slides for you. See Detection & Auto-Follow.
7. (Optional) Use your phone. Enable the remote and connect a phone as a wireless controller. See The Phone Remote.

See also

• Building a Service: Cues & Running Order
• Preferences, Shortcuts & Menus
• Appendix B — Keyboard Shortcuts
• Appendix C — External Dependencies & Troubleshooting

Building a Service: Cues & Running Order

This chapter covers the heart of ACE Presenter: assembling your order of service out of cues, arranging them into a running order, grouping them with service plans, and driving them live during the service. It also covers blank/clear, per‑cue auto‑advance, and the Go On Air service‑run mode with its scheduled auto‑start and speaker timer.

Song authoring (lyrics, sections, arrangements) is covered in Songs & Arrangements; presenting scripture is in Scripture; the deep slide editor and the Edit workspace slide grid are in Songs & Arrangements and Outputs & Screens. This chapter cross‑links to those where the topics touch.

Reading conventions. Shortcuts are written macOS ⌘X / Windows Ctrl+X. Status badges: both, macOS only, (Windows: not yet available), (build‑dependent). See the manual README and the Platform Differences appendix.

Concepts: cues, slides, and the running order

A service in ACE Presenter is an ordered list of cues. Each cue is one item in your order of service — a song, a scripture reading, a sermon block, an announcement loop, a video, and so on. A cue holds:

• a title,
• a kind (which drives its default look and behavior),
• one or more slides (the individual screens the cue can send live), and
• optional settings such as auto‑advance, an arrangement, a theme, and — where a switcher is configured — an ATEM video‑switcher trigger.

The running order is the top‑to‑bottom sequence of cues, shown in the left‑hand Cue Plan sidebar. Going live means selecting a cue and sending one of its slides to your outputs; Next/Previous then walk through that cue's slides and across cue boundaries.

Slides are the atomic unit of what appears on screen. A cue's slides can be lyrics, scripture verses, an image, a video, or a blank. Slides carry a couple of per‑slide properties (skip/disable and a label color) described under Slides below.

The Windows edition's document model is a deliberate "pragmatic subset" of the macOS model. Most differences in this chapter trace back to that: fewer cue kinds, no cross‑reference song library link, and a smaller set of per‑slide/per‑cue options. macOS is the reference edition; where the two differ, macOS is authoritative.

Cues and the running order

The Cue Plan sidebar

What it does. Lists every cue in the service, in order, and is where you reorder, edit, and take cues live.

How to get there. The Cue Plan sidebar is present in the Cue Plan workspace (⌘1 / Ctrl+1) on the left. The workspace header reads RUN SHEET; the top of the sidebar carries the service‑run bar (see Go On Air).

Take a cue live. Single‑click a cue row to take it live (see Going live).

Cue kinds

A cue's kind sets its default styling and how ACE treats it (for example, scripture cues resolve against the scripture theme template; announcement cues are typically rolling slides on auto‑advance). You choose the kind in the New Cue dialog.

macOS: 10 kinds. (macOS only for the full set)

Windows: 6 kinds. The Windows model stores six kinds — Song, Scripture, Media, Announcement, Sermon, Generic. The Add/Edit Cue dialog still offers nine choices in its KIND menu (Announcement, Song, Scripture, Sermon, Prayer, Offering, Video, Timer, Custom), but several fold down on save:

The practical effect: on Windows, Prayer/Offering/Timer/Custom cues all behave as Generic, and Video behaves as Media. (Windows: reduced cue‑kind set)

Reordering cues

What it does. Changes the top‑to‑bottom order of the running order.

How to get there.

• Drag and drop a cue row up or down. both
• Right‑click ▸ Move Up / Move Down. (Windows only) — a keyboard/menu alternative to dragging. (Move Up is disabled on the first row; Move Down on the last.)

Row actions (the cue context menu)

What it does. Per‑cue actions available from the row's context menu.

How to get there. Right‑click (or use the row's menu control) on a cue in the Cue Plan sidebar.

Multi‑select and batch delete

What it does. Select several cues at once to delete them together.

How to get there. ⌘‑click / Ctrl‑click to add individual cues to the selection, or ⇧‑click to select a range, then delete. both

Service plans (templates)

What they do. A service plan is a named grouping of cues — an order‑of‑service template such as "Sunday Morning" or "Midweek." Plans let you group the running order into collapsible, counted sections; cues not assigned to any plan appear under "Unassigned" / "All Cues." Applying a template reorders the running order to match. Service plans are also searchable from the Command Palette.

How to get there.

• Create: use the "NEW SERVICE PLAN" row at the top of the plan list. macOS shows an inline name field; Windows opens a name prompt. Creating a plan snapshots the current cue order into it.
• Rename / Delete: use the plan section's header menu.
• Assign a cue to a plan: drag the cue onto the plan section both, or on Windows use the cue row's Assign to Plan ▸ submenu.
• Apply a plan: selecting/applying the template reorders the running order to that plan's sequence.

Options.

• Plan sections are collapsible and show a cue count.
• Cues can move between plans and the "Unassigned"/"All Cues" bucket.

Cue kinds versus plans: a kind describes what one cue is; a plan describes how a set of cues is grouped and ordered. A single cue can belong to one plan at a time.

Slides

What they are. The individual screens inside a cue. Slide kinds are text, scripture, image, video, and blank. A cue can mix slides (for example, a song cue is a sequence of text slides).

Per‑slide properties.

How slides relate to cues. Going live sends one slide of the current cue to the outputs; Next/Previous step through the cue's (enabled) slides and then cross into the next/previous cue. Disabled slides are stepped over during live playback but remain editable.

Editing slides.

• Edit a text slide: the "Edit Slide" dialog (text slides only) edits the slide's section label and its lines.
• Edit‑grid right‑click menu offers: Edit, Enable/Disable, Label color, Apply Theme (to the cue), Background Media, Scaling, and Clear background. macOS additionally offers per‑cue Transition, Layer (background/foreground), and slide‑vs‑cue background scoping. (those three: macOS only)
• Deeper slide‑grid work lives in the Edit workspace (⌘3 / Ctrl+3), which shows the cue list plus a slide grid and is non‑destructive (editing there does not move the live cursor). Its header offers Reflow…, Slide Grid…, and Edit Cue…. On macOS the Slide Grid is an inline grid (1–6 columns) with a run‑sheet PVW/PGM; on Windows it is a modal Slide Grid dialog with real 16:9 theme thumbnails in a fixed 3‑column layout where clicking a thumbnail takes it live. Full coverage is in Songs & Arrangements and Outputs & Screens.

Going live: PVW, PGM, and Take

What it does. Sends cue content to your outputs. ACE distinguishes preview (what you're lining up) from program (what the audience sees).

How to get there.

• Single‑click a cue row in the Cue Plan sidebar to take it live. both
• PVW (preview) and PGM (program) tile buttons: PVW stages content to preview/stage only; PGM sends it to the audience. While a cue is live, the Cue Plan shows a PREV / NOW / NEXT confidence strip (the NOW slot carries a red LIVE badge), and a NEXT UP strip is pinned at the bottom.

Next / Previous / Take.

Next/Previous walk the current cue's enabled slides and then cross cue boundaries into the next/previous cue. On Windows the audience output window handles keys directly (arrows, Space, Page Down = next; B = blank; Esc = close); on macOS the audience window has no key handling of its own. See Outputs & Screens for output‑window behavior.

Blank and clear

Blanking hides output temporarily; clearing stops content on one or more layers. This is where macOS and Windows differ most within this chapter.

Blank

What it does. Toggles a blank (black) output without losing your place in the cue.

How to get there.

Clear

What it does. Stops content. The scope of what "clear" affects differs by platform.

macOS — per‑layer clear/restore. (macOS only) macOS clears (and restores) individual layers independently: slide, media, videoInput, props (lower‑third), and messages, plus a distinct "unset cursor." The output control panel exposes:

• TXT — clears the slide (.slide) layer,
• MEDIA — clears media + video input,
• L3 — clears the lower‑third / props layer,
• ALL CLR — clears everything and restores layers.

Windows — single clear + Blank‑Scope. Windows has a single clear() (stop all content) plus a Blank‑Scope selector (CLEAR TARGETS) that decides which outputs BLACK/CLEAR affect: All / Audience / Stage. There is no per‑layer clear on Windows; the LAYERS row's TXT simply toggles blank, MEDIA applies scoped per‑output media suppression, and ALL CLR clears everything. (Windows: no per‑layer clear; per‑layer restore not yet available)

The output control panel (CLEAR / BLACK↔︎SHOW / LIVE / TAKE, CLEAR TARGETS, LAYERS, and the AUD/STG output toggles) is documented in full in Outputs & Screens. This chapter covers only how blank/clear relate to running the service.

Per‑cue auto‑advance

What it does (macOS). A cue can be set to auto‑advance after N seconds — once it goes live, a timer counts down and then automatically advances to the next slide/cue. On macOS the timer actually fires and calls Next; it is suppressed while the output is blank, while a quick‑screen message is showing, or while the service is held.

How to get there. In the New/Edit Cue dialog, enable "Auto‑advance after" and set the seconds (Windows range: 1–300 s, default 10 s). The Cue Plan's order summary shows a count such as "N items · M auto‑advance," and cues with auto‑advance are listed under the TIMERS tab.

Windows: auto‑advance does not advance yet. Windows — not yet On Windows the countdown is display‑only. The stage display and the TIMERS tab show the countdown ticking down, but no timer calls Next — slides do not actually advance. The empty‑state text in the TIMERS tab even points you to set per‑cue "Auto Advance" seconds in the cue editor, but be aware that on Windows this only drives the on‑screen countdown, not automatic advancement. Do not rely on auto‑advance to run an unattended announcement loop on Windows; advance manually or via the phone remote.

The Go On Air service‑run mode

What it does. A dedicated "run the service" mode that takes the whole order of service live from the top and tracks service state (idle → on air → held → ended). It lives in the service‑run bar at the top of the Cue Plan.

How to get there. The service‑run bar shows GO ON AIR before the service; once on air it shows HOLD (which becomes RESUME while held) and END SERVICE.

Holding freezes the run and suspends auto‑advance; resuming continues. Ending clears the live output and returns to the pre‑service state.

Scheduled auto‑start

What it does. Arms an automatic Go On Air at a chosen time.

How to get there. Use the Schedule… control in the service‑run bar. Pick a date/time (Windows dialog: Schedule On Air ▸ Set Auto‑start). Once armed, the control shows a live "Auto‑start m:ss" countdown and fires GO ON AIR at zero (only if the service is still idle). Click the armed control again to cancel.

Options / platform note. macOS persists the schedule (date and plan). Windows keeps it in memory (time only) — it does not survive a relaunch and does not tie to a specific plan. (Windows: schedule is not persisted)

Speaker timer

What it does. A countdown/count‑up timer for the person speaking, surfaced on the stage display.

Options / platform note. macOS provides a full multi‑timer engine; Windows provides a single speaker timer. (Windows: single timer) See Outputs & Screens for how timers appear on the stage layout.

The New Cue dialog

What it does. Creates a new cue (or edits an existing one) — title, kind, content, auto‑advance, and, when a switcher is configured, an ATEM video‑switcher trigger.

How to get there.

• macOS: New Cue is offered from the cue‑plan / Edit rails. The rail's "Add Cue" menu includes options such as "Add Lower Third."
• Windows: File ▸ New Cue…, or the rail's "Add Cue" button (which appends a blank Generic cue directly). Editing an existing cue via Edit Cue… opens the same dialog titled Edit Cue.

Fields (Windows dialog).

The dialog's footer buttons are Cancel and Add Cue (or Save Cue when editing). Editing preserves the cue's other fields (audio trigger, arrangements, theme, label color, operator note, target lanes, lyrics render mode) rather than rebuilding the cue from scratch.

Creating songs (Title / Artist / Lyrics with auto‑split sections) uses the separate New Song dialog (⌘N / Ctrl+N), covered in Songs & Arrangements. On macOS that sheet doubles as the song editor; on Windows it is create‑only (edit later via Reflow / the song CRUD).

See also

• Songs & Arrangements — the song library, sections, arrangements, and lyric editing
• Scripture — presenting Bible passages and comparison
• Detection & Auto‑Follow (AI) — Learn Timing and automatic song/scripture following
• Outputs & Screens — the output control panel, blank/clear controls, and the stage display
• Preferences, Shortcuts & Menus — the command palette and the full menu map
• Platform Differences appendix — the authoritative macOS ↔︎ Windows list

Songs & Arrangements

Songs are the heart of most worship services, and ACE Presenter treats them as reusable, structured documents rather than one-off slide decks. A song is a title, an optional artist, and a set of sections (Verse 1, Chorus, Bridge…), each holding a few lines of lyrics. Because a song is structured this way, ACE can auto-colour its sections, let you re-order them into named arrangements, and drop the same song into any number of services without retyping it.

This chapter covers the song library, creating and editing songs, how sections work, building and applying arrangements, the Reflow lyric editor, and the Edit workspace / Slide Grid as they apply to song cues.

Related reading:

• Building a Service: Cues & Running Order — how a song becomes a cue in the running order, going live, blank/clear, auto-advance.
• Themes, Looks & Overlays — how song lyrics are styled, and the CCLI licence number on song slides.

The song library vs. the running order

Two lists sit in the left sidebar, and it's worth being clear on the difference:

What it does. The library is your permanent stock of songs. The running order is a selection from that stock (plus scripture, media, and announcements) arranged for one service. Adding a song to the plan does not remove it from the library — the same song can appear in many services over time.

Platform difference — how a plan cue links back to the library.

• macOS: the library is a generic collection on the presentation document, and each cue carries a libraryRef back to its source song. Editing the library song propagates the change to every plan cue that references it. macOS only
• Windows: songs live in a dedicated Song library with revision-based (rev/CAS) concurrency to keep edits safe when the phone remote and the desktop edit at once. A plan cue created from a song does not keep a live back-reference — edits made through Reflow or the library are applied to the cue you're editing. (Windows)

Adding a song to the plan

How to get there:

• Per-row + — every song in the Library list has a + button; click it to append that song to the running order. both
• Drag the song from the Library list into the Cue Plan. (macOS; Windows adds via + and right-click)
• From the New Song dialog — tick "Also add to current service" so the song lands in the plan the moment you create it (see below). both

Taking a song slide live

What it does. With a song selected, its slides appear in the preview area. Clicking a slide in the preview takes it live and, if the song wasn't already in the running order, auto-adds it to the plan at the same time — so you can go live straight from the library without a separate "add" step. both

Preview shows a hint until you pick a song: "Click a song in the left sidebar to preview its slides here, then Add to Plan." The Add to Plan button is available on the preview pane. (Windows)

For prev/next, PVW vs PGM, and blank/clear once a song is live, see Building a Service.

Searching the library

The Library list has a search box that filters by song title (and artist/name).

Platform difference. macOS search is scope-aware (it can narrow to songs, scripture, etc.). The phone remote's library search on Windows is a flat title/name substring match. (see The Phone Remote)

Creating a song

What it does. The New Song dialog turns pasted lyrics into a fully structured, sectioned song. You give it a title (and optionally an artist), paste the lyrics with a blank line between each section, and ACE splits them into Verse / Chorus / Bridge automatically. A live section preview on the right updates as you type.

How to get there:

The dialog

How auto-split works

• Blank lines separate sections. Each block of lines becomes one section.
• If a block's first line is a recognised label (Verse / Chorus / Bridge, etc.), that line becomes the section's label and is removed from the sung lines.
• Blocks without a label are numbered automatically — Verse 1, Verse 2, … — and a repeated block is treated as a Chorus.

So pasting plain lyrics with sensible blank lines is usually enough; you rarely need to type the labels yourself. On Windows the header reads "Lyrics — blank line between sections; "Chorus" / "Verse 2" lines are detected," and the dialog notes the song is "Saved to Library."

Editing an existing song

Here the two editions diverge in an important way.

Platform difference — the New Song dialog and editing.

• macOS: the New Song sheet doubles as the song editor. Right-click a song in the Library and choose Edit Song… (pencil) to reopen the same sheet in edit mode — change the title, artist, or lyrics, and (because of libraryRef) the edit propagates to plan cues built from that song. macOS only
• Windows: the New Song dialog is create-only. To change an existing song's words you edit it in place with the Reflow editor, or through the library's create/edit/delete (CRUD) operations, which use rev-based concurrency. There is no "reopen the New Song dialog to edit" path. (Windows: New Song is create-only)

The Reflow editor (below) is the reliable, cross-platform way to fix a typo or re-line lyrics on a song that's already in your plan.

Song sections & auto-colouring

Every slide in a song carries a section label (Verse 1, Chorus, Bridge…). ACE colours slides by section so the operator can see the shape of a song at a glance:

(both — the colour comes from the section label automatically; you don't set it per slide for songs.)

These labels are what make arrangements possible: an arrangement is simply an ordering of these named sections.

Arrangements

What they are. An arrangement is a named ordering of a song's sections — for example a "Short Version" that plays Verse 1 → Chorus → Verse 2 → Chorus, or a "Full" version that adds the bridge and a final chorus. One song can hold several arrangements; repeats are allowed (you can play the chorus as many times as the band does). Applying an arrangement re-orders the song's slides without changing the underlying lyrics.

The Arrangement Editor

What it does. A two-column editor: on the left, a palette of all the song's sections; on the right, the draft order you're building. Tap sections to append them, drag to re-order, name the result, and save it.

How to get there:

• Cue-row menu ▸ Arrangement submenu — pick an existing arrangement to apply it, or choose Manage Arrangements… (or New Arrangement… if none exist yet) to open the editor. both
• Windows also: Editors ▸ Arrangements opens the editor for the selected song cue.

Using it:

Applying an arrangement (and natural order)

How to get there. From the cue-row ▸ Arrangement submenu, choose the arrangement you want. To return to the song's original section order, choose Default (Windows) — the built-in "natural order" that plays sections as they were authored. Selecting Default clears the active arrangement (internally, applying an empty arrangement id = natural order). (both — macOS labels the natural-order choice as the un-set/none option in the same submenu.)

Platform note — how order is stored. macOS stores an arrangement as a list of slide IDs; Windows stores it as a list of slide indices. The result is identical to you as a user — the same sections in the same order.

The Reflow editor

What it does. Reflow is an in-place lyric editor for a song cue. Use it to fix a typo, re-line a verse, or adjust how lyrics are split across slides without rebuilding the song from scratch. It's the practical way to edit a song that's already in your running order — and on Windows it's the main path for editing song lyrics after creation.

How to get there:

• Edit workspace header ▸ Reflow… (see below). both
• Available on song cues only — cues that aren't songs don't have lyric reflow.

Changes you make in Reflow apply to the song cue you're editing.

The Edit workspace & Slide Grid

What it does. The Edit workspace is a non-destructive editing view: a cue list beside a slide grid, where you can rework slides without moving the live cursor. Nothing you do here changes what's currently on the audience screen — it's a safe place to prepare and tidy songs mid-service.

How to get there:

The workspace header offers three actions for the selected cue: Reflow…, Slide Grid…, and Edit Cue….

The Slide Grid

What it does. A grid of a song's slides, rendered as thumbnails, for reviewing the whole song at once and jumping to any slide.

Platform difference — Slide Grid.

• macOS: an inline grid inside the Edit workspace with an adjustable 1–6 columns (via the column-count control) and placeholder thumbnails, plus run-sheet PVW/PGM tiles. (macOS)
• Windows: a modal Slide Grid dialog (Slide Grid…) that renders real 16:9 theme thumbnails — actual previews styled with the cue's theme — in a fixed 3-column layout. Click a thumbnail to take that slide live. (Windows)

Because the Windows grid paints true themed thumbnails, it's a faithful preview of what each slide will look like on the audience screen; the fixed three columns are not adjustable.

Editing individual song slides

For song lyrics, prefer Reflow (above) — it understands sections and re-lining. The generic per-slide controls (enable/disable a slide, label colour, apply theme, background media, scaling) are shared with all cue kinds and are documented under Building a Service ▸ Slides, including the macOS-only per-slide options (per-cue transitions, background layer scoping, per-slide media binding).

Quick reference

Scripture

The Bible workspace is where you look up, preview, and present passages of scripture — by typing a reference, browsing book/chapter/verse, searching by keyword, comparing translations side by side, and (during a live service) following along with what the preacher is quoting. It shares the same output pipeline as everything else in ACE, so a passage goes to the audience and stage screens exactly the way a song or slide does.

This chapter covers the Bible workspace itself. Automatic Bible-reference detection from live audio is introduced briefly here and documented in full in Detection & Auto-Follow (AI). For turning a passage into part of your running order, see Building a Service.

Platform note. The Bible workspace exists on both editions and works the same way for the core tasks. Two differences matter: macOS ships a wider set of bundled translations, while Windows adds a Zefania XML import for bringing your own; and live auto-follow behaves slightly differently (covered under Auto-scroll & follow).

Opening the Bible workspace

What it does. Switches the main window to the scripture view: a grid of verse tiles for the current chapter, with a two-row control bar across the top for navigation, search, comparison, and display options.

How to get there.

• Click the BIBLE tab (workspace switcher).
• Or use the workspace shortcut — the Bible workspace is one of the numbered workspaces (macOS ⌘1–⌘6 / Windows Ctrl+1–Ctrl+6); see Preferences, Shortcuts & Menus for the exact number in your layout.

The chapter you were last viewing is restored. The top control bar has two rows: Row 1 holds the keyword search field plus the Compare and Options buttons; Row 2 holds the reference field, the book / chapter / verse pickers, the translation picker, and GO / CLEAR.

Finding a passage

The reference field, pickers, GO and CLEAR

What it does. Gets you to a specific verse or range. Type a reference like John 3:1-36 into the reference field and press GO (or Enter), or build the location with the three pickers.

How to get there. Row 2 of the control bar:

Ranges are fully supported — John 3:1-36 selects verses 1 through 36, and All verses selects the entire chapter.

Arrow-key navigation

What it does. Moves through scripture without touching the mouse once the grid has focus.

This is the fastest way to walk a reading verse by verse while it is live.

Search — reference vs keyword

What it does. One search box (Row 1, placeholder "Search reference or keywords…") does double duty:

• Type a reference (e.g. Romans 8:28) and it jumps the pickers/grid straight to that location.
• Type keywords (e.g. love your enemies) and it scans the entire Bible — roughly 31,000 verses — and lists matches.

Options. Keyword results are capped at 200 matches to keep the list responsive; narrow your terms if you need something further down. Results are drawn from the currently active translation.

Translations

What it does. Chooses which translation the grid, preview, and live output use. The translation picker (Row 2) groups entries into Installed and Online (licensed).

How to get there. Click the translation button (it shows the current translation's name). The menu is grouped:

Honesty note. Online and licensed translations are not usable on the Free tier, and they require a reachable gateway (ACE's licensing/content service). If you are on Free, or the gateway is unavailable, these entries will not present. The picker groups them under Online (licensed) so it is clear which ones carry that requirement. Everything under Installed works offline on any tier.

Bring your own key. You may optionally supply your own API.Bible key to access additional online translations through your own account. Configure this in Preferences ▸ Bible (see Preferences, Shortcuts & Menus).

Getting more translations.

• Download translations… both — the picker's overflow offers a downloader for additional bundled/available versions.
• Import translation (Zefania XML)… (Windows only) — Windows adds a menu item to import a translation from a Zefania-format XML file. This appears in the translation picker's overflow menu, the Options menu, and the workspace context menu. macOS does not expose Zefania import here; it relies on its wider bundled set and the Import Wizard for other scripture formats (see Media).

Cues built from a licensed translation are internally flagged as licensed, so that exporting a service will not redistribute copyrighted verse text.

Presenting a passage

What it does. Sends the selected verse or range to preview and, when you choose, to the live audience/stage output — with the same layering and theming as any other slide.

How to get there. From the verse grid:

Tiles carry the tooltip "Click to preview · double-click to go live" as a reminder.

The passage (right-click) menu:

Passage options

What it does. Controls how verses are laid out on the slides — numbering, whether the reference and translation are shown, whether each verse gets its own slide, and where the reference appears.

How to get there. The Options button (Row 1). Settings persist between sessions.

Reference placement (only meaningful when Show reference is on):

Windows theme caveat. The Windows slide renderer does not yet honour the {{translation}} token or indexed {{verse:N}} tokens in custom themes, and it uses {{scripture}} where macOS uses {{verse}}. Multi-template and comparison themes are macOS-only. If a custom scripture theme looks wrong on Windows, this is why — see Themes, Looks & Overlays.

Compare translations

What it does. Shows the same verse in several translations side by side, so you can read them together and then push the comparison live.

How to get there. The Compare button (Row 1). Pick the translations to include; the panel shows each translation's rendering of the current verse. A GO LIVE action sends the comparison to the audience. A Clear comparison entry resets the set.

Requirements. both for bundled translations. If your comparison set includes any Online (licensed) translation, that translation still requires Pro + a gateway Pro — the same rule as elsewhere. Side-by-side comparison slides are richest on macOS; on Windows, see the theme caveat above.

Auto-scroll & follow (live detection)

What it does. During a live service with detection running, the workspace helps you keep pace with the passage being read or quoted. The selected verse always auto-scrolls into view in the grid both. Beyond that, the two editions follow live Bible-reference detection differently:

On both editions, verses the preacher seems to be paraphrasing surface as a suggested verses panel — each entry has a Show button that pushes that verse live, and a CLEAR to dismiss all suggestions.

A reference already present in your running order will jump to that cue when heard. A reference with no matching cue raises the banner (or, if Auto-program spoken scripture is enabled, can build a cue and go live automatically — that setting is off by default). All of this — how references are parsed, plausibility guards, "mentioned in passing" vetoes, and the auto-program toggle — is documented in Detection & Auto-Follow (AI).

Deep Scripture Study (cross-references)

What it does. Opens a study panel for a verse showing its cross-references — related passages drawn from the bundled Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — so you can explore connected scripture without leaving ACE. It works offline.

How to get there.

• Right-click a verse and choose Study {reference}…, or
• Use the Study… entry in the passage menu.

From the study panel you can navigate to any cross-referenced verse and, from there, preview or present it like any other passage.

See also

• Detection & Auto-Follow (AI) — live transcription, Bible-reference detection, and the confidence/translation banner details.
• Building a Service — how Add Passage to Plan fits into your running order.
• Themes, Looks & Overlays — scripture slide templates, tokens, and the Windows renderer caveats.
• Preferences, Shortcuts & Menus — the Bible preferences pane and your BYO API.Bible key.

Detection & Auto-Follow (AI)

ACE Presenter can listen to your service and follow along automatically — advancing song lyrics as they're sung, jumping to a scripture the moment it's read aloud, and identifying a song by the sound of the band alone. This chapter covers turning detection on, choosing what it listens for, the speech backends and languages behind it, the Song Bank (acoustic fingerprinting of your own recordings), Bible-reference auto-detection, lyric matching, operator voice commands, and the full Detection Settings dialog.

Detection is closely tied to two other workspaces:

• Scripture — where detected Bible references land and preview.
• Songs & Arrangements — the lyrics that auto-follow matches against.

How honest is "AI" here? Everything below runs on-device by default and for free. The cloud option (Deepgram) is optional and requires sign-in. Where a capability is far richer on one platform — and song matching is the big one — this chapter says so plainly rather than promising parity.

Turning detection on

What it does. Starts (or stops) the listening pipeline: the app captures audio from the chosen input, transcribes it, and feeds the transcript to the matchers.

How to get there.

• The LISTENING / IDLE pill in the top status bar. Click it to toggle. It reads LISTENING while active and IDLE when off both.
• The START / STOP button beside the pill. It reads START when idle and STOP while listening both.
• Menu: Detection ▸ Toggle Listening — macOS ⌘⇧L. On Windows this menu item exists but has no bound keyboard shortcut; use the pill, the START/STOP button, or the menu.

Shortcut collision (be aware). On Windows, Ctrl+L toggles the audience screen, not listening. On macOS the same-looking chord ⌘⇧L toggles listening. Don't assume the macOS listening shortcut carries over.

Options.

• Auto-start on launch. If enabled, detection begins listening a moment after the app opens, so an unattended machine starts following on its own both.
• Matcher-confidence pill. While listening, a small music-note pill (e.g. ♪ 72%) appears next to LISTENING once the current match confidence rises above a low floor. It reflects how sure the lyric/song matcher currently is both.
• No usable transcriber? If you press START but no backend can actually transcribe (for example, no model installed, or a cloud backend with no sign-in), the app tells you rather than pretending to listen.

Choosing what it listens for: detection target mode

What it does. Focuses detection on songs, on scripture, or lets it decide.

How to get there. The AUTO · SONG · BIBLE segmented pill in the top bar, or the Detection menu:

• AUTO — macOS ⌥1 / Windows Ctrl+Alt+1
• SONG — macOS ⌥2 / Windows Ctrl+Alt+2
• BIBLE — macOS ⌥3 / Windows Ctrl+Alt+3

Options.

Pick SONG during worship sets and BIBLE during the sermon if you want to avoid cross-talk between the two matchers; leave it on AUTO for a hands-off service.

Speech backends

What it does. Chooses the engine that turns audio into text.

How to get there. Detection Settings ▸ Backend (radio buttons). Open Detection Settings from Detection ▸ Detection Settings… — macOS ⌥⌘, / Windows Ctrl+Alt+,.

Options.

Changing the backend applies without a full restart; the matchers stay untouched while the transcriber is swapped underneath them.

Language selection

What it does. Tells the transcriber which language(s) to expect. Getting this right is the single biggest lever on accuracy.

How to get there. Detection Settings ▸ Language.

Options.

• Auto (multilingual) — the transcriber detects the spoken language itself.
• A specific language — pick one to lock the transcriber to it.
• Biased languages (✨) — a ✨ marks languages that ship with a hand-crafted worship/sermon vocabulary bias (better recognition of hymn and scripture wording). Languages without the sparkle use generic Whisper vocabulary.

macOS offers a broader list (~30 languages, each with bias metadata); **Windows offers a fixed set (~20)**.

Warnings the dialog raises.

• English-only model + a non-English language. If you've selected an .en model but chosen a non-English language, the app warns that the English-only model produces unusable text and suggests switching to Base — Multilingual (or a larger multilingual model).
• Languages that need Large v3 Turbo. Some languages can't be transcribed usefully by the bundled base models. The dialog flags these and points you to download Large v3 Turbo — "slower, but a slow transcript beats a wrong one."

Deepgram cloud transcription

What it does. Streams your audio to Deepgram's nova-3 model for low-latency cloud transcription instead of running Whisper on your machine.

How to get there. Detection Settings ▸ Backend ▸ Deepgram (cloud), then the Deepgram Cloud section shows its ready state.

Options / requirements.

• Managed (pooled) access — requires sign-in. When you're signed in, ACE authenticates to its relay (wss://api.ace-presenter.app) using your licence, and cloud transcription is ready with no key needed. If you're not signed in, the section tells you to sign in and use WhisperKit (on-device) in the meantime.
• Bring your own key. Enter a personal Deepgram token and ACE connects directly to api.deepgram.com. A personal key needs no sign-in.
• Empty-audio fallback macOS only. On macOS, if Deepgram returns empty audio, the app quietly spins up a parallel WhisperKit fallback so you don't lose the transcript. Windows has no such fallback — if the cloud stream goes quiet, it stays on Deepgram.

Detection model management (WhisperKit backend)

What it does. Manages the on-device Whisper models used by the WhisperKit backend.

How to get there. Detection Settings ▸ Detection model (visible only while the WhisperKit backend is selected).

Options.

• macOS downloads a rich catalogue from Hugging Face: tiny / base / small in both .en (English) and multilingual variants, plus large-v3-turbo.
• Windows bundles two base GGML models out of the box, plus a Download and Choose a detection model (pick a local file) button for larger models:

Anything larger than base — notably Large v3 Turbo, the most accurate multilingual option — is an extra download and needs a fast machine.

Song Bank — Acoustic ID

What it does. Recognizes a song by its sound, not its lyrics — you fingerprint your own recordings, and the app matches the live band's audio against them. Once a song is acoustically identified it can drive slide changes from its learned timing, even without any usable transcription. This is ideal for instrumental passages, non-lyrical intros, and songs the transcriber struggles with.

Your audio stays local. Fingerprinting and matching happen entirely on your machine; recordings never leave it. Available to all tiers.

How to get there. Detection Settings ▸ Song Bank — Acoustic ID.

Options.

• macOS uses Apple ShazamKit with a .shazamcatalog. You build and reveal the catalog from the dialog; the on/off flag lives outside the dialog.
• Windows uses ACE's own fingerprinter. Everything is in-dialog: an on/off toggle, plus add / remove / list controls for the recordings in your bank.
• Song lock. When the Song Bank identifies a song, it owns the song selection (locks it), and the learned timing advances slides without needing a transcript.

If detection reports no Song Bank yet, add a recording in Detection Settings and start again.

Bible reference auto-detection

What it does. Listens for spoken (or typed) scripture references and surfaces them — jumping to a matching cue, previewing in a banner, or (optionally) building and showing the verse on the spot. See Scripture for how passages are presented.

How it recognizes references.

• Spoken and typed forms — digit references ("John 3:16"), spoken forms ("John chapter three verse sixteen"), and bare forms are all parsed.
• Chapter-only → suggestion. "Let's turn to Romans 8" (no verse) becomes a suggestion rather than an immediate jump.
• Bare "verse N" — within a known chapter, "verse nine" is understood in context.
• Plausibility guards. The parser checks chapters-per-book and splits run-together numbers so it doesn't invent references.
• Paraphrase → promotable suggestions. A loosely quoted verse becomes a suggestion you can promote. macOS resolves these with a semantic embedding model (NLEmbedding); Windows uses a word-index (VerseSearchIndex) — lighter, but effective for close wording.

What happens on a hit.

• A reference already in your running order always jumps to that cue — you put it there, so it's meant to be shown.
• A reference with no cue shows in a banner (unless "send to Program" is on — see below). The banner on macOS shows a confidence % and the translation; Windows shows the reference only.
• "Mentioned in passing" is vetoed. A reference dropped casually mid-sentence (rather than announced as the passage) is suppressed so you don't jump on every aside.

Auto-program spoken scripture (default OFF).

• What it does. Builds a cue and sends a heard verse straight to Program even when no cue exists for it.
• How to get there. On Windows it's Detection Settings ▸ Spoken Scripture ▸ "Send a heard verse straight to Program"; on macOS it lives in the detection Settings sheet.
• Why it's off by default. Most operators want to see a verse before the congregation does. A reference already in the order always jumps regardless of this toggle — this setting only governs verses that have no cue.

Lyric matching & song auto-advance

What it does. Matches the live transcript against the lyrics of the current (or a candidate) song and advances the slide when confidence is high enough.

How to get there. Automatic while listening in AUTO or SONG mode. The threshold is Detection Settings ▸ Advanced (VAD) ▸ Min match confidence.

Options.

• Min match confidence. The floor a match must clear before the app jumps slides (Windows default 50%, adjustable 20–90%). Raise it if it jumps too eagerly; lower it if it hesitates.

Platform reality — song following differs a lot.

• macOS is far more sophisticated: semantic embeddings, a vote / challenger state machine that confirms the song before committing, silence-hold, ACRCloud acoustic verification, and an online AI identification fallback (via Anthropic / Genius) that can even auto-import a song it recognizes but you don't have.
• Windows is a single token-set F1-threshold jump: it compares word overlap and advances when the score clears Min match confidence. There is no confirmed-song state machine and no online fallback. It follows well within a song you already have loaded, but won't identify or import an unknown one.

Operator voice commands

What it does. A separate operator microphone that takes spoken commands from the person running the service — "next", "previous", "blank", "clear", "take", "live", "next verse", "show John 3 16", "start timer five minutes", "go to {cue}", and so on. This is distinct from the detection mic that follows the congregation/worship.

How to get there. The OP MIC pill (a microphone-circle icon) in the toolbar. Related settings: Detection Settings ▸ Operator Voice Commands ▸ "Show command toast" (a confirmation toast when a command is recognized).

Options / status.

• macOS — fully functional (OperatorMicSession + a VoiceCommandEngine). Toggle the operator mic and speak the commands above.
• Windows — Windows — not yet. The OP MIC pill is a placeholder: it has no handler and there is no voice-command engine behind it. Toggling it does nothing yet. Use the keyboard and the phone remote for hands-off control on Windows.

Hallucination filtering

What it does. Silently drops the junk that Whisper-class models emit on music, silence, and noise, so it never reaches your matchers or the transcript panel.

What it removes. Repetition loops, filler, stock YouTube-style artifacts ("thank you for watching", "please subscribe"), sound tags ([Música], ♪), and near-duplicate lines. The transcript panel shows the cleaned text. This is always on and behaves equivalently on both platforms; its sensitivity is governed by the VAD thresholds below.

The Detection Settings dialog (control inventory)

How to get there. Detection ▸ Detection Settings… — macOS ⌥⌘, / Windows Ctrl+Alt+,.

The dialog gathers everything above in one place. On Windows it also hosts the Song Bank on/off toggle and the auto-program spoken-scripture toggle in-dialog; on macOS those two live elsewhere (a Song Bank flag outside the dialog, and the auto-program option in the Settings sheet).

Advanced — VAD thresholds. Voice-activity detection skips near-silent audio (saving CPU and avoiding hallucinations) and force-transcribes loud chunks. Defaults are tuned; change these only if you see dropouts on quiet voices or hallucinations over instrumentals.

Quick reference — detection shortcuts

See Preferences, Shortcuts & Menus and Appendix B — Keyboard Shortcuts for the complete map, and Appendix A — Platform Differences for the authoritative list of what's available on each edition.

Media

Everything you show that isn't a song or a scripture passage — background photos, motion loops, video clips, worship-bed audio, and imported slide decks (PowerPoint, Keynote, PDF) — lives in the media library and is reached through the media tray along the bottom of the window. This chapter covers finding and organizing media, grouping it into playlists, sending it live, playing video, importing decks and other files, pulling in free stock imagery, and how ACE stores your media on disk.

For styling what sits on top of media (lower-thirds, logos, translation bands), see Themes, Looks & Overlays. For choosing which display media lands on, see Outputs & Screens. To drive video playback from your phone, see The Phone Remote.

Tier note. Image and video playback are Pro features. On the Free tier you can build and organize a library, but sending image/video content to the audience output is gated. See Getting Started ▸ Accounts & Tiers.

The media tray

What it does. The media tray is the persistent bin of all imported media. It filters by kind, searches, marks favorites, tags with colors, and is where you double-click to go live.

How to get there. The tray sits along the bottom of the main window. Toggle it with ⌘M / Ctrl+M, or click the chevron / the MEDIA header to collapse and expand it.

• Collapse / expand both — chevron or the MEDIA title bar.
• Drag to resize macOS only — drag the tray's top edge between 140 and 280 pt; the height is remembered. On Windows the tray is a fixed 140 px and cannot be resized.

Kind tabs

Across the top of the tray are five kind tabs that filter the library and show a live count. The default tab is Photo.

Motion is never auto-assigned both. Importing a video file lands it under Video, not Motion. The Motion tab only lists assets that were authored/tagged as motion loops externally — it will look empty if you have only imported ordinary clips.

Adding files

How to get there.

• Click + ADD FILES in the tray both.
• macOS: also ⇧⌘I (Add Files).
• Windows: there is no add-files shortcut; Ctrl+I opens the Import Wizard instead.

Supported formats.

Search

What it does. The search box narrows the current view by name.

• macOS matches both the file name and its color-tag names.
• Windows matches the name only — tag search is macOS only.

Favorites

What it does. Star an asset to pin it and filter to just your go-tos.

How to get there. Hover an item and click the star overlay to favorite it. Use the Show favorites only star toggle in the tray header to filter, or the Favorites row in the rail. both

Recents

What it does. A rolling list of the media you presented most recently, newest first, reachable from the Recents rail row.

• macOS keeps the last 20; Windows keeps the last 30.
• Windows quirk: the Recents rail badge is currently hardcoded to show 0 even when items are present — the list itself is correct; only the badge count is wrong.

Color tags

What it does. Assign one of six colors as a corner dot to group assets visually (e.g. all pre-service loops in blue).

Options. None / Red / Yellow / Green / Blue / Purple, set from the item's right-click menu. both On macOS, tag names are also searchable (see Search).

Scaling / fit

What it does. Controls how an asset fills the frame when it goes live.

Options. Fit / Fill / Stretch / Scale + Blur. Defaults: video → Fill, photo and deck → Fit.

• macOS re-applies a scaling change to the live asset instantly.
• Windows applies the change on the next time the asset is promoted.

Grid / list view and zoom

What it does. Toggle between a thumbnail grid and a compact list, and adjust thumbnail size with the zoom slider. both

• macOS remembers your grid/list choice and zoom level.
• Windows does not persist these between sessions.

Missing-file handling

What it does. If a source file has moved, been deleted, or lives on an unplugged drive, its thumbnail shows a red MISSING badge. both

• macOS only: relink via configured search paths, and a clean-up-unlinked-media action to purge entries whose files are gone. On Windows there is no relink or clean-up tool — use Reveal to locate the file, then re-add it.

Media playlists

What it does. Playlists are named, ordered groups of media — a "Pre-Service" set, a "Communion" set — alongside three built-in virtual lists: All, Favorites, and Recents.

How to get there. The playlist rail runs down the side of the tray. Create, rename, and delete playlists from the rail; the virtual lists are always present.

Options / adding to a playlist.

• macOS: drag an asset onto a playlist to add it; drag between playlists to move it. Each playlist item can also carry per-item overrides — a Layer choice (background / foreground) and a Fit override — that apply only within that playlist.
• Windows: right-click an asset and choose Add to Playlist. There is no drag-to-add, and no per-item Layer/Fit overrides — those are macOS only.

Presenting media

What it does. Sends the selected media to your outputs.

How to get there / options.

• Double-click = go live both:
  • Photo or deck page → an image cue.
  • Video or motion → a video cue (motion loops and plays muted).
  • Audio → plays with no visual change.
• Single-click = set as a persistent background layer macOS only. On Windows a single click only selects the item — there is no single-click-to-background equivalent.
• Delete an asset: ⌫ or ⌘⌫ (macOS) / Delete (Windows).

Video playback and transport

This is the largest single difference between the two editions — read the badges carefully.

macOS (both playback and operator transport):

• One shared player drives all outputs at once, so audience, stage, and preview stay in sync.
• An on-clip transport overlay gives play/pause, a scrub bar, an audio meter, and mute directly on the clip.
• Spacebar toggles play/pause app-wide.
• Live, moving video appears in the dashboard preview.

Windows (playback only — see caveats):

• Video plays in the live output window (audio is on the output window too).
• No local operator transport UI. Play/pause/scrub/seek is remote-driven only — you control transport from the phone remote, not from the desktop app. (Windows: not yet available on the desktop.)
• The dashboard preview shows a still frame (a poster image or a "▶ VIDEO" placeholder), not live decoded video. Live in-app preview is a later phase. (Windows: not yet available.)

In short: on Windows, once a video is live you steer it from your phone; the desktop shows a still poster where macOS shows the moving clip.

Video thumbnails and poster frames

What it does. ACE grabs a frame (around the 1-second mark) to represent each video in the tray, plus a duration chip and an audio badge. both

• macOS generates thumbnails in memory and does not persist them.
• Windows generates a 640-px-wide poster frame, saves it (under the app's thumbs folder) along with the clip's duration, so both survive a restart.

Slide-deck import (PPTX / PDF / Keynote → pages)

What it does. Imports a presentation deck and turns it into a series of presentable page images, shown as a single entry on the Slides tab with a page-count chip.

How to get there. Add a deck like any other file (+ ADD FILES / Import Wizard).

Requirements and behavior.

LibreOffice is required for non-PDF decks on both editions and is not bundled (~600 MB). Install it first if you present PowerPoint or Keynote files. On Windows, importing a PPTX without LibreOffice installed produces an empty deck (0 pages); on macOS you still get the slide text via the native fallback. See Appendix C — External Dependencies.

The Import Wizard

What it does. A guided, four-stage importer — Source → Preview → Import → Summary.

How to get there. ⌘I / Ctrl+I.

• macOS: auto-detects and dispatches many file kinds — ProPresenter 6/7, ChordPro, plain text, PPTX, PDF, Keynote, Bible formats (OSIS, Zefania, MyBible, OpenSong), images, and video — and supports working drag-and-drop into the wizard.
• Windows: the wizard completes decks only (plus nominal ChordPro / presentation handling). Other kinds are listed as "support pending", and the drop zone ("Drop files here, or use Add files…") is static — drag-and-drop is not functional yet. (Windows: not yet available) for non-deck formats. To bring in ordinary images, video, and audio on Windows, use + ADD FILES in the tray instead.

Stock media (Pixabay)

What it does. Searches the Pixabay stock library and downloads images (and, on macOS, video/motion) straight into your media library.

How to get there. Output ▸ Stock Media…

Requirements. A Pixabay API key is required.

• macOS: enter it under Preferences ▸ Integrations.
• Windows: set it in settings (stock/pixabayKey) or via the ACE_PIXABAY_KEY environment variable.

Options. Search images or video, then download to the library. macOS offers 7 presets (including motion/video); Windows offers 4 image presets.

Pixabay keys on Windows are stored in your user settings in plain text (not a credential vault). See Appendix C — External Dependencies.

How media is stored

What it does. The Manage media automatically setting (default ON) copies every import into ACE's own media folder, so a show doesn't break when the original file is moved, deleted, or on a drive that gets unplugged. With it off, ACE references the original file paths in place.

How to get there. Preferences / Settings (see Preferences).

• macOS copies into ~/Library/Application Support/ACE/Media with a UUID filename prefix.
• Windows copies into the app's media folder under AppData, keeping the original filename.

Themes, Looks & Overlays

This chapter covers everything that controls how your slides look on screen: the Looks workspace for applying and switching themes at showtime, the Theme Editor for designing them, the overlays that sit on top of every slide (lower-thirds, logo/watermark, translation band, CCLI, the Free-tier watermark), and the Stage Display Layout editor for your confidence/stage monitor.

For where these themes actually appear — audience versus stage windows, multiple outputs, transparency for downstream keying — see Outputs & Screens. For the slide content that themes render (song lyrics, scripture, sections), see Songs & Arrangements and Scripture.

Reading conventions. Shortcuts are written macOS ⌘X / Windows Ctrl+X. Availability badges: both, macOS only, (Windows: not yet available), Pro.

The Looks workspace

What it does. The Looks workspace is where you apply a theme (or a Look) to what is currently on screen. It has two sections:

• THEMES — a grid of theme tiles. Tapping a tile applies that theme immediately (applyTheme); the tile that is currently on air shows a LIVE badge.
• LOOKS — named per-screen theme assignments (for example, a warm theme on the audience screen while the stage screen runs a high-contrast cue-list look). Pro

The two sections are mutually exclusive: applying a theme clears the active Look, and applying a Look overrides the plain theme. Only one is live at a time.

How to get there. Open the workspace with ⌘5 / Ctrl+5, or from the workspace switcher. From here you can also jump straight into design tools: Edit Themes opens the Theme Editor; Edit Looks (macOS) opens the Look editor.

Options.

Looks (per-screen theme assignments) — Pro

A Look bundles a theme per screen, so one action re-skins your whole rig at once. On macOS the LookEditor lets you assign, per screen, a theme plus its layers, opacity/blend, and transition, then save the result as a named Look you can recall from the Looks grid or the Command Palette.

• macOS — full authoring. Create, name, and edit Looks with per-screen theme, layers, opacity/blend, and transitions.
• Windows: not yet available — the LOOKS section is an upsell, not an editor. On the Free tier the button reads Upgrade to Pro; even on Pro the Windows port folds Looks into the flat theme list rather than authoring per-screen assignments. The hint text explains what a Look would do ("a warm audience theme while the stage runs a high-contrast cue list"), but there is no Look editor on Windows yet.

Because Looks is Pro-gated, the Free tier shows the upgrade prompt on both platforms. See Getting Started ▸ Accounts & Tiers.

The Theme Editor

What it does. The Theme Editor is where you design a theme — the fonts, colors, background, and on-slide objects that ACE uses to render every slide of a given kind. It is a three-pane editor: a sidebar listing your themes, a 16:9 canvas in the middle, and an inspector on the right for the selected object or the theme as a whole.

How to get there. Output ▸ Themes… (⌘T / Ctrl+T), or Edit Themes in the Looks workspace.

Working in the editor.

• Make Active applies the theme you are editing to live output. (On Windows the button reads Make Active, then flips to Active once applied.)
• Changes auto-save, with undo/redo while you work.
• Rulers and guides help you align objects on the canvas (macOS richer; Windows provides the core canvas).

Fonts

• Pick from all installed font families.
• Import custom fonts (.ttf, .otf, .ttc) so a theme can travel with its typeface. both

Colors

Set colors by hex for:

Alignment

Horizontal and vertical alignment for text within its box.

Background

Objects

A theme can carry objects stacked on the canvas: text, shape, and image. Each object has these properties:

Text objects can contain content tokens — placeholders ACE substitutes at render time (see below).

Content tokens

Text objects use {{token}} placeholders that ACE fills in from the live slide.

Windows token caveat. The Windows renderer ignores {{translation}} and indexed {{verse:N}}, and uses {{scripture}} where macOS uses {{verse}}. If you build a theme on macOS that relies on translation or indexed-verse tokens and open it on Windows, those tokens will not render. See Per-slide templates & comparison below.

Per-slide templates & comparison themes

• macOS — a single theme carries multiple per-slide templates (Lyrics / Bible / Title / Blank), and ACE picks the right template automatically based on the cue's kind. macOS themes can also define comparison / multi-translation layouts that show several translations at once (Compare N Translations), driven by the {{translation}} and {{verse:N}} tokens above.
• Windows: not yet available — a Windows theme is a single object canvas. The "add slide template" control is present but stubbed (it does not yet create per-kind templates), and comparison / multi-translation themes are macOS-only.

Built-in themes

• macOS — a library-driven set of built-in themes.
• Windows — three hardcoded starters: Default Dark, Bold Red, Minimal White.

You can duplicate and edit any built-in as the starting point for your own.

Slide rendering

Every slide is composed on a fixed 1920×1080 canvas and then scaled to fit each output, letterboxing to preserve aspect ratio. Text auto-fits — long lines shrink to stay inside their box.

Under the hood the two editions render differently, which is why some effects are macOS-only:

• macOS — a 10-layer compositor with per-layer opacity, blend modes, and transitions, GPU-accelerated, including a scrolling-lyrics mode.
• Windows — a single composited slide image plus a separate overlay widget.

For how many layers your tier unlocks and how layers are cleared per output, see Outputs & Screens ▸ Layers.

Overlays

Overlays draw on top of whatever theme is live. They are configured once and stay on until you turn them off.

Lower-thirds

What it does. A lower-third is a title/subtitle banner (speaker name, sermon title, announcement) that fires over the current slide.

How to get there. Editors ▸ Lower Thirds. On Windows this is Ctrl+Shift+L. (macOS has no default shortcut.)

Options.

Each saved lower-third row has its own FIRE (put it on air) and HIDE (take it off) controls, so you can prepare several and trigger them during the service.

Where they're stored. macOS stores lower-thirds inside the presentation document; Windows stores them in app settings (with a migration for older files). Functionally they behave the same both.

Logo / watermark overlay

What it does. Pins a logo or watermark image to a corner or the center of every output. Once configured it is always on until you clear it.

How to get there. Workspace ▸ Logo / Watermark…

Options: image file, position (corner or center), width %, opacity, and margin.

Translation overlay

What it does. A subtitle-style band that shows translated text across the bottom (or top/center) of the output. This is a visual overlay and is decoupled from spoken-language audio translation — see Streaming & Audio ▸ Audio routing for the audio side.

How to get there. Output ▸ Translation Overlay…

Options.

The Free-tier watermark

On the Free tier, ACE tiles a diagonal "ACE FREE" watermark across the full screen at 50% opacity. It is automatic and identical on both platforms both, and disappears when you sign in on a Pro or Venue licence. See Getting Started ▸ Accounts & Tiers.

The CCLI number

What it does. For licence compliance, ACE draws a small, dimmed CCLI licence number in the corner of song-lyric slides.

How to get there. Set your number in Settings / Preferences ▸ CCLI license number (see Preferences).

• macOS — always shown on song slides.
• Windows: not yet available on object-based themes — Windows renders the CCLI number only on legacy-style themes, not on the newer object-based themes. If you rely on CCLI display on Windows, use a legacy theme until this lands.

The Stage Display Layout editor

What it does. Designs the layout of your stage / confidence monitor — the screen the worship team and speaker see. It is a 1920×1080 canvas of slots you place and size, some of which show live data pulled from the presentation engine.

How to get there. Output ▸ Stage Layout… (⇧⌘T / Ctrl+Shift+T). Toggle the stage output itself with ⌥⌘S / Ctrl+Shift+D; see Outputs & Screens ▸ Stage monitor.

Free tier: there is no stage output on Free (audience only). Stage layouts require Pro or above.

Slot types.

Live Text sources. A Live Text slot binds to one of the engine's data sources:

Presets. Start from a ready-made layout: Default, Classic NOW + NEXT, Speaker View, Scripture Reader. You can then save your own named layouts and recall them.

Platform differences.

• macOS — the richer editor: layouts are stored in the presentation, with undo/redo, snap, and rulers, and the full source list.
• Windows — a lighter editor: layouts are stored in app settings (stage/layoutJSON and stage/savedLayouts), with no undo/snap/rulers and a reduced source picker that omits Video Countdown, Chord Chart, and Next Scripture Translation.

Stage theme override. The per-output Stage Theme control (in Screen Setup) is a real picker on macOS but a placeholder on Windows — it does not yet apply a stage-specific theme. This lives with the output configuration; see Outputs & Screens ▸ Screen Setup.

Outputs & Screens

This chapter covers everything ACE Presenter sends to a screen: the audience output your congregation sees, the stage/confidence monitor your musicians and speakers see, the Screen Setup dialog where you assign displays and tune each output, multi-output arrangements (mirror, grouped, edge-blend), the OUTPUT control panel for taking content live and clearing it, quick screen operator messages, and how the app recovers when a display is unplugged mid-service.

How outputs are stored. macOS keeps a per-output map that can describe any number of outputs, each keyed to a specific display. Windows keeps two roles — Audience and Stage — plus a mirror list, keyed by display name. The practical result is the same day to day; the difference matters mostly for multi-output setups.

Tier note. The Free tier provides a single audience output only — no stage output, no multiple/grouped displays, and a diagonal "ACE FREE" watermark on what it shows. Multiple outputs and stage displays require Pro; edge-blending and the deepest compositor require Venue. See Getting Started ▸ Accounts & Tiers.

The audience output

What it does. The audience output is the fullscreen live program — the slides, scripture, media, and overlays your congregation sees — shown on the display you assign to it. It carries whatever is currently live, blanks to black when you blank, and shows the Free-tier watermark on the Free tier.

How to get there.

• Assign a display: open Screen Setup — Output ▸ Screen Setup… (macOS ⇧⌘, / Windows Ctrl+Shift+,) — and pick a monitor for the audience output.
• Show/hide it: Workspace ▸ Toggle Audience Screen (macOS ⌥⌘A / Windows Ctrl+L), or the AUD button in the OUTPUT control panel's OUTPUTS row.

Shortcut collision (Windows). On Windows, Ctrl+L toggles the audience screen. On macOS, ⇧⌘L is Toggle Listening (detection), an unrelated feature — don't carry the habit across platforms. See Detection & Auto-Follow.

Options.

• Keyboard on the output window itself (Windows only): the Windows audience output window handles keys directly when focused — arrows / Space / PageDown advance to the next slide, B blanks, Esc closes the window. On macOS the audience window does not handle its own keys; drive it from the main window instead.
• Windowed (no display): if you have no second monitor, you can run the output in a window rather than fullscreen (see Display assignment below).

The stage / confidence monitor

What it does. The stage output is a separate confidence display for people on the platform — musicians, speakers, tech. Instead of the raw program it shows a configurable layout: current and next slide, a clock, timers, scripture reference, slide counts, and more. (You design that layout in the Stage Layout editor — see Themes, Looks & Overlays ▸ Stage Display Layout.)

How to get there.

• Design the layout: Output ▸ Stage Layout… (macOS ⇧⌘T / Windows Ctrl+Shift+T).
• Show/hide the output: Workspace ▸ Toggle Stage Screen (macOS ⌥⌘S / Windows Ctrl+Shift+D), or the STG button in the OUTPUTS row of the OUTPUT control panel.

Options.

• Mirror-program backdrop — draw a dimmed copy of the live program behind the stage layout (set in Screen Setup). both
• Some stage-layout data sources are not yet wired on either platform — AI Confidence, Stage Message, Operator Note, Video Countdown, and Chord Chart slots render as placeholders for now. both
• The stage output requires Pro or above; Free is audience-only.

The Screen Setup dialog

What it does. Screen Setup is the control room for every output: which display each one uses, its color grade, keystone correction, which layers it shows, how it goes fullscreen, its blanking color, and (for the stage) its theme and backdrop. It is also where you reach the Identify overlay and test patterns.

How to get there. Output ▸ Screen Setup… — macOS ⇧⌘, / Windows Ctrl+Shift+,.

Screen Setup sub-tabs

Streaming-related toggles (NDI send, audio routing) also live in Screen Setup but are documented in Streaming & Audio.

Multi-output: mirror, grouped, edge-blend

What it does. Beyond a single audience screen, ACE Presenter can drive several displays at once in a few arrangements:

• Single — one audience output.
• Mirror — the same program on multiple displays.
• Grouped — one wide image sliced across several displays (e.g. three projectors making one panorama). Each display shows one slice of the whole.
• Edge-blend — grouped output where adjacent slices overlap slightly and fade into each other, so the seams disappear on overlapping projectors.

Each slice is described by an index, a total count, an axis (horizontal/vertical), a pan offset, and a blend amount (up to ~30%).

How to get there. Assign the displays and configure slicing in Screen Setup.

Options & platform notes.

• Slice count & index — macOS lets you set the total number of slices and each display's index by hand. On Windows the slice count and index are derived from the screen-list order and cannot be overridden manually (Windows: not yet available — manual slice count/index).
• Pan and axis — adjustable on both platforms.
• Edge blend — a Venue-tier feature. Neither platform yet threads the blend percentage fully into every slice, so treat edge-blend width as approximate and verify on the wall.
• Multiple outputs require Pro; edge-blending requires Venue.

The OUTPUT control panel

What it does. The OUTPUT control panel is the always-visible strip of live controls for taking content live, blanking, clearing specific layers, and showing/hiding outputs. It is organized as four rows.

How to get there. It sits in the main window (see the main window overview); its actions also appear under the Output menu.

OUTPUT row

CLEAR TARGETS row — ALL / AUD / STG

Scopes which outputs the CLEAR / BLACK / MEDIA actions affect: ALL outputs, AUD (audience only), or STG (stage only). On Windows this selection persists as the engine's blank scope, so a blank or media clear can be aimed at just one output. both

LAYERS row

Clears or hides individual layers without disturbing the rest of the live output.

See Themes, Looks & Overlays for what lives on each layer (lower-thirds, logo, translation overlay).

OUTPUTS row — AUD / STG

Toggles the audience and stage outputs.

• macOS: enables/disables the output (the disabled state is remembered between sessions).
• Windows: shows/hides the output window, subject to the role being enabled in Screen Setup.

The AUD and STG buttons mirror the Workspace ▸ Toggle Audience/Stage shortcuts above.

Quick screen / operator messages

What it does. Quick screen puts a short text message directly on an output — "Please silence your phones", "Prayer time", a countdown note, or a message to the platform. Useful for on-the-fly announcements without building a cue.

How to get there.

• Windows: View ▸ Quick Screen… (Ctrl+J). It opens as an inspector panel.
• macOS: the quick-screen sheet (also under the Output workspace controls); the shared shortcut is ⌘J.
• Clear it: press Esc.

Options.

• Route the message to ALL, STG (stage), or AUD (audience). The default is stage, so you can cue the platform without the congregation seeing it.
• Type free text, or pick from recents / presets (saved between sessions).
• On macOS, showing a quick screen also ducks the front-of-house audio slightly; see Streaming & Audio.

Hot-plug display recovery

What it does. If a display is unplugged, sleeps, or changes during a service, ACE Presenter tries to recover gracefully rather than dropping your output. When it can't reconnect automatically, it shows a banner telling you how to reassign.

Platform behavior.

• macOS: rebinds outputs by a stable display identifier, tracks which specific output was lost, dims a degraded window to ~45% so you can see something is wrong, and shows a banner: "DISPLAY LOST … ⇧⌘, to reassign".
• Windows: re-matches displays by name and rebuilds any mirror set, showing a banner: "… Ctrl+Shift+, to reassign". It does not dim the degraded window or rebind by stable identifier.

What to do. Follow the banner — open Screen Setup (macOS ⇧⌘, / Windows Ctrl+Shift+,) and reassign the affected output to the correct monitor.

Identify overlay & test patterns

What it does. When you're not sure which physical monitor is which — a common problem with three identical projectors — the Identify tools paint a label on every screen, and the test patterns help you check color, focus, and alignment before the service.

How to get there. The Screen Setup footer / Diagnostics area.

Options.

• Identify Screens — overlays each display's number, name, and resolution.
• Identify Outputs — overlays a role card (Audience / Stage) on each output.
• Test Patterns:
  • macOS: four patterns — Color Bars, Focus Grid, Greyscale, Solid White — each shown for 8 seconds.
  • Windows: a single color-bars pattern shown for 3 seconds (Windows: reduced test-pattern set).

See also

• Themes, Looks & Overlays — what renders on each layer, the stage-display layout editor, lower-thirds, logo, and the Free-tier watermark.
• Streaming & Audio — NDI send/receive, capture cards, ATEM, and audio routing (also configured in Screen Setup).
• Building a Service: Cues & Running Order — going live, blank/clear behavior, and Go On Air.
• Appendix A — Platform Differences — the authoritative macOS ↔︎ Windows list.

Streaming & Audio

This chapter covers everything ACE Presenter does past the projector: pushing your service to the internet over RTMP, sending it to other machines over NDI, pulling cameras and switchers in as program layers, controlling an ATEM switcher, and routing sound to the right speakers — including spatial/binaural monitoring and per-venue audio zones.

If you are still setting up the audience and stage displays themselves, start with Outputs & Screens. Anything that needs an external driver, runtime, or piece of hardware is summarised in Appendix C — External Dependencies & Troubleshooting.

How to read the badges. both = same on macOS and Windows · macOS only = not on Windows · Windows — not yet = exists on macOS, not yet ported · build-dependent = on Windows, present only if the app was compiled with the relevant module. See the Platform Differences appendix for the authoritative list.

Live streaming (RTMP)

What it does. Encodes a composite of your program output — camera/capture backdrop plus the live slide — and pushes it to any RTMP destination (YouTube Live, Facebook, a custom media server, etc.). This is the same PROGRAM composite described below; it is not a screen recording of the app.

How to get there.

• macOS — the Stream panel lives in the STREAM layout preset. Click the red STREAM button in the toolbar to switch to that preset; the panel (roughly 460×560) appears. Streaming controls are only reachable from this preset.
• Windows — Output ▸ Stream…, available from any layout. The same panel opens as a dialog.

Options. The settings are identical on both platforms:

Going live. Set the URL, key, resolution and bitrate, choose an audio input, then press Go Live. The button turns green and reads Stop Stream while broadcasting; press it again to end the broadcast.

Auto-reconnect (Windows). If the connection drops mid-broadcast, Windows automatically retries with a backoff schedule — up to 20 attempts over roughly four and a half minutes (1s, 2s, 4s, 8s, then 15s intervals). The panel reports progress ("Stream reconnecting — attempt 3 of 20, retrying in 15s"); if every attempt fails it gives up with a message. This rides out a router reboot or a flapping uplink without operator intervention. On macOS, a lost connection is reported as an error and streaming stops — reconnect manually.

Encoder & requirements.

• macOS — uses HaishinKit and is always built in. No extra install; streaming is available in any macOS build.
• Windows — uses an FFmpeg encoder that is build-dependent: the build must be compiled with ACE_WITH_FFMPEG. If it wasn't, the Stream dialog shows the message "This build has no streaming encoder. Rebuild with ACE_WITH_FFMPEG=ON" and Go Live is disabled. Check your build if the button is greyed out.

The PROGRAM composite

What it does. The single image ACE streams and sends over NDI. It is layered: a camera or capture backdrop (cover-fit to fill the frame) with the live slide composited on top. When output is blanked, the composite goes black. It is always rendered at 1080p internally and scaled to the chosen stream resolution. This is what your online audience sees — independent of the physical audience and stage displays. both

To put a camera into this composite rather than just a slide, see Camera & video input.

NDI

NDI carries video (and alpha) between machines over the local network — sending ACE's program to a switcher or capture PC, or bringing another NDI source into ACE as a video input.

NDI send

What it does. Publishes the PROGRAM composite as a named NDI source that other NDI-aware software on your network can subscribe to.

How to get there. Screen Setup ▸ NDI — toggle it on and set the stream name that will appear to receivers.

• macOS — shows a teal status badge and, if the runtime is missing, a guided install sheet.
• Windows — shows an inline caption for status.

The NDI setting is stored per venue (ndiEnabled / ndiName), so different venue profiles can publish under different names — see Venues & venue profiles.

Requirements. The NDI runtime is not bundled with either edition and must be installed separately. macOS provides a fetch helper; Windows detects the runtime on the filesystem. See Appendix C.

NDI receive

What it does. Lets ACE consume another NDI source (a PTZ camera, a graphics machine, another ACE) as a program video layer. Received sources appear in the Stream Video Input picker labelled "<name> (NDI)".

How to get there. Open the video-input picker in the Stream panel and choose the NDI source.

Platform status.

• Windows — full receive loop (both, functional). NDI enumeration is deferred until you first open the picker, to avoid a firewall prompt at launch.
• macOS — the receiver is header-verified only (unconfirmed live): the code path exists but has not been validated end-to-end. Treat macOS NDI receive as experimental.

Requirements. NDI runtime installed (see above); the source and ACE on the same network.

DeckLink / SDI capture

What it does. Brings a Blackmagic DeckLink (or compatible SDI/HDMI capture) input into ACE as a program video layer. Capture devices appear in the Stream Video Input picker labelled "<name> (SDI)".

How to get there. Choose the SDI device in the Stream panel's video-input picker.

Platform notes.

• Windows — a COM implementation with format detection, gated on the Blackmagic SDK at build time.
• macOS — the ACEDeckLink module, loaded dynamically (dlopen).

Requirements. The Blackmagic Desktop Video driver must be installed for the capture hardware to be visible to ACE on either platform. See Appendix C.

Camera & video input

What it does. Uses a webcam or other live video device as the backdrop layer of the PROGRAM composite — "Show camera as program layer." With a camera selected, slides composite on top of the live picture; with "None (slide only)" selected, the composite is slides on a black background.

How to get there. In the Stream panel, enable Show camera as program layer, pick the device, and use the preview to confirm framing.

Options.

• Device picker (webcams, capture cards, plus NDI/SDI sources described above).
• "None (slide only)" — a valid choice that omits any camera backdrop.
• Live preview of the selected input.

Platform note. macOS enumerates more Apple device types, including Continuity Camera and Desk View. (both, with more device types on macOS)

ATEM switcher control

What it does. Lets ACE cut a Blackmagic ATEM switcher to a chosen program input when a cue goes live. Each cue can carry a VIDEO SWITCHER input number; when that cue is taken, ACE tells the ATEM to cut to that input — keeping your switcher's program in sync with the presentation.

How to get there.

• Windows — Preferences ▸ ATEM tab. Enable it, set the host (default 192.168.1.100) and port (default 9910), and use Connect to test the link. Then set the per-cue VIDEO SWITCHER input in the New/Edit Cue dialog (the field appears when ATEM is enabled).
• macOS — configured in the app's persistence/settings rather than a dedicated Preferences tab; the same per-cue video-switcher input applies.

Macro triggering.

• macOS — ATEM macro triggering is scaffolded but unvalidated macOS only. It is behind a developer/build flag and not a supported feature.
• Windows — deliberately omits macros; it performs the program-input cut only.

Requirements. An ATEM switcher reachable on the LAN. ACE talks to it over raw UDP with no Blackmagic SDK, so no additional driver is required — but the switcher must be powered, networked, and at the configured host/port. See Appendix C.

The Stream layout preset

On macOS, layout is a first-class preset enum — General / Sermon / Conference / Stream / Custom — and the Stream panel (and its red toolbar button) is gated to the Stream preset. Switching to the Stream preset is how you reach streaming controls.

On Windows, presets are simply named layouts; streaming is reached independently via Output ▸ Stream… regardless of the current layout. (both, reached differently)

Audio

ACE distinguishes two audio concerns that are easy to confuse:

• Audio-input capture — what gets encoded into a stream or recording (one device in, described next).
• Output routing (AudioRouter / FOH) — where the app's own sound (media beds, translation, spatial monitoring) is sent out to speakers and headphones.

Audio-input capture device

What it does. Selects the microphone or mix that ACE encodes into the live stream (and recording). This is distinct from output routing below.

How to get there. The Audio Input control in the Stream panel.

Options.

• macOS — Core Audio devices plus "System default" (with a hint to route a full mix in via BlackHole or similar).
• Windows — QMediaDevices inputs plus "None (no audio)"; captured at 48 kHz, stereo, 16-bit.

Output routing (AudioRouter / FOH)

What it does. Assigns a real output device to each audio role, so front-of-house, stage monitors, headphone/binaural monitoring, and each translation language can go to different interfaces.

How to get there. Screen Setup ▸ Audio.

Roles.

Options & behaviour.

• Output routing is persisted per venue (VenueProfile.audioRoles).
• A role pointing at a device that is no longer present shows an amber "missing device" warning.
• Devices are re-enumerated on hot-plug, so plugging in an interface updates the pickers live.

Spatial / binaural (HRTF) monitoring

What it does. Renders a head-related-transfer-function (HRTF) binaural mix to headphones, positioning each translation language at a chosen angle around the listener. Useful for a translator or operator monitoring several languages at once on one pair of headphones.

How to get there. The Spatial toggle in the Screen Setup ▸ Audio section, plus a per-language azimuth slider for each language (−90° to +90°, 0° = centre).

Options.

• Enable/disable the binaural bus (feeds the Binaural / headphones role).
• Per-language azimuth placement.

Platform status & requirements.

• macOS — uses AVAudioEnvironmentNode HRTF and includes an AudioWatchdog that automatically degrades spatial processing under CPU load. Always available.
• Windows — build-dependent: requires the app to be compiled with ACE_WITH_SPATIAL_AUDIO. Without it, spatial audio is disabled and there is no binaural bus. There is no watchdog on Windows.

Venues & venue profiles

What it does. A venue profile bundles a whole room's configuration: display assignments, output devices, NDI settings, audio roles, room model / zones, spatial settings, and detection language. Switching venues re-applies all of it at once — ideal for a portable rig used in different rooms, or a building with several spaces.

How to get there. ⌘⇧V (macOS) / Ctrl+Shift+V (Windows).

• macOS — the Venues sheet: full create/read/update/delete plus detailed per-section editing.
• Windows — Output ▸ Venues… opens the Venues dialog: create/read/update/delete only, plus a venue badge in the status bar.

Profiles are stored in venues.json. (both, editor is richer on macOS)

Audio Zones / RoomModel

What it does. Models a room as a top-down floorplan of zones and speakers, each with a trim (dB) and a propagation delay so distant zones stay time-aligned with the stage. Live level/mute faders let you ride each zone during a service.

How to get there. macOS — the Inspector ▸ Zones tab (part of the venue/room configuration): initialise a room model, add zones and speakers, drag them into place on the floorplan, and adjust live level/mute faders.

Platform status.

• macOS — the full floorplan editor described above: init room model, add zone/speaker, drag to position, live level/mute faders in the Inspector Zones tab. (macOS only)
• Windows — (Windows: not yet available). The Zones tab is a hardcoded empty state ("Phase 7/9"); there is no zone or room editor and no fader UI. Zones authored on macOS do travel in an imported venues.json, so a Windows machine can load a venue that contains zones — but it still cannot edit them or show faders.

Requirements. None external; this is an in-app model.

Audio for media

What it does. Governs how sound attached to media and cues behaves during a service.

Defaults & options (both, with per-platform controls):

• Motion backgrounds loop and play muted.
• Background audio beds loop.
• Video audio is muted on the stage output by default.
• macOS — an on-preview mute toggle, and FOH is ducked by −6 dB during a quick-screen message so spoken announcements sit above the bed.
• Windows — per-lane mute / solo / bypass controls plus the media defaults above.

Related chapters

• Outputs & Screens — audience/stage displays, Screen Setup, blank/clear, the OUTPUT control panel.
• Themes, Looks & Overlays — the slides that composite over camera/capture in the PROGRAM image.
• Building a Service: Cues & Running Order — where a cue's VIDEO SWITCHER input is set.
• Preferences, Shortcuts & Menus — the ATEM tab and other settings panes.
• Appendix C — External Dependencies & Troubleshooting — NDI runtime, Blackmagic Desktop Video, ATEM on the LAN, and the ACE_WITH_FFMPEG / ACE_WITH_SPATIAL_AUDIO build flags.

The Phone Remote

ACE Presenter Remote is a companion phone app — one app for iOS and Android — that controls a running copy of ACE Presenter over your local network. From a phone in your hand you can walk the running order, jump to any cue and slide, blank and clear the output, control video playback, search the library, and even edit or create songs, all while watching live preview thumbnails of what is currently on screen.

The remote is a separate download from the presenter itself. It talks to either edition of the desktop app — macOS or Windows — over a small WebSocket protocol. The macOS edition is the protocol authority, so a few remote features work against macOS but are still in progress on Windows; those are flagged throughout this chapter.

This chapter covers the phone side. For the desktop features the remote drives, see Building a Service: Cues & Running Order, Scripture, Media, and Outputs & Screens.

What you need

• The desktop app (macOS or Windows) running on a computer.
• The phone and the computer on the same local network (same Wi-Fi / LAN).
• The ACE Presenter Remote app installed on the phone.
• On Windows only, the remote server switched on (see below). On macOS it is always on.

Enabling the remote on the presenter

Before a phone can connect, the desktop app has to be listening for it. This is the one place where the two editions differ significantly.

macOS — always on (macOS only behavior)

The macOS edition starts its remote server automatically at launch. There is no toggle — as soon as the app is open, it is discoverable and ready to pair. It listens for control traffic on WebSocket port 7001, with a separate HTTP service on port 7002 for preview images.

macOS 15 (Sequoia) and later prompt once for local-network permission the first time the app advertises itself. Allow it, or the phone will never see the presenter in discovery. If you declined by accident, re-enable ACE Presenter under System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security ▸ Local Network.

Windows — off by default (both, with a Windows enable step)

The Windows edition ships with the remote server OFF. Turn it on with:

When the server is running, the presenter shows its status — the network address phones should connect to, plus a live device count of how many phones are currently paired. Windows serves both control traffic and preview images on port 7001 (there is no separate HTTP port). Toggle the server off again with the same menu item or Ctrl+R; a broadcast operator may prefer to leave it off until needed.

Shortcut: Start/Stop Remote Server is Ctrl+R on Windows; there is no macOS equivalent because the macOS server is always running. See Preferences, Shortcuts & Menus.

Connecting the phone (the Connection Hub)

The remote opens on its Connection Hub — the entry screen that finds presenters and lets you join one.

What it does. The Hub lists presenters it discovers automatically on the network and also lets you type in an address by hand.

• Automatic discovery (Bonjour / mDNS). The Hub browses for the _aceremote._tcp service and lists every presenter it finds. Tap a presenter in the list to connect. When two copies are running on the network, a TXT instanceID record disambiguates them so you connect to the right one.
• Manual IP entry. If discovery is blocked (some guest or enterprise Wi-Fi networks disable mDNS), type the presenter's address into the Presenter IP field. The default port is 7001 on both platforms.

How to get there. The Connection Hub is the first screen the app shows. If you are already connected, disconnecting returns you here.

If nothing shows up: confirm the phone and computer share the same network; on Windows confirm the remote server is running (Ctrl+R); on macOS 15+ confirm local-network permission was granted. Then fall back to manual IP entry with port 7001.

Demo / Explore mode

Don't have a presenter on the network — or just want to look around? The Hub offers an Explore / Demo mode that runs the whole app against built-in sample data, no desktop connection required. Every tab is populated so you can learn the layout before a service.

What happens when you connect (the handshake)

On connect, the phone and presenter exchange a short handshake: the phone sends a hello (announcing the protocol version and the list of capabilities it supports), and the presenter replies with the current state, preview thumbnails, and media state. From then on the phone stays in sync as you and the operator work.

Operator-profile adoption macOS only — On macOS, the presenter also sends a profile frame carrying the signed-in operator's account details (email, licence tier, organization). The phone adopts that account automatically, so the remote inherits whatever the operator is signed in to — no separate login needed.

On Windows Windows — not yet — the presenter does not send a profile frame. The phone therefore has to sign in itself (email + password on the Account tab) if you want account-tied features on the remote.

What the phone can control

Once paired, the remote is a full operating surface for the live service. The table below summarizes the controls; details for each are in the referenced desktop chapters.

Honest notes on transport and search

• The scrubber / position bar is display-only both — Today, on both platforms, the media position bar shows elapsed and total time and updates as the clip plays, but you cannot drag it to seek. The working transport is play / pause / stop / restart. Treat the bar as a progress indicator, not a control.
• Search scope differs by platform. On macOS, remote search is scope-aware and resolves Bible references (type a reference and it finds the passage). On Windows (Windows: not yet available), remote search is a flat title/name substring match — no scope, no Bible-reference resolution. It will find a song or media item by its name, but it will not resolve "John 3:16" to a passage.

The phone's tabs

The remote is organized into five tabs along the bottom.

Remote tab

What it does. Your primary live controls: previous/next tiles, a blank toggle, per-lane clear/restore, and live preview thumbnails of the current and next slide. When a video is live, the transport tiles (play/pause/stop/restart) and the display-only position bar appear here.

Cues tab

What it does. Mirrors the presenter's running order so you can walk the service from your hand. Tap a cue to jump to it; open a cue to take an individual slide live.

Library tab

What it does. Browse and search the song library, scripture, and media, and take any of them live (present song / scripture / media). This is also where you edit or create a song from the phone; edits use optimistic concurrency so your changes and the operator's don't overwrite each other. Remember the search-scope difference: Bible-reference search works on macOS but not on Windows.

Screens tab macOS only

What it does. On macOS, lets you inspect and change output/screen configuration and see the list of available Bible versions from the phone.

On Windows Windows — not yet, the presenter does not answer the phone's screen-configuration or Bible-version requests — it returns "not supported" — so this tab has nothing to drive there yet. Configure screens and Bible versions from the Windows desktop instead: see Outputs & Screens and Scripture.

Account tab

What it does. Shows the signed-in account and offers sign-in with email + password.

• On macOS, the account is usually adopted from the operator automatically at connect (the profile frame), so you may already be signed in here.
• On Windows, there is no profile frame, so you sign in on this tab yourself if you want account-tied features.

Quick troubleshooting

See also: Outputs & Screens · Scripture · Media · Preferences, Shortcuts & Menus · Platform Differences appendix

Preferences, Shortcuts & Menus

This chapter is the reference for everything that sits around the presentation: the Command Palette (the fastest way to jump anywhere), the Preferences/Settings window (every pane, on both editions), and the menu-bar map. Keyboard shortcuts are summarised here and listed in full in Appendix B — Keyboard Shortcuts; this chapter keeps its shortcut coverage light and cross-links there.

Conventions used below (see How to read this manual): shortcuts are given as macOS ⌘X / Windows Ctrl+X; status badges are both, macOS only, and Windows — not yet.

The Command Palette — ⌘K / Windows Ctrl+K

The Command Palette is a fuzzy, type-to-find launcher. Press ⌘K (macOS) or Ctrl+K (Windows), start typing, and the results narrow as you go. On Windows it also lives on the menu bar at View ▸ Command Palette; on macOS it is keyboard-only.

What it searches both:

Navigating it: type to filter, use ↑ / ↓ to move through results, Enter to run the highlighted item, Esc to dismiss.

Platform note on what's indexed: macOS indexes Looks and themes separately, so a Look and a theme with similar names both appear. Windows folds Looks into the theme list (Looks authoring is macOS-only — see Themes, Looks & Overlays) and, in exchange, surfaces explicit Service-Plan and Layout-preset entries. Both editions reach cues, library, media, service plans, themes, workspaces, and presets.

Preferences / Settings — ⌘, / Windows Ctrl+,

Open with ⌘, (macOS: ACE ▸ Settings…) or Ctrl+, (Windows: File ▸ Preferences…). Both editions present a left-hand navigation split into an operations group and an Advanced group, with the same panes in the same order.

Read this before the table. The Windows Preferences window now mirrors the macOS pane list exactly — every pane below appears in the Windows sidebar too. The honest difference is no longer which panes exist but which panes do anything: several Windows panes are deliberately-visible roadmap placeholders whose controls are inert (they are kept on screen so the plan stays visible rather than vanishing). Those are flagged Windows — not yet below. This is why you may see, for example, a ProPresenter or Linked Computers pane on Windows and find its switches do nothing.

Pane-by-pane comparison

Summary of Windows placeholder panes (Windows: not yet available): ProPresenter, NDI (full pane), Linked Computers, and the online-song-ID half of Integrations are visible-but-inert roadmap stubs. The Account pane is sign-in-only. ATEM is a genuinely working Windows Preferences tab. Everything in the operations group that touches the live show — General's wired toggles, CCLI, ATEM — works.

The menu bar

The two editions organise their menus differently, chiefly because macOS carries an application (ACE) menu and an automatic Window menu, while Windows gathers those responsibilities into View, Editors, and the File/Help menus. On macOS, several things that Windows exposes as menu items are reached instead through inspectors, right-click menus, or the ⋯ EDITORS pill in the tab bar.

Top-level menus:

Key structural differences: Windows has dedicated View and Editors menus and no Window menu; macOS places Settings and Check for Updates… under the ACE menu. There is no separate ProPresenter/NDI menu on either — those live in Preferences and Screen Setup.

macOS menus

Windows menus

Why Windows has an Editors menu. On macOS these editors open from an inspector, a right-click, or the ⋯ EDITORS pill. The Windows build has the pill but not the inspectors, so the Editors menu is the primary route to the Look Editor, Reflow, Arrangements, Lower Thirds, the Background Inspector, Scripture Study, and Past Recordings.

Stream and Remote Server placement. Windows exposes Stream… on the Output menu (usable from any layout) and Start / Stop Remote Server (Ctrl+R) on Workspace — the remote server is off by default on Windows and must be started here, whereas on macOS it is always on at launch. See The Phone Remote.

Keyboard shortcuts — where to find the full list

This chapter shows only the shortcuts attached to the panes and menus above. The complete, side-by-side keyboard reference for both editions is Appendix B — Keyboard Shortcuts. In the app, open the live cheat-sheet from Help ▸ Keyboard Shortcuts (⌘? / Ctrl+?); on Windows the Hotkeys Preferences pane shows the same list, generated from whatever the app currently binds.

Shortcut collisions & platform differences

A few bindings differ enough between editions to catch out an operator moving between them:

For the exhaustive list — including workspace switching, media tray, import/export, detection modes, and the service-run controls — see Appendix B.

Auto-update behaviour

Both editions ship a background updater, with a deliberate difference in cadence:

• macOS (Sparkle 2): checks for a new release in the background on every launch, plus a manual ACE ▸ Check for Updates….
• Windows (WinSparkle): a single quiet check ~8 seconds after launch (never mid-service), plus a manual Help ▸ Check for Updates…. The feed is the appcast at https://dl.ace-presenter.app/presenter-win/appcast.xml.

Neither edition prompts for an update while a service is live.

See also

• Getting Started — install, first run, sign-in, and tiers.
• Appendix A — Platform Differences — the authoritative list of what each edition does and doesn't do today.
• Appendix B — Keyboard Shortcuts — the full keyboard reference.
• The Phone Remote — enabling the remote server (Windows: Ctrl+R) and pairing.

Appendix A — Platform Differences (macOS ↔︎ Windows)

ACE Presenter is one product with two native editions. The macOS edition is the reference; the Windows edition is a native port that matches it closely but has a handful of features still in progress. This appendix is the authoritative "what works where" list — if a chapter and this appendix ever seem to disagree, trust this appendix.

Everything not listed here behaves the same on both editions.

At-a-glance parity matrix

macOS-only features (today)

These exist on macOS and are not yet in the Windows port:

• Operator voice commands (spoken "next / blank / show John 3:16", etc.).
• Audio Zones — the room-model floorplan editor with per-zone trim, delay, speakers, and live level/mute faders.
• Looks authoring — creating per-screen theme assignments (Windows can apply themes but not author Looks).
• Theme slide templates & multi-translation comparison themes (Compare 2–4).
• Local video transport — the on-clip play/pause/scrub overlay and spacebar; live video in the dashboard preview.
• Import Wizard for the full range of formats (ProPresenter, ChordPro, plain text, Bible formats, images/video) and drag-and-drop into it.
• Native PPTX text fallback when LibreOffice isn't installed.
• Media niceties — single-click-to-background, missing-media relink/clean-up, search that matches tags, a resizable media tray.
• Richer song auto-follow — semantic matching, vote/challenger promotion, acoustic verification, and online AI song identification that can auto-import a song.
• Remote screen configuration & Bible-version listing from the phone; operator-profile adoption; scope-aware/Bible-reference remote search.
• A complete Account pane (profile, sign-out, delete-account, seat management) — on Windows the Account pane is sign-in-only.

Windows: present but incomplete or behaving differently

• Auto-advance shows a countdown on the stage display and timers panel but does not actually advance the slide.
• Fullscreen mode — "Borderless Fill" and "True Fullscreen" currently behave the same.
• Stage Theme sub-tab in Screen Setup is a placeholder (no picker).
• Screen color applies to the audience output only (a stage screen-color is saved but not shown).
• CCLI number is not drawn on themes built from positioned objects (it shows on the classic text layout).
• Theme tokens {{translation}} and indexed comparison tokens aren't substituted.
• The Recents tab badge in the media tray always reads "0" (the tab still works).
• Preferences now shows the same panes as macOS, but some are placeholders: ProPresenter and Linked Computers are inert, NDI is reduced to an install button, and a couple of Integrations keys (Anthropic/Genius) are unwired (Pixabay works). ATEM is a fully working Windows tab.

Windows build-dependent features

Some Windows capabilities are compiled in per build. If your build was made without the relevant module, the feature is cleanly unavailable (with an on-screen note) rather than broken:

• RTMP streaming (requires the FFmpeg module) — Go Live is disabled with a message otherwise.
• Spatial / binaural HRTF audio (requires the Qt SpatialAudio module) — the toggle is disabled otherwise.
• On-device Whisper detection (requires the Whisper module) — otherwise use the Sample Phrases or Deepgram backends.
• DeckLink / SDI capture (requires the Blackmagic SDK at build time).

Things that are the same on purpose

The Free-tier watermark, lower-third styles, translation-overlay styles, logo/watermark defaults, the 1920×1080 letterbox rendering rule, the phone-remote wire protocol, and the licence tiers are all deliberately identical across editions.

See Appendix C — External Dependencies & Troubleshooting for what to install, and Appendix B for the shortcut differences.

Appendix B — Keyboard Shortcuts

The complete shortcut map for both editions. Open the in-app cheat sheet any time from Help ▸ Keyboard Shortcuts (⌘? / Ctrl+?).

Modifier symbols: ⌘ Command · ⌥ Option/Alt · ⇧ Shift · ⌃ Control. On Windows, ⌃ is the Ctrl key and ⌥ is Alt.

Files & editing

Navigation & live control

The live audience output window on Windows also accepts → / Space / PageDown to advance and B to blank while it has focus.

Workspaces & windows

Setup & editors

Service run (On Air)

(On Windows the On-Air commands use Ctrl+Meta — the Meta/Windows key — plus G/H/E.)

Detection

Help

⚠️ Shortcut differences to watch

• Ctrl+L on Windows toggles the Audience Screen. The nearest macOS equivalent (⇧⌘L) instead means Toggle Listening — so the same-looking chord does different things per platform. On Windows, Toggle Listening has no keyboard shortcut (click the LISTENING pill).
• Blank is plain B on Windows but ⌘B on macOS.
• Take (⌘⏎), Open Presentation (⌘O), and Undo Scene (⌥⌘Z) exist on macOS only.
• Start/Stop Remote Server (Ctrl+R) exists on Windows only — the macOS remote is always on.

See Preferences, Shortcuts & Menus for the full menu map, and Appendix A for feature-level differences.

Appendix C — External Dependencies & Troubleshooting

External dependencies

Most of ACE Presenter works out of the box. A few features rely on software or hardware you provide.

Windows build-dependent modules. RTMP streaming, spatial/HRTF audio, on-device Whisper, and DeckLink are compiled into the Windows build per configuration. If a build lacks one, that feature is cleanly unavailable with an on-screen note — it is not broken. See Appendix A.

Troubleshooting

Output / displays

• Nothing shows on the projector. Open Output ▸ Screen Setup… (⇧⌘, / Ctrl+Shift+,) and confirm your display is assigned to the audience output (not "Windowed / no display"). Then toggle the audience screen on (⌥⌘A / Ctrl+L). Use Identify: Screens in Screen Setup to confirm which physical display is which.
• A display went black or moved after unplugging/replugging. ACE recovers automatically; if a "DISPLAY LOST" banner appears, click Reassign (or reopen Screen Setup, ⇧⌘, / Ctrl+Shift+,).
• On Free tier only the main screen works. That's expected — the stage/second output needs Pro.
• (Windows) Borderless vs True Fullscreen look the same. They currently behave identically on Windows — this is a known limitation, not a misconfiguration.
• (Windows) The stage monitor's screen-color didn't apply. Screen color currently applies to the audience output only on Windows.

Detection / auto-follow

• Detection prints nonsense or won't follow. Confirm the correct Audio Input in Detection Settings (⌥⌘, / Ctrl+Alt+,), pick the right Language, and note that a language-specific model may be required (the dialog warns you). ACE silently filters common mis-hearings; if nothing appears at all, check the microphone permission and input level.
• Cloud transcription says "sign in". Deepgram's pooled relay needs a signed-in account, or enter a personal Deepgram key. On-device Whisper works offline with no account.
• (Windows) Operator voice commands don't do anything. They're not implemented on Windows yet — use the keyboard, the on-screen controls, or the phone remote.
• Songs don't auto-advance even while listening. Lower the Min match confidence slider in Detection Settings ▸ Advanced, make sure the target mode isn't set to Bible only, and remember that the leader must be audible to the selected input device.

Media

• A PowerPoint imported with no pages. Install LibreOffice and re-import (PDF decks don't need it). See the dependency table above.
• A media tile shows "MISSING". The source file moved or was deleted. On macOS, use relink/search-paths; on either platform, remove and re-add the file, or turn on "manage media automatically" so future imports are copied into the app.
• (Windows) No play/pause controls on a live video. Local video transport isn't in the Windows edition yet — drive play/pause/seek from the phone remote. See The Phone Remote.

Auto-advance

• (Windows) A cue's countdown runs but the slide never changes. Per-cue auto-advance isn't wired on Windows yet — advance manually (→) or use auto-follow detection.

Streaming

• (Windows) "Go Live" is disabled with a note about a streaming encoder. This build was compiled without the FFmpeg module — use a build that includes streaming.
• The stream keeps dropping. On Windows the stream auto-reconnects with backoff; check your upload bandwidth and lower the bitrate/resolution in the Stream panel. Verify the server URL and stream key.
• A network camera (NDI) isn't listed. Install the NDI runtime, ensure the source is on the same network, and open the camera picker (it defers NDI discovery until first opened to avoid a firewall prompt).

The phone remote

• The phone can't find the presenter. On Windows, start the server first: Workspace ▸ Start/Stop Remote Server (Ctrl+R). Ensure the phone and computer are on the same Wi-Fi. On macOS, allow the Local Network permission prompt. If discovery fails, enter the computer's IP manually (default port 7001).
• (Windows) The phone's Screens tab or a verse-version list is empty. Remote screen configuration and Bible-version listing aren't available over the Windows remote yet.

Where things are stored

• Bundled Bibles / extra translations: an app support folder (…/ACE/Bibles); downloaded/imported translations live alongside the bundled ones.
• Managed media (when "manage media automatically" is on): an app media folder; on Windows, rasterized deck pages and video poster frames are cached under the app data folder.
• Settings: standard per-platform preferences storage (macOS defaults / Windows registry). Venue profiles are saved as venues.json in the app support folder.

See Appendix A — Platform Differences for the full list of what's available on each edition, and return to the manual index.