This version needs macOS 12 or later. A Mac on 10.15 or 11 should stay on 0.1.8. 0.1.8 will still offer this version there, at the foot of the side column. Leave it alone on that Mac: once it is in, it will not open.
Update before 7 November. Every copy up to 0.1.8 signs in once and never renews it, so sixty days after that sign-in it stops importing files, adding backdrops and saving, though a show already made still opens and plays, and a plan bought on the website would never have reached the Mac. This one renews by itself. A Mac that stays on 0.1.8 can sign in again when it says its licence has run out, and that gives it another sixty days.
Before you open it in a venue
Mark the projector. A screen is for the audience only because somebody said so. Every screen starts with nobody having said who it is for, and until it is marked For the audience nothing from the show reaches it: not a picture, not a backdrop, not the camera, not the calibration grid. 0.1.8 never wrote down which screen it had chosen, so on a Mac that is updated nothing is marked, and every picture plays in a small window on the console's own screen until the projector is marked For the audience in Screen settings. In a show with pictures, the check before the house opens goes red until it is. A booth monitor with the sound desk or the script on it is never taken over again unless it is marked For the audience. Until one is marked, in a show with pictures or a room with a camera, a line over the running order says no screen here is for the audience. Its button, Say who it is for, opens Screen settings on that screen. When more than one screen has nobody saying who it is for, there is a button for each, by its name.
A screen for the audience is black from the moment the console opens. It is covered at launch, as it is plugged in and the moment it is marked For the audience, before anything has played on it, so the house does not see the Mac's desktop before the first cue and Blackout has a screen to reach. Between one cue and the next it is black and says nothing: OUTPUT READY is gone. A screen nobody has marked is left as the Mac has it. A marked one stays covered for as long as CueMonkey is open, with the pointer hidden over it. To use it as an ordinary screen between shows, mark it Only for me, which takes the show off it, and For the audience again before the house opens. If it was the show's default screen, the show plays on the next screen for the audience meanwhile, or in the small window when there is none, and it takes the show back once it is marked For the audience again. Or quit. A monitor mirroring the projector when you mark it is marked with it, so if you turn the mirroring off with both plugged in, that monitor goes black too; mark it Only for me to have it back. Opening Screen settings puts nothing on a screen: the alignment grid appears once you press Show this screen or move the picture, and never once a show is on. And if a screen for the audience will not go black, a line over the running order says so, "Screen 3 would not go black, so the audience may be seeing this Mac's desktop on it.", with the reason under it and Try again beside it. It goes by itself once the screen is covered.
Every sound cue is asked of the sound engine before the house opens. 0.1.8 took a sound in by its name alone, so a show made with it can hold an Apple Lossless, Opus or ADPCM cue that plays nothing at GO, or a high efficiency AAC one that plays at half its rate with its top end gone, and a 5.1 AAC cue plays nothing, because the engine takes no more than two channels of AAC. A sound coming in now is asked of the engine itself, and anything it cannot play as it is, a 5.1 AAC file among them, is converted as it comes in, whatever its name and codec say. The check before the house opens now asks the engine itself about every sound cue's file. A cue it cannot play at all stops the show by name, as a missing file does: "In a form the sound engine cannot play, so it will play nothing: Rain." One it plays only in part is a warning: "In a form the sound engine plays only in part, so it will not sound as it should: Wind." Use Replace the file on it and pick the same sound again: it is converted as it comes in, and the cue keeps its place and starts its settings afresh.
A 5.1 mix is folded into stereo as it comes in. A sound file with more than two channels is folded into stereo on the way in: its centre is heard on both sides and each surround on its own side, its sub is left out, and evening out makes up for it coming in quieter. One brought in by an earlier version still plays only its front left and right, and the check before the house opens names it, with Replace the file to bring it in folded.
Pictures come at the press, and Blackout fades. Every release up to now had the screens' permission written for a window that does not exist, so a screen could not hear the console. A picture reached the stage only on the screen's own check once a second, up to a second after GO, and Blackout and Restore cut whatever Screen settings said. Now a picture comes up the moment it is sent, and a Blackout fade set in Screen settings takes the time it says. A show that had a Blackout fade typed in and never saw it work will see it on the first night after the update. The check names a Blackout that fades, because a panic control that takes two seconds is something whoever runs the show tonight has to be told.
A film that reaches its end leaves. Its picture goes over its own fade out, the tile stops saying Live, a cue set to start when it ends comes in, and a backdrop set to come back comes back. Until now the last frame stayed up until the next GO. A file a screen cannot open counts as ended at once, so what follows it still comes. GO pressed on a film's last frame is not taken for its end, so the next cue stays up.
"Start the next cue when it ends" works on a sound. A cue set to start the next when it ends did nothing on an untrimmed sound, and its Live mark stayed on all evening. It fires now, so a show with that set by accident will move on by itself.
A fade out goes down like a fader. Evenly in decibels, the way a hand on a fader takes a sound out, and smoothly to nothing at the end. It used to walk down in sixty steps you could hear on a held note, and jump the last thirty two decibels to silence. Every fade out in the show will sound different. A film's own sound on a fade shorter than about two seconds goes down along a gentler curve instead, because a film's level can change only once a frame. A cue that crosses into one with a fade in of its own keeps the old shape, so the two do not dip together, and that is decided once, at GO, for sounds and films alike.
Quitting asks while the show is on. ⌘Q, the Dock, shutting the Mac down and the console's close button all come to one question, a row over the running order: "Quit while the show is on? Everything on stage stops." Leave it is what Esc and doing nothing give. ⌘W, ⌘M and ⌃⌘F do nothing on the console or on a screen. ⌘H hides the console and leaves the screens up, where it used to show the audience the Mac's desktop. However the app goes, the sound goes over sixty milliseconds, not with a click.
Fullscreen is the kind Esc cannot leave. It covers the screen without a Space of its own, has no title bar and no green button, and is left from Settings. Esc is the console's key, pressed in the middle of scenes, and it used to take the console out of fullscreen and slide the Dock up.
Opening a show asks first. Open, a double click in Finder, New and Revert are one thing now. With work to lose, New and Open offer Save first, Don't save or Cancel. Revert never offers Save first, and neither does opening the show that is already open, because the show as it is goes into Earlier versions instead. The show being left is kept in Earlier versions whenever it has cues in it or work that is in no file. A file opened from Finder in the middle of a show waits in a row with Open it, rather than putting a window over GO.
The space bar is GO unless you walked to a button with Tab. The check, Earlier versions, the account and Other ways to save, opened with the mouse and put away with Esc, each took the next space bar, so the first GO of the evening could open the check again and fire nothing. A menu put away and a fader dragged in the player leave the space bar to GO now, and the arrow keys to the playhead. Tab to a button and Space presses it, Clear and Blackout included. In 0.1.8, Tab to Clear and Space fired the next cue. The player's position line answers a click and nothing else: Return on it used to wind the cue that was on back to the start.
Return gives a window its answer. Delete in a question, Save in a cue's settings and the trim, Done in Settings. It used to press whichever button had the focus, and Delete chosen from a cue's or a backdrop's menu opened on Cancel, so Return put the question away and nothing was deleted. Escape over a number you have just typed puts back what was there instead of keeping it, and the next Escape closes the window. A window opens on itself rather than on its first control, so the space bar presses nothing in it and a cue's settings no longer open with the cursor in the note; renaming a cue selects its name, so what you type replaces it. Tab to a button and Return presses that button, as before.
Escape is Cancel in a cue's settings and its trim. Escape and a click outside a cue's settings or its trim are now Cancel, as on every Mac: what the window changed goes back as it was when it opened, and a follow, a note or a layer chosen there does not happen. Whatever Escape puts back it says, and ⌘Z brings it back. Closing a window with nothing changed no longer uses up a step of undo.
A key brushed in the dark opens no window. S, T, N and ? open the armed cue's settings, its trim, its note and the list of keys while a show is being built. Once any cue has reached the stage, including one tried by hand in the afternoon, they open nothing until a new show is started or another is opened, and say which menu has the same thing.
A screen keeps its number all evening. A screen unplugged leaves a gap rather than moving the others up. A cue set to a screen that is not plugged in plays in the small window on this Mac, and the check before the house opens says so.
Clear reaches a picture the console has lost track of. When a change to the stage went quiet at its deadline, the notice said to press Clear, and in 0.1.8 Clear then stopped the sound and touched no screen. Now it takes every picture the running order can put up off every screen, and it still leaves backdrops and the camera standing, each to be taken down by its own card.
Where a film's own sound comes out. A video's sound plays through this Mac's output, the one in System Settings, whatever Sound settings sends the sound cues to. Until it can go where the show does, the console says so: in the check before the house opens, and in Sound settings, where the line under Audio output now reads "Where sound cues play out of." To hear both in one place, make the device the show plays through this Mac's output in System Settings, Sound, as the check says. A film with no sound of its own can be set to Mute, and is then left out.
A cable pulled out leaves the show silent, and in time. When the interface the show plays through is unplugged or stops answering, no sound cue comes out of the laptop any more. A film's own sound still plays through this Mac's output meanwhile, and the line over the running order says so. Every cue goes on where the scene is, a fade finishes when it would have, and when the interface is back the show plays through it again on its own, from where the scene has got to. It used to stop every cue that was sounding and send the rest of the evening out of whatever this Mac was set to, which in a small room is the back row hearing the laptop. The same holds for a console opened before its interface is plugged in, and the check before the house opens says so, with how to play through something else meanwhile. To have the show carry on through this Mac instead: Settings, under Running a show, If the sound device goes. A console set that way says so in the check before the house opens.
The player opens closed. It used to open as it was left, so a player left open at the end of a tech run was open at the top of the next night's show. After that it is open or closed only when you say, with P or its cross, and stays open through the show for as long as you want it. Hold holds what follows too: a cue set to start the next one stops counting while it is held and goes on from what it had left when it runs on, where the next cue used to fire underneath the hold and take the held one off.
New
- A new icon: black, with the mark in white. On macOS 26 the Mac draws it itself, in whichever style it is set to, dark, clear or tinted included. The installer window is black to match, with nothing on it but the two icons, an arrow and one line, and sharp on a Retina screen.
- Files dragged in from the Finder come in: onto the running order as cues, and pictures and films onto the backdrop strip as backdrops. A sound let go of over the strip goes into the running order, and the console says so. A show file dropped on the console on its own opens it, asking first as Open does.
- A projector's cable pulled out mid-show puts that screen's window away and keeps what was on it, and the cable going back in brings it back. A line over the running order names the screen and says so. The console hears about cables from the Mac itself, whether Screen settings is open or not, so a projector plugged in after the console is up is seen at once.
- ⌘1 to ⌘9 choose an act, and holding ⌘ shows each act's number. ⇧⌘] and ⇧⌘[ go to the next and the previous act. None of them fire anything.
- What Clear does is set in Settings: over each cue's own fade out, or a cut. Pressing Clear again while a sound is still fading takes it off now.
- A monitor mirroring the projector is shown as the projector, and either of the pair can be unplugged. The check says so when the projector is mirroring this Mac, or when the console has opened on a screen marked for the audience.
- Hold takes the sound down over sixty milliseconds and brings it back the same way, and on a sound cue a fade coming up waits for it. A held film's fade keeps its time.
- H holds what is playing and lets it run on, as the player's Hold button does, while the player is open. With the player closed, or nothing it can hold, it says so and holds nothing, so a key brushed in the dark cannot stop the music.
- A cue that is on hold says Held: on its tile, in the list and on the player, where it said Live, and on the layer rail, where it counted down, and its red dot stands still. The line beside the acts says Held once everything on is held. Under Blackout the player says Blacked out for a picture, as its tile and its row do, and a held film's tile says Held under the dark rather than Still playing.
- Sound settings says where the show's sound is, not only where it was put. An interface that is unplugged stays in the list, marked (not connected), and a line under it says what the show is doing meanwhile, for example: "Scarlett Solo 4th Gen" is not connected. The show keeps time without a sound until it is. The line goes by itself once the show is back. A device you pick that will not play says why, in red, under the list.
- The check before the house opens is one mark at the foot of the side column, the worst of what it found: a red cross if anything would stop the show, whatever else is fine, an amber triangle if something is worth a look, and a green tick when everything is. It was a light for each line, and one red light among green ones read as mostly fine. It says Show ready or Show not ready, and Show mode once the show is on. Press it for the whole list.
- A toast can say what comes next on a second line, with its keys drawn as keys, and one comes at a time, at the top, under anything that is wrong.
- The manual and Show me around, the walk a new console opens with, are in Settings, under About CueMonkey.
- Send a report says exactly what goes with it: the log as it is, which names the show, each cue and the time it went, the devices and any errors. It used to say nothing about the show went, which was not true. It is kept on our server and emailed to us through Resend, and the words beside Send say both.
- The list's grip is at the front of the row, and the transport reads CLEAR, BLACKOUT and GO in capitals. A double click inside a control on a row or a tile fires nothing.
- A new splash, and one mark for something being done, wherever it is.
- The source of the ffmpeg inside the app, and of the x264 built into it, is attached to every release from this one on.
Fixed, on show night
Sound. The show owns one mixer from the moment the console opens, and a sound device only plays it. Changing the output, losing a cable and getting it back no longer stop the cues that are sounding, and the running order no longer reads that silence as the end of a file and moves on. Plugging in headphones, a projector or a dock during a show no longer stops the cue that is playing either. The sound changes device over five milliseconds, so there is no click. A device that stops is found by counting what it takes, which catches a connector that blinks and a lid closed and opened, and fades wait through the gap with the sound. The show goes back to the device it was put on the moment that device will play again, and a show that is playing is never moved to a new default, which is somebody's headphones in the wings. Devices are known by their own ID, so two of the same interface are told apart and a rename changes nothing. A device chosen before it is plugged in is kept. The check before the house opens names the device the sound is really coming out of, and goes red when that is not where the show was put. It used to go green as soon as the interface's name was back in the list, with the show still in the laptop. The device's own buffer is left as it was set, where it used to be forced for every program on the Mac. Every cue is heard as its file is from its first frame. The first hundredth of a second used to come out with left and right taking turns, which is the attack of every gunshot, and a 5.1 file played two channels along for the whole cue. A trimmed sound ends exactly on its out point without a click. A trimmed loop goes round, where it used to play once and stop, and each pass joins its out point straight to its in point, with no gap. A loop no longer piles up passes over a long evening until the Mac will not open its file again. A held film's own sound goes down and comes back over sixty milliseconds, as a held sound does, and a Hold pressed as a film ends no longer pauses the next film on that layer.
The panic controls. Nothing that can wait runs where GO, Clear and Blackout wait behind it. A file on a disk that stopped answering, or a touch of the position bar after the interface was pulled out, used to freeze all three, and a cue whose file is that slow is never started late over a newer one on its layer. GO pressed faster than a fade no longer stacks cues. A fade typed as 16.1 seconds made Clear do nothing to that cue, and it no longer does. A cue, a backdrop or the camera put up during a Blackout no longer makes the button say BLACKOUT over black screens, so the next B no longer lifts the dark onto the picture being hidden. A cue number typed and not yet used is armed by GO however it is pressed, the button and Go anyway included. A click on GO used to fire the cue already armed while the chip said GO to arm. A double tap on the first GO of the evening no longer presses Go anyway on the check it has just opened: a window hears no Space or Return for its first moment, and nothing held down as it opened. A cue tried by hand before the show no longer uses up the check the first GO walks into. If part of the console fails to draw, what is left still has Clear, Blackout and GO, and says what the next GO does. If the whole console fails, Clear and Blackout are still there, and so are Delete and B, and Try again starts the console again with the show where it was and show mode kept. After a run that went down, signing in again is offered in a row, never a window over GO.
Screens. A screen marked For the audience is black from the moment the console opens, before the first cue, stays above the menu bar and the Dock, shows no pointer and nothing that can be selected, and never says OUTPUT READY. Blackout reaches a screen the moment it is pressed, where it used to wait up to a second for the screen to ask, and nothing sent before the press can lift it. A screen's window never takes the keyboard, so a hand on the projector in the dark leaves GO where it was, and closing a window keeps the projector's calibration. A picture is spoken to on the screen it went up on, even when the show's screen has changed since. Going back to an earlier copy takes everything off the stage first, where it used to leave a film on the projector that nothing could reach. A projector that comes back takes the show back with it, and calibration is sent when the console opens. A still on the second layer no longer wipes the first, a transparent PNG shows what is under it, and a film stops on its out point to the frame.
Files. A sound the console cannot play as it is, Apple Lossless, Opus, ADPCM or HE-AAC, is converted to FLAC as it comes in. The first three used to come in and play nothing at GO, and HE-AAC played at half its rate with its top end gone. One an earlier version brought in, and any sound the engine cannot play, is named in the check before the house opens. A cue whose file has gone says File missing on its own tile, the armed one included, which in 0.1.8 was the first cue of every show. The check hears about a missing file at once, where it went on saying all was well for up to a minute. A light copy that fails names the video it could not make lighter, says nothing was written and that the log has why, and names a full disk as one. It used to say Light copy stopped, as though somebody had pressed Stop. A Stop pressed between two videos now stops the copy, where it used to be lost. A save never fails because one cue's file has gone: the cue is kept in its place and named afterwards. A show file carries on coming out after a quit, a crash or an update, and a cue on its way says Unpacking, never File missing. Clearing the unpacked media keeps what the open show is playing. A show file from somewhere else can no longer write anywhere on this Mac. Replace the file works, which it never did in a released copy. Save as a new show keeps the layers, which 0.1.8 dropped: a file saved that way opens with every cue on layer 1, and stays that way.
The mouse. A double click in a hurry on the button at the end of a row could leave the console taking no clicks at all, with nothing open, while the keys still worked. A menu that has gone now always gives the mouse back.
Typing a number. Typing into a number you have clicked into replaces it. In the app it went in beside what was there, so 80 typed over a volume of 100 became 400, four times the file. The browser the checks ran in never did this, and they now run in the app's engine too.
The console. Every window is drawn the same way, and the tooltips behave, CLEAR and BLACKOUT's among them, which never showed. GO keeps the next cue in sight in an act longer than the screen, without moving the running order under a hand that is on it. The transport keeps its width whatever the layer is called, and BLACKOUT and RESTORE take the same room, so Clear no longer moves when the screens go dark. A tile shows its badge and its clock side by side, the running time kept when room runs out. Return in a question does what the button under the finger says, so tabbing to Cancel and pressing Return no longer deletes the thing. Menus open with Return. Escape closes the window on top even with a tooltip showing. Blackout answers with a window open, and is the only key that does. The window can be made as small as 1024 across without losing the show's name, the note beside the transport or a cue's name, and the backdrop strip, and the camera card in it, keep their room there. The printed running order has one table per layer, numbered the way the console numbers them. In Sound settings a tick is only a selection, and Leave them alone or Put them back in is the decision.
Underneath. The ffmpeg inside the app is built for the Macs the app runs on rather than for the Mac that built it, which made every import fail on an older Mac.