ACE Presenter — User Manual

A comprehensive reference for ACE Presenter 2.4, the worship/church presentation system. This manual covers both the macOS and Windows editions in one place. The two are built to the same standard — every feature lands on both — and the few genuine differences are named where they occur and collected in the platform-differences appendix.

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 — a native Mac app (Apple silicon).
• Windows — a native Windows app with the same features, menus and file formats. Where it uses Ctrl the Mac uses ⌘, and where it uses Alt the Mac uses ⌥.
• 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 differs between the editions 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 bin along the bottom, and an output control panel for taking content live.

• Stage — the live presentation view with preview (PVW) and program (PGM) controls.
• Song — the selected song's slides, shown as the audience sees them.
• Edit — a non-destructive slide editor.
• Bible — the scripture workspace.
• Looks — themes and per-screen Looks.
• Cue Plan — your service order (the running order of cues); the song library sits in the left sidebar.
• Top status bar — the LISTENING pill (detection), stream 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 Settings ▸ Account (macOS) or Help ▸ Sign In… (Windows).

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.

ACE also creates a Documents ▸ ACE Presenter folder for its own files — exported songs, services and themes, library backups, and an Inbox that imports whatever you drop into it. See Media ▸ ACE files and the ACE Presenter folder.

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.

Interface language. ACE Presenter's menus and screens are available in 9 languages on both editions — English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese (Simplified), Korean and Arabic. It follows your system language by default; choose another in Preferences ▸ General ▸ Language (the change applies after a relaunch).

Coming from ProPresenter? File ▸ Import ▸ File… (⌘I / Ctrl+I) takes a ProPresenter library or a single playlist and keeps its shape. See Media ▸ The Import Wizard.

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 bin along the bottom, and an output control panel for taking content live.

Workspaces (⌘1–⌘6 / Ctrl+1–Ctrl+6)

The tab bar along the top reads STAGE · SONG · EDIT · BIBLE · LOOKS · CUE PLAN in that order on both editions. The Theme Editor opens as its own window (Output ▸ Themes…, ⌘T / Ctrl+T).

Persistent elements

• Top status bar — the LISTENING / IDLE pill (detection on/off), a match-confidence pill while listening, stream status, and the venue badge. See Detection & Auto-Follow and Streaming & Audio.
• Media bin (⌘M / Ctrl+M to toggle) — your images, videos, audio, and slide decks, in folders and playlists. 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 — or drop in SongSelect lyrics files, or add the Public-Domain Hymns pack from File ▸ Import. 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 → / ← (or a clicker's Page Down / Page Up) to move one slide, ↓ / ↑ to move one row in the slide grid, ⌘B (macOS) / B (Windows) 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). 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.

Both editions read and write the same services and the same .acePlaylist files. The differences that remain in this chapter are named where they occur: Windows stores fewer cue kinds, its per‑cue auto‑advance only counts down, and its scheduled auto‑start and speaker timer are simpler.

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: fewer stored kinds. The Windows model stores Song, Scripture, Media, Announcement, Sermon, Generic, plus Presentation (an imported PowerPoint) and Lower Third cues. The Add/Edit Cue dialog 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 press Delete. both

Delete always asks. Pressing Delete (or Backspace) removes what you selected in the list you clicked last — the Cue Plan, the song Library, or (macOS) the media bin — after asking "Delete “…” from the service?" (or "Delete N items from …?"). Return answers Delete; Esc answers Cancel. Delete never acts while you are typing in a text box. 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 The live cue row, the live slide card and the live song section carry a red LIVE mark.
• 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.

A presentation clicker's Page Down / Page Up buttons therefore move one slide on both editions.

Rows. ↓ and ↑ jump the live slide by one row of the slide grid and stop at the top and bottom rows of the live item — they don't skip to another service item. On macOS a row is the Stage grid's column count (the cols pill, 3 by default); on Windows the grid is a fixed 3 columns. In the Bible workspace these keys move through the verse grid instead (see Scripture).

Next/Previous walk the current cue's enabled slides and then cross cue boundaries into the next/previous cue.

Keys after typing in a search box. The arrow keys and Space stand aside while you are typing in a text box, and come back as soon as you click anywhere that isn't a text box — so after searching the Library you can carry straight on with → and ←. (On macOS an empty focused search box doesn't block them at all.) Holding any modifier key bypasses these bare‑key controls, and they never act while a dialog is open. both

On Windows the audience output window also handles keys directly when it has focus (→ / Space / Page Down = next; ← / Page Up = previous; 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 — layer toggles + clear targets. On Windows the LAYERS row's TXT, MEDIA and L3 are on/off toggles that hide the slide text, the media/backdrop and the lower third on the outputs chosen in CLEAR TARGETS (ALL / AUD / STG, remembered between sessions), and bring them back when toggled again. ALL CLR clears everything and restores every hidden layer. Output ▸ Clear is a single clear of the slide, background and lower third. (Windows: no separate messages‑layer clear)

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.

(On Windows these use Ctrl plus the Windows key.)

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 cue list's + Add Cue menu — New Cue…, New Lower Third…, and Add Lower Third ▸ (your saved lower thirds). 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 both editions the same dialog reopens as the song editor from the Library's Edit Song….

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 and finding a song by its words, the Song panel (Labels and Credit), creating and editing songs, bringing songs in from SongSelect and the Public-Domain Hymns pack, the CCLI credit line and usage report, 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.

How a plan cue links back to the library. A song cue in the plan stays linked to its library song. Editing the song with Edit Song… updates the cue built from it — including the slides on screen if that song is live. both

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
• Right-click ▸ Add to Cue Plan. both
• Drag the song from the Library list into the Cue Plan. (macOS only — on Windows use + or the right-click menu)
• 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 — by title or by the words

What it does. The Library's search box (placeholder "Search title or lyrics...") matches a song's title, its artist, or any line of its lyrics. Type a line the congregation sings and ACE finds the song; when a song was found by its words rather than its title, the line that matched appears in quotes under the song's name. both

Library rows also have a right-click menu: Preview the song, Add to Cue Plan, Edit Song…, Learn Timing…, and Remove from Library (which asks first). Pressing Delete on a selected song asks the same question — Return confirms, Esc cancels.

Searching from the phone remote works differently on each edition — see The Phone Remote.

The Song panel: Labels and Credit

What it does. The Song workspace (⌘2 / Ctrl+2) shows the selected song's slides as cards drawn the way the audience will see them — theme, font and colours — with each slide's number and section underneath. It opens on the last song you had up, even after a relaunch. both

Two pickers sit in its toolbar:

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

What it does. The New Song dialog doubles as the song editor. Right-click a song in the Library and choose Edit Song… to reopen it in edit mode (on Windows the window is titled Edit Song and its button reads Save Song) — change the title, artist, or lyrics, and the edit reaches the plan cue built from that song, live slides included. both

For a quick fix to a song cue that's already in your plan, the Reflow editor (below) also works on both editions.

Bringing songs in

SongSelect lyrics files

What it does. If your church has a CCLI SongSelect subscription, download a song's lyrics file from SongSelect and give it to ACE: the song arrives in your Library with its writers, copyright and CCLI song number, and none of SongSelect's footer text ends up on your slides. both

How to get there. There's no separate menu item — ACE recognises a SongSelect lyrics file by its CCLI footer. Use any of the usual import routes:

• File ▸ Import ▸ File… (⌘I / Ctrl+I) — the Import Wizard; you can also drop the file onto the Import window.
• Drop the file into the Inbox folder inside Documents ▸ ACE Presenter (see Media ▸ ACE files). (macOS only — on Windows the Inbox takes ACE files, ProPresenter files and media; use the Import Wizard for SongSelect files.)

ACE never copies lyrics from the internet. When detection hears a song you don't have, it names the song and offers Find on SongSelect, so you can import it under your CCLI licence — it does not fetch lyrics from websites into your Library. See Detection & Auto-Follow.

Public-Domain Hymns

What it does. File ▸ Import ▸ Public-Domain Hymns adds a pack of well-loved hymns whose words are free to project anywhere — Amazing Grace, Holy, Holy, Holy, It Is Well and more — to your Library. Hymns already in your Library are skipped, so running it twice adds nothing new. both

Songs as ACE files (.acesong)

Every song can be saved as an .acesong file — ACE's own song format, with the ACE icon, identical on both editions. Double-click one to bring it into ACE, drop it into the Import Wizard or the Inbox folder, or back up your whole library at once with File ▸ Export ▸ Back Up Library to Documents. See Media ▸ ACE files and the ACE Presenter folder.

CCLI credit line and usage report

What it does. For licence compliance, once your CCLI licence number is set ACE adds a credit line to a song's slides — the song's title, writers, © copyright and CCLI song number — on the first slide by default. Use the Song panel's Credit: picker to put it on the last slide, first and last, every slide, or none. both

How to get there. Preferences ▸ General ▸ CCLI license number. The credit line only appears when this number is set.

Usage report. Below the licence number, Export song usage (CSV)… saves every song that went live, by date, with its CCLI song number — ready for your CCLI usage report. both

Windows theme note. On Windows the CCLI number and credit line are drawn by the built-in slide layout; themes built from positioned objects don't draw them yet (Windows: not yet available on object-based themes). See Themes, Looks & Overlays ▸ The CCLI number.

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.

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 column count, plus run-sheet PVW/PGM tiles. (macOS)
• Windows: Slide Grid… opens a Slide Grid dialog of 16:9 themed thumbnails in a fixed 3-column layout — click a thumbnail to take that slide live. The Cue Plan and Song workspaces also show inline slide grids, likewise 3 columns. (Windows)

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 works the same way on both editions — the same bundled translations, the same keys, the same options. The one visible difference is how live auto-follow presents a heard reference (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 press ⌘4 / Ctrl+4 (Workspace ▸ Bible).

The panel opens where you left it — the same translation, book, chapter, verse and range — even after a relaunch. (A remembered online translation reappears once your licence check has listed it.) 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.

Keyboard navigation

What it does. Walks a reading verse by verse without touching the mouse. both

The toolbar tooltip sums it up: "← → next verse · ↑ ↓ one row · ⌥↑ ⌥↓ chapter." The verse grid's column count (macOS: 2–6 columns) decides how far a row is. If the live cue holds several slides, the arrows step through those slides first.

Showing several verses together

⌘-click / Ctrl-click a verse tile to add or remove it; ⇧-click to add a run of verses. A bar shows "N verses selected"; double-click a selected verse to show them all together on one passage. On macOS the bar also has Show, Add to plan and Clear buttons. both

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 — in the translation picker (and Preferences ▸ Bible), opens the Extras Download Manager with more public-domain Bible packs to download.
• Licensed translations come through the Online (licensed) group above rather than as files: redistributing most modern translations is a licensing matter, so ACE ships public-domain Bibles and offers licensed ones online. (Windows: custom translation files can't be sideloaded.)

Cues built from a licensed translation are internally flagged as licensed, so licensed verse text is kept out of every export — presentations, ACE playlists, and songs saved in the Library alike — and is never redistributed.

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):

Row 2 of the control bar also carries two quick pickers, Verse: and Reference:, that mirror the Show verse numbers and Show reference options.

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) — it reads Compare (N) once translations are picked. Choose the translations to include from the Installed and Online sections; the panel shows each translation's rendering of the current verse. A GO LIVE action sends the comparison to the audience, laid out by the theme's Compare 2 / 3 / 4 Translations template. Clear comparison resets the set.

Online Bibles in Compare. When you're signed in on Pro, your online (licensed) translations appear in the Compare list too and are fetched as their rows appear (Windows shows "Loading…", or "Not in this translation" for a verse a translation lacks). (both; online translations: Pro)

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 (Bible, Compare) and tokens.
• 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, with the speech models ACE ships. The cloud option (Deepgram) is optional and requires sign-in. Song detection works the same way on both editions; where one edition has something the other doesn't (Apple's speech engine on macOS 26, operator voice commands), this chapter says so plainly.

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 English, Auto and 20 further languages.

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.
• Deepgram for speech, on-device for songs. Deepgram hears preaching and scripture well but returns almost nothing on recorded choirs, so with Deepgram on, ACE also listens on this computer for the songs: Deepgram keeps the preaching and scripture, and the on-device Whisper engine hears the singing. This needs a Whisper model to load, and on Windows it runs unless the target mode is Bible only. both

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).

The models ACE comes with. Both editions install two speech models, so detection works the moment ACE opens — no download needed: both

Large v3 Turbo (optional). The larger, most accurate multilingual model is an optional download: File ▸ Extras Download… (the Extras Download Manager), or the download control in Detection Settings. It recognised songs far more often on recorded choirs, but it needs a fast computer. When ACE uses it on its own differs by edition:

• macOS — once Turbo is downloaded, ACE uses it automatically on a Mac with Apple silicon and 16 GB of memory, until you choose a model yourself in Detection Settings.
• Windows — ACE uses Turbo automatically only for the languages the base models can't transcribe usefully (Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Swahili, Zulu, Xhosa, Amharic, Tamil, Telugu). For other languages Detection Settings recommends it for songs, and you can pick the downloaded file with Choose file….

If Turbo falls behind. On both editions, if Turbo can't keep up during a service, ACE moves to the faster base model by itself, says so, and remembers for next time (on Windows, except for the languages only Turbo can transcribe). both

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 (restart detection after building to load it).
• Windows uses ACE's own fingerprinter, with an Identify songs by sound toggle and Add recordings…, Remove and Reveal folder buttons in the dialog.
• Only with recordings. Acoustic ID matches the exact recordings in your bank — never a choir singing live — so it runs only when the Song Bank has recordings, and starts the moment you add some. both
• 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.

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 identification

What it does. Works out which song is being sung, then matches the live transcript against its lyrics 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.

• Songs found by their words. ACE picks a song by the words that tell it apart — the line only that song has — rather than words every worship song shares, and it keeps listening once a song is found so the slides keep following. Both editions use the same method and were replayed against the same recorded choirs with the same results. both

Online Song ID (a song you don't have). Detection Settings ▸ Online Song ID ▸ Look up unknown songs online (needs sign-in, or your own Anthropic key on Windows). When ACE keeps hearing a song that isn't in your plan, it asks an online provider to name it from a short transcript — the title and artist only, never the lyrics: both

• If the song is in your Library, ACE adds it to the plan (it doesn't take it live).
• If not, a notice reads "Sounds like {title}. It isn't in your Library — import it from SongSelect under your CCLI licence." with a Find on SongSelect button.

ACE never copies lyrics from the web. Since 2.3, lyrics enter your Library only from files you import — SongSelect files, ProPresenter, your own typing — never from websites. See Songs & Arrangements ▸ SongSelect lyrics files.

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 shown but has nothing behind it yet — toggling it does nothing. Use the keyboard and the phone remote for hands-off control on Windows. (Spoken Verse Navigation ▸ Let the preacher move the reading, which lets the preacher's own words step a live reading, works on both.)

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 auto-program spoken-scripture toggle in-dialog; on macOS that option lives 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 bin along the bottom of the window. This chapter covers finding and organizing media in folders, playlists and smart playlists, sending it live as foreground or background, playing video and audio, importing decks and whole ProPresenter libraries, pulling in free stock imagery, ACE's own file formats, and the Documents ▸ ACE Presenter folder.

For styling what sits on top of media (lower thirds, logos, translation bands), see Themes, Looks & Overlays. For choosing which screen 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 bin

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

How to get there. The bin sits along the bottom of the main window. Toggle it with ⌘M / Ctrl+M (Workspace ▸ Toggle Media Tray), or click the chevron to collapse it to its header.

• Collapse / expand both — the chevron.
• Drag to resize both — drag the bin's top edge; it can be 140 to 280 points (pixels on Windows) tall, and the height is remembered.

Kind tabs

Across the top of the bin are five kind tabs that filter the library and show a live count: PHOTO, VIDEO, MOTION, AUDIO, SLIDES. both Clicking a tab only filters — it no longer folds the bin away.

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 bin, or drop files and folders onto it from Finder / File Explorer. 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 and Recents

Hover an item and click the star overlay to favorite it; the Favorites row in the playlist sidebar lists them. Recents lists the media you presented most recently, newest first — macOS keeps the last 20, Windows the last 30. both

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

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

Options. Right-click ▸ Scaling: Scale to Fit, Scale to Fill, Stretch to Fill, Scale + Blur. Defaults: video → Fill, photo and deck → Fit. both

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 resets them at each launch.

Missing files and relinking

What it does. If a source file has moved, been deleted, or lives on an unplugged drive, its tile shows a red MISSING badge. Click the missing tile to open Locate Missing File and point ACE at it — other missing files from the same folder are reconnected at the same time ("Reconnected N files"). both

• macOS also offers Preferences ▸ General ▸ Relink Missing Media and Add folder… (search paths ACE looks through for moved files).

Deleting media

Select media and press Delete: ACE asks "Delete “…” from the media bin?" — Return confirms, Esc cancels. (macOS only — on Windows use the item's right-click menu.)

Media playlists, folders and smart playlists

What it does. Organise media the way you would in ProPresenter. The PLAYLISTS sidebar beside the bin holds three built-in views — All, Favorites and Recents — plus your own: both

How to get there. The + at the top of the sidebar offers New Playlist, New Playlist Folder and New Smart Playlist… (which asks for the folder to watch). Right-click a smart playlist for Smart Playlist Behavior, Open File Location, Change Folder…, Rename and Delete.

Adding to a playlist. Drag an asset onto a playlist (dragging from All copies it; dragging within a playlist reorders it). both Windows also has right-click ▸ Add to Playlist / Remove from Playlist.

Foreground or Background

Each picture or video in a playlist goes live on one of two layers: both

• Background — sits behind the slide text (lyrics over a motion loop).
• Foreground — fills the screen in front of the slide.

Choose per item with right-click ▸ Layer ▸ Background / Foreground, or for a whole smart playlist with Smart Playlist Behavior. Media sent from outside a playlist goes to the background. What's on screen is marked on its tile: LIVE, BG (playing as the background) or PLAYING.

When a video ends

Right-click a video ▸ When Video Ends: Loop, Hold Last Frame, Black After Last Frame, Clear After Last Frame, Fade to Black, Fade to Clear. A separate Loop choice (Loop / Play once / Default) sets whether it repeats. both

Windows: Fade to Black and Fade to Clear cut rather than fade for now (Windows: fade not yet available).

Play-through (walk-in loops)

Right-click a playlist ▸ Play Through to let it run on its own: Off — wait for me, In Order or Shuffle. With play-through on, the same menu offers Start Again After the Last, Show Each Picture For ▸ N seconds, and Start Playing / Stop Playing. A playlist that plays through shows the tooltip "Plays through on its own." both

Starting a playlist from a slide

Right-click a slide ▸ Start Media Playlist ▸ a playlist (or None): when that slide goes live, the playlist starts — handy for a welcome slide that kicks off the walk-in loop. (both — on Windows, from the Cue Plan's slide grid)

Presenting media

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

How to get there / options.

• Single-click a picture or video to send it live on its layer — the background, or the foreground if its playlist says so. Clicking a deck page takes it live. both
• Double-click sends a picture or video to the program screen as a cue. both
• Audio — clicking an audio file plays it on its own player; clicking it again stops it. both On macOS the track is also listed in the running order, like a video sent live.
• ⌘-click / Ctrl-click and ⇧-click select several items. (macOS)
• Windows' right-click menu also offers Send to Background, Send Live and Clear Background.

Video playback and transport

What it does. One shared player drives every output, so the audience screen, the stage and the network feeds stay in sync. both

• Transport — while a video is live, play/pause, a scrub bar, elapsed/remaining time, loop and mute controls appear for the operator (macOS: on the clip; Windows: under the PROGRAM monitor). both
• Space toggles play/pause of the live video. both
• The PROGRAM monitor shows the moving video. both
• From your phone, the remote can also play, pause, stop and restart the clip — see The Phone Remote.

Audio player

When an audio file from the bin is playing, an audio transport bar appears under the program monitor — play/pause, a scrub bar with elapsed and remaining time, and Stop. both Audio attached to a cue plays too.

Video thumbnails and poster frames

What it does. ACE grabs a frame (around the 1-second mark) to represent each video in the bin, 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 and 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. See Appendix C — External Dependencies.

The Import Wizard

What it does. A guided, four-stage importer — Source → Preview → Import → Summary — for songs, services, themes, slides and media, including whole ProPresenter libraries.

How to get there. File ▸ Import ▸ File… (⌘I / Ctrl+I). Add files with Add files…, or drop files or whole folders onto the window — a plain folder is opened up into the files inside it. both Windows also has an Add ProPresenter folder… button.

What it takes.

Anything Windows doesn't take yet is listed in the Summary as skipped, rather than half-imported.

Bringing a ProPresenter library across

Point the wizard at your ProPresenter home folder, or drop in a .proPlaylist. ACE brings in themes, songs (library-only songs go to the Library) and services: each ProPresenter playlist becomes its own service template, named after it and keeping its order, and running the import again doesn't create duplicates. both

Media and Audio bins.

• macOS keeps the bins' shape: playlist folders, playlists in order, and smart playlists still watching the same folders, for the Media bin and the Audio bin (under an Audio Bin folder). A file that can't be found stays in its place, marked MISSING, ready to relink.
• Windows brings bin media across, but flattens folders into names such as "Folder / Playlist", doesn't recreate smart playlists, and lists missing files in the Summary instead of keeping placeholders (Windows: full bin structure not yet available).

Stock media (Pixabay)

What it does. Searches the Pixabay stock library (Images and Videos) and downloads straight into your media bin. both

How to get there. Output ▸ Stock Media (Pixabay)… (macOS) / Output ▸ Stock Media… (Windows), also in the EDITORS pop-up on macOS.

Requirements. A Pixabay API key.

• macOS: uses the key built into the app.
• Windows: enter it in Preferences ▸ Integrations ▸ Pixabay (or set the ACE_PIXABAY_KEY environment variable). The key is stored in your user settings, not a credential vault.

Options. Windows offers four search presets — Backgrounds, Worship, Nature, Abstract.

ACE files and the ACE Presenter folder

ACE's own files

ACE saves to three file types of its own, with the ACE icon, identical on macOS and Windows: both

Double-click an ACE file to bring it into ACE, or drop it on the Import Wizard. Licensed Bible text is always left out of these files.

Documents ▸ ACE Presenter

ACE keeps a folder in your Documents — ACE Presenter — for files you can see and copy: both

Your live show itself stays in ACE's application-support folder; this folder is for exports, backups and the Inbox. File ▸ Export ▸ Show ACE Presenter Folder opens it.

The Inbox

Drop files into Documents ▸ ACE Presenter ▸ Inbox and ACE takes them in by itself while it runs — no import step. It waits until a file has finished copying, skips files that haven't changed, and picks up anything dropped while ACE was closed at the next launch. Saving the same file again updates what it brought in instead of adding a duplicate; deleting a file from the Inbox leaves what it brought in alone. both

• macOS: takes songs (including SongSelect and ChordPro files), services, themes, media and ProPresenter files.
• Windows: takes ACE files, ProPresenter files and media.

Exporting and backing up

File ▸ Export:

How media is stored

What it does. The Manage media automatically setting (default ON, Preferences ▸ General) 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.

• 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, text scaling that keeps words inside their box, the lower thirds (animated name bars, and lyrics or scripture as a lower-third bar), the other overlays that sit on top of every slide (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 opens the Look editor (it reads Upgrade to Pro without a Pro licence). On Windows the Look editor is also at Editors ▸ Look Editor.

Options.

Looks (per-screen theme assignments) — Pro

A Look decides what each screen shows, so one action re-skins your whole rig at once. In the Look editor you set, per screen, an optional theme override and which layers that screen shows, then save the result as a named Look you can recall from the Looks grid. both

• Layers really come off. Turning Background or Media off for a screen in a Look takes it off that screen — the wall, the stage and the network feed alike.
• A Look sits on top of the show's theme. Screens a Look doesn't mention keep their theme rather than going black.
• One theme for the whole service. The Look editor's ALL SCREENS ▸ Theme sets a single theme across every screen at once ("everything goes white tonight"). It holds even over cues that carry a theme of their own; a screen you've given its own theme in the Look still keeps it.
• Screens of their own (added in Screen Setup) appear in the Look editor by name, so a stream feed can carry lyrics on black while the wall keeps the full look.
• macOS also offers per-screen opacity/blend and transitions, and lists Looks in the Command Palette.

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 (with a separate LOWER THIRD THEMES section), a 16:9 canvas in the middle, and an inspector on the right for the selected object or the theme as a whole. It opens as a window of its own that you can move, resize and leave open.

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).

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) — and each has Scaling and Line Transform settings.

Text that fits its box: Scaling and Line Transform

What it does. Keeps text inside its box, the way ProPresenter does. Every text box has these settings in the Text inspector: both

Lyrics and Bible verses shrink to fit by default, so a long passage is never cut off — on the screen or the stage display. The Stage Layout editor has Scaling with Min/Max too (no Line Transform). Scaling and Line Transform don't apply to lower-third slides, which size their bar to the words instead.

Content tokens

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

A theme built on one edition renders the same on the other.

Per-slide templates & comparison themes

A single theme carries multiple per-slide templates — Lyrics, Bible, Title, Blank, Compare 2 / 3 / 4 Translations and Lower Third — listed under SLIDES in the editor (the + adds one). ACE picks the right template automatically: Lyrics for a song, Bible for a verse, Compare N for a comparison. In the Bible and Compare templates the reference, the verse and the translation each sit in a box of their own. Themes from earlier versions get the missing templates added without losing anything you designed. both

Built-in themes

• macOS — a library-driven set of built-in themes.
• Windows — three starters: Default Dark, Bold Red, Minimal White.
• Both — two lower-third themes, Static and Animated (see Lyrics and scripture as lower thirds).

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 follows each box's Scaling setting; lyric and verse boxes shrink to fit by default.

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 bar (speaker name and role, sermon title, announcement) that fires over the current slide. Lower thirds animate in, hold, and animate out. both

How to get there. macOS: the EDITORS pop-up in the tab bar ▸ Lower Thirds. Windows: Editors ▸ Lower Thirds (Ctrl+Shift+L). Press + to create one.

Options.

Designing your own. A lower third's look comes from a theme: design your own under LOWER THIRD THEMES in the Theme Editor, set how each part moves in and out, and press Play to watch it run. Change the theme and the look follows.

In the Cue Plan. Making a lower third adds its cue to the plan; clicking the cue fires it. Right-click the cue for Edit Lower Third… (Windows also lists Fire Lower Third). CLEAR takes a lower third down too, and clearing one from the phone remote no longer clears the whole screen. both

Where they appear. On the audience screen, the PROGRAM monitor, NDI, the livestream and the recording. For keying over cameras, Screen Setup's Overlay source with transparency publishes a separate NDI source — named "… Overlays" (default ACE Overlays) — carrying just the lower thirds and your logo on a clear background. both See Outputs & Screens.

Lyrics and scripture as lower thirds

What it does. Songs and verses can go out as a bar along the bottom instead of filling the screen — the look a livestream or camera feed needs. Give your stream screen a lower-third theme in its Look and the room keeps its full-screen words. both

• Two ready-made themes, Static and Animated, sit in the Theme Editor beside your other themes. Press + under LOWER THIRD THEMES to make your own from sixteen designs for lyrics and Bible — half static, half animated — and set colours and position once for the whole theme. Every part of a design can be animated in, out and on Next; Play shows exactly what will go out.
• The bar stays up; the words change. The bar comes in with the first line, and on every Next only the words change, with the bar growing or shrinking smoothly to fit. CLEAR, a blank or an announcement takes it out. Verses compared in two, three or four translations sit side by side, one column each.
• Too long? Split it. A slide with more words than the bar can hold is marked TOO LONG in the slide grid ("Too long for a lower third. Right-click → Split in Two."). Right-click it ▸ Split in Two: it breaks where a reader would pause and keeps the reference on both halves.

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, once your CCLI licence number is set ACE draws it, small and dimmed, on song-lyric slides, together with the song's credit line — title, writers, © and CCLI song number — on the slides chosen with the Song panel's Credit: picker (first slide by default). See Songs & Arrangements ▸ CCLI credit line and usage report.

How to get there. Preferences ▸ General ▸ CCLI license number (see Preferences).

• macOS — shown on song slides.
• Windows — drawn by the built-in slide layout; themes built from positioned objects don't draw the number or the credit line yet (Windows: not yet available on object-based themes).

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). It opens as a window of its own. Toggle the stage output itself with ⌥⌘S / Ctrl+Shift+D; see Outputs & Screens ▸ Stage monitor.

Each stage screen can show something different. Every stage screen picks its own layout in Screen Setup (Stage Layout, or follow the live layout) — lyrics and chords on the musicians' monitor, timers and notes on the director's. See Outputs & Screens. both

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

Slot types.

Text and Live Text slots have Scaling with Min/Max size limits, like theme text boxes.

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, with no undo/snap/rulers (Windows: not yet available) 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 (Same as Audience or a theme) but still a placeholder on Windows (Windows: not yet available). See Outputs & Screens ▸ Screen Setup.

Outputs & Screens

This chapter covers everything ACE Presenter sends to a screen: screens and their destinations (a display, a window, NDI, Syphon or SDI), the audience output your congregation sees, the stage/confidence monitor your musicians and speakers see, the Screen Setup dialog where you set all of this up, 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.

Screens and outputs. A screen decides what is shown — its layers, its theme, its Look. An output is where it goes — a display, a window, or a network/video feed. A screen can have several outputs (the same picture in two places), and a role (Audience or Stage) can have several screens, each showing something different. See Screens and destinations.

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+,) — select the audience screen and pick a monitor in its destination box.
• 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: if you have no second monitor, choose Windowed in the destination box to run the output in a window rather than fullscreen.

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.

• A layout per stage screen — each stage screen picks its own layout in Screen Setup's Stage Layout picker, or follows the live layout (macOS: Follow Live; Windows: Follow the live layout). Give the musicians lyrics and chords and the director timers and notes. both
• Mirror-program backdrop — draw a dimmed copy of the live program behind the stage layout (set in Screen Setup). both
• Screen preview — a stage layout can carry a live picture of the audience screen (Windows: not yet available).
• 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 screen and output: where each one goes, its color grade, keystone correction, which layers it shows, how it goes fullscreen, its blanking color, and (for the stage) its layout, 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+,.

Screens and destinations

The left side of Screen Setup lists your screens, grouped by role (Audience, Stage), with their outputs beneath them. both

Adding a screen. The + asks what you mean: both

• New screen — its own layers and theme — a screen of its own. It appears in the Look editor by name, so a stream feed can carry lyrics on black while the wall keeps the full look.
• Another output — same content, second destination — the same picture in a second place (mirroring).

Naming. Double-click a screen to rename it — "Foyer TV", "Balcony" — or right-click ▸ Rename…. both

The destination box. Click a selected output's destination box to choose where it goes:

The single NDI switch is retired. NDI used to be one global "broadcast" switch that could only send the audience program. Any screen can now be an NDI feed through its destination box, which is why there's no separate NDI on/off. both

Taking it back. Removing a screen or output, or switching a whole role off, shows a banner with Undo for ten seconds. both

Nothing hidden. On macOS, screens your licence can't open are marked rather than left out, the destination box shows what the screen is actually putting out, and a tab holding a corner pin or hidden layer carries a dot so nothing sits there forgotten.

Overlays NDI source

In Screen Setup's advanced section (ADVANCED — RENDERER · NDI), Overlay source with transparency publishes an extra NDI source — "… Overlays", by default ACE Overlays — carrying only the lower thirds and your logo on a transparent background, for keying over cameras in vMix, OBS, an ATEM or a TriCaster. both

Screen Setup sub-tabs

Audio routing (Screen Setup ▸ Audio) and NDI as a destination are documented further 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. Mirroring is a choice you make with + ▸ Another output.

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.

• View ▸ Quick Screen… (⌘J / Ctrl+J). both
• Clear it: macOS Output ▸ Clear Quick Screen (Esc); Windows Clear screen.

Options.

• Route the message to All, Stage, or Audience. On macOS the default is stage, so you can cue the platform without the congregation seeing it; on Windows the default is Audience.
• Type free text, or pick from recents / presets (saved between sessions).
• Windows: the sheet's Push to… button currently only saves the text to recents — show the message from the Messages tab instead (Windows: Push not yet working).
• 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: moves windows to the remaining displays and shows a DISPLAY LOST banner — "… — Ctrl+Shift+, to reassign" — with a REASSIGN button. 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. (On Windows it labels the main audience and stage outputs only, not extra named screens.)
• 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 — the livestream, NDI 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, still to come on Windows. 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, built in. No extra install.
• Windows — uses an FFmpeg encoder that ships in the Windows installer. No extra install.

The PROGRAM composite

What it does. The single image ACE streams and records. It is layered: a camera or capture backdrop (cover-fit to fill the frame) with the live slide composited on top — lower thirds and your logo included. 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 — any screen

What it does. Sends a screen over the network as a named NDI source that other NDI-aware software can subscribe to — a streaming PC, a switcher, another building. both

How to get there. Screen Setup — select a screen's output, click its destination box and choose NDI — send over the network. It is sent under that screen's name, so rename the screen to rename the source. Stage screens can go out this way too. (This replaced the old single NDI switch, which could only send the audience program.) See Outputs & Screens ▸ Screens and destinations.

• A clip playing on screen plays on the NDI feed too, even with no audience window open, and the feed follows the MEDIA button in the LAYERS row. On the Free plan it carries the same ACE FREE mark as the screen.
• Overlay source with transparency adds a second source with just the lower thirds and logo on a clear background — see Overlays NDI source.
• On macOS, Syphon and SDI are destinations alongside NDI and behave the same way, transparency included (Syphon: macOS only; SDI: Windows not yet available).

Requirements. The NDI runtime is not bundled with either edition and must be installed separately; the NDI choice appears in the destination box once it is. macOS provides a guided install; Windows detects the runtime on disk. 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 — DeckLink capture with format detection, included in the Windows installer.
• macOS — the ACEDeckLink module, loaded when Blackmagic's driver is present.

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.

• Preferences ▸ ATEM both. Enable it, set the host (default 192.168.1.100) and port (default 9910), and test the link (Windows: Test connection). Then set the per-cue VIDEO SWITCHER input in the New/Edit Cue dialog (on Windows the field appears when ATEM is enabled).

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 — Qt Spatial Audio HRTF, included in the Windows installer ("HRTF-rendered positioning, through the binaural device"). There is no CPU watchdog on Windows.

Venues & venue profiles

What it does. A venue profile bundles a whole room's configuration: display assignments, output devices, 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: Add, Rename, Delete and Switch to this venue, plus a venue badge in the status bar. A Windows venue is a name only for now — switching doesn't yet capture or re-apply displays, audio or other settings (Windows: full venue profiles not yet available).

macOS stores profiles in venues.json.

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. The Zones tab shows an empty state ("No zones yet"); there is no zone or room editor and no fader UI yet.

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 — the media defaults above; the LANES tab also has per-lane M (mute) and S (solo) buttons.

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.

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. The Windows palette ("Search cues, library, looks, scenes…") lists themes but not saved Looks, and doesn't index media Windows — not yet; it surfaces explicit Service-Plan and Layout-preset entries (General, Sermon, Conference, Stream, Custom). Both editions reach cues, songs, service plans, themes, workspaces, and presets.

Preferences / Settings — ⌘, / Windows Ctrl+,

Open with ⌘, (macOS: ACE ▸ Settings…) or Ctrl+, (Windows: File ▸ Preferences…).

• macOS shows Account, General, Audio, Bible, ATEM and Hotkeys; turning on Show advanced adds Detection, Network, NDI and Updates under an ADVANCED divider.
• Windows lists every pane in the table below, including three that macOS doesn't show at all (ProPresenter, Linked Computers, Integrations). On Windows, ProPresenter and Linked Computers are visible but switched off — their controls are disabled with a "Not built on Windows yet" note.

Pane-by-pane comparison

The menu bar

The two editions share the same menus — File, Edit, View, Output, Workspace, Detection and Help — with the same items in the same places. macOS adds the application (ACE) menu and an automatic Window menu; Windows adds an Editors menu for the editors macOS opens from the EDITORS pop-up in the tab bar.

macOS menus

The EDITORS pop-up in the tab bar opens the Lower Thirds editor, Theme Editor (⌘T), Stage Layout (⇧⌘T), Logo / Watermark, Translation Overlay, Reading Plans, Reference Scanner and Stock Media.

Windows menus

The bare keys — → / ← / Page Down / Page Up, ↓ / ↑, Space, B and Delete — work from anywhere in the main window rather than through menu shortcuts, so the Next Slide, Previous Slide and Toggle Blank items show no shortcut on Windows.

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, built to the same standard: every feature and fix is meant to land on both, with the same menus, the same file formats (.acesong, .acePlaylist, .aceTheme), the same nine interface languages and the same release numbers. This appendix lists the differences that remain in version 2.4 — some because a technology exists on only one platform, the rest because Windows hasn't caught up yet. If a chapter and this appendix ever seem to disagree, trust this appendix.

Everything not listed here behaves the same on both editions. Windows uses Ctrl where macOS uses ⌘, and Alt where macOS uses ⌥.

Platform technologies (by design)

Windows: not yet available

Windows only

• Move Up / Move Down and Learn Timing… on a cue's right-click menu (on macOS, drag to reorder; Learn Timing… is on the song's Library row).
• The Editors menu (macOS opens the same editors from the EDITORS pop-up).
• An Integrations pane for your own Pixabay and Anthropic keys.
• Keys handled by the audience output window itself when it has focus.
• Auto-reconnect for the livestream (macOS reports the drop and stops).

The same on purpose

The Free-tier watermark, the lower-third designs, the lyric and scripture lower-third themes, Looks, theme templates and tokens, text Scaling and Line Transform, translation-overlay styles, logo/watermark defaults, the 1920×1080 letterbox rendering rule, the media bin's folders, smart playlists and play-through, the ACE file formats and the Documents ▸ ACE Presenter folder, the bundled Bibles and speech models, song identification, SongSelect import, the CCLI credit line and usage report, the phone-remote wire protocol, and the licence tiers are 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 list any time from Help ▸ Keyboard Shortcuts (⌘? / Ctrl+?).

Modifier symbols: ⌘ Command · ⌥ Option/Alt · ⇧ Shift · ⌃ Control. As a rule, Windows uses Ctrl where macOS uses ⌘, and Alt where macOS uses ⌥.

Running the show

These bare keys work anywhere in the main window. They stand aside while you're typing in a text box and come back as soon as you click outside it; they never act while a dialog is open or while a modifier key is held.

A presentation clicker's Page Down / Page Up buttons move one slide on both editions.

The live audience output window on Windows also accepts → / Space / Page Down to advance, ← / Page Up to go back, B to blank and Esc to close while it has focus.

Bible workspace

Files & editing

Navigation

Workspaces & windows

Setup & editors

Service run (On Air)

(On Windows the On-Air commands use Ctrl plus the Windows key.)

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), Add files (⇧⌘I) 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.

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

• Songs aren't recognised while Deepgram is on. Deepgram hears speech; the songs are heard by the on-device engine beside it, which needs a Whisper model to load (and on Windows, a target mode other than Bible only).
• 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. Click the tile and find the file (Locate Missing File) — other missing files from the same folder reconnect with it. Keep "Manage media automatically" on so future imports are copied into the app. On macOS, Preferences ▸ General ▸ Relink Missing Media also searches folders you add.
• A ProPresenter import is missing media. The files weren't where the library said. On macOS they arrive as MISSING tiles ready to relink; on Windows the Import Wizard's Summary lists them so you can add them by hand.

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

• 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.
• Your ACE files: Documents ▸ ACE Presenter — songs, services and themes you export or back up, plus the Inbox (see Media). The live show itself stays in the app support folder.
• Settings: standard per-platform preferences storage (macOS defaults / Windows registry). On macOS, 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.