Wired Displays

Build the overlay for each screen connected to your Mac. Switch widgets on in the sidebar, set them up on the right, and arrange them directly on the display.

Finding your way around

The widget sidebar

Every widget lives in a named group in the left sidebar: METERS, LOUDNESS / DYNAMICS, AUDIO SPECTRUM, WAVEFORMS, PHASE, MUSICAL, VISUALISER, MULTICHANNEL AUDIO, AU PLUGINS, UTILITIES, CONTROLS, CAMERAS, plus OPTIONS and DAW STATUS / FOLLOW at the top. WiFi Remotes uses the same groups, so what you learn on one applies to the other.

Click a group heading to open or close it, and use Collapse All / Expand All at the top of the list to fold the whole sidebar at once.

How the groups fold is your choice, in Settings ▸ Appearance / Graphics ▸ EDITOR SIDEBAR:

• Auto Collapse — opening a group closes the others, so you only ever scroll one list.
• Persistent — groups stay as you left them and are remembered.

Display list and canvas

Below the canvas is a list of your displays, each showing its toggle key and an overlay on/off dot. Click a row to edit that display; its name appears above the canvas. Click a widget on the canvas to open its settings, or drag it to move it. Use Filter and the order menu (Manual, Display Order, Name) when you have lots of screens.

Quick actions

Full overlay presets

The preset menu at the top right recalls a whole layout for the selected display. Save updates the current preset, Save As… makes a new one, and Manage opens the Preset Manager.

Widget presets and instances

Most widget pages start with a Widget Presets bar that stores just that widget's look. Factory looks sit on the left; your five slots on the right. Tap a slot to recall it, hold to save, and right-click for rename, copy and clear.

More than one of a widget

Some widgets can appear more than once on the same display. Each copy is an instance with its own settings, size, position and input.

• Add one: click the ＋ chip in the widget's Instance row, or right-click the widget in the sidebar and choose Duplicate Widget. BPM Detector and Key Detector are added only from the ＋ chip.
• The new instance is selected for you. Its settings open and the sidebar scrolls to it, so you can carry on setting it up straight away.
• Right-click an instance chip for Rename…, Duplicate Widget and Delete. The first instance can't be deleted. Extra instances show a small number beside their dot in the sidebar.
• Label: meter instances can show their name on the overlay. Turn on Show Label and set its position, size and colour.

Switching a group on and off

When a widget has more than one instance, its sidebar switch controls the whole group. Switching it off hides every instance and remembers which ones were showing; switching it on brings back that same set (or all of them, if none was on). Shortcuts, Button Panel keys and Remote rows that switch the widget work the same way. Clear All turns off every instance too.

Arranging widgets

1. Black out the display with its shortcut (F16 for display 1).
2. Click a widget to select it. A red outline with handles appears.
3. Drag inside the outline to move it. Drag a handle to resize; the opposite edge stays put.
4. Click empty space to deselect. Press the shortcut again to hide the overlay.

Widgets you can click

On a Transparent display, clicks pass through to your apps everywhere except on these widgets' own keys and controls: Button Panel keys, Notepad, the Hover Panel, Now Playing's transport buttons, MIDI Piano keys and the BPM reset. So you can press a key on a Transparent display and still click through the gaps around it. A plug-in meter's own controls can be clicked only on a blacked-out display.

Options

Overlay Options

• Background: Blackout or Transparent, plus Background Alpha and Background Colour. Below 100%, the desktop shows through, tinted.
• Shortcut Assignments: this display's Toggle Display, Open Settings, Toggle Transparent and Cycle Preset keys.
• Peek on Mouse Move: turn on Enable Peek, then set Reveal (how fast it fades out), Fade, Hold (how long it stays away after you stop) and Wake Delay. Transparent Peek keeps widgets visible and clears only the background.
• Menu Peek Strip: move the pointer to the top of a blacked-out display to reveal the menu bar. It's your safety escape, so leave it on.
• Ignore Preset Recall: tick it beside a group to keep those settings when you recall a full overlay preset.

Mouse Options

Two features that make blacked-out screens comfortable to work around. Hide Cursor is set per display, on the display selected above. Where’s My Mouse applies app-wide, to every display. Both are preset-unaware: neither is saved in a preset, and recalling a preset never turns them on or off.

Hide Cursor

Hide Cursor hides the pointer over this blacked-out display. The setting applies to the selected display, so you can hide the pointer on a meter bridge and keep it on the screen beside it.

Each display has its own setting — here, or with the Hide Cursor button in that display’s quick actions. The pointer follows the setting of the display it is on, whichever app is active.

The pointer disappears the moment it crosses onto that display, and comes back as soon as it leaves. There's no delay and no stray arrow sitting over your meters. It never hides on Transparent displays or while you're arranging.

• Hold Control (or Shift) to see the pointer for a moment.
• The pointer always comes back when the screen locks, the Mac wakes, displays change, or DarkStage quits.
• Lost it anyway? Press ⌃⌥⌘Esc to force it back.

Where's My Mouse?

After the pointer has sat still for the Idle Time, your next mouse movement flashes a ring around it, so you find it straight away across several dark screens. Clicking or scrolling never triggers it.

Click Trigger Ring to preview, even while it's off. The same controls also appear in Settings ▸ General.

Preset Looper

Five banks, each holding up to four full overlay presets. Press the Cycle Preset shortcut to step this display through them. Missing presets are skipped.

Transport Colours

The colours used for Play, Record, Idle / Stopped and Armed by every transport-aware widget, with Smoothing for the change between them.

DAW Status / Follow

These widgets follow your DAW. Set it up first in Setup ▸ Connect your DAW.

Counter Format on the Counter page appears only for Ableton Live and REAPER, which don't tell DarkStage which counter they're showing.

Meters

• PPM / VU: set the ballistics under Metering, the reference level under Scale & Reference, colour zones, peak hold, clip LED hold and numeric readouts. Clear clip LEDs with Clear Clip LEDs or from the menu bar.
• Needle VU: set the 0 VU Reference (RMS) to match your studio's line-up level, such as −18 or −20 dBFS.

Loudness / Dynamics

• Reset Mode: On Transport Play starts Integrated afresh every time you press Play; Manual keeps counting until you press Reset Integrated LUFS Now. Reset All Inputs restarts every input at once. Integrated, Loudness Range and Average Dynamics restart together.

Reading the LUFS Meter

Loudness is measured three ways at once, and the Combined appearance shows all three together:

Lower is quieter: −14 LUFS is louder than −23 LUFS. The meter colours itself against the Target you set, so the job is usually “keep Integrated in the band” rather than reading an exact number.

The five LUFS appearances

One meter, five ways of drawing it. Pick whichever reads best from where you sit — the measurement is identical in all of them.

Each was photographed a few seconds apart on the same track, so the numbers differ slightly between them — they are not one moment shown five ways.

Setting a target and scale

1. Switch on LUFS Meter under LOUDNESS / DYNAMICS and click it to open its settings.
2. Choose a Target: EBU −23, ATSC −24, Spotify −14, Legacy −16 or Custom (a slider from −36 to −6 LUFS).
3. Choose a Scale — Full (−60 … 0) for everything, or the EBU relative scales EBU +9 and EBU +18, which put your target at zero so you read how far off you are rather than an absolute number.
4. Pick an Appearance: Combined (the default), Classic, Bar, Segments or Arc.
5. Set the INPUT switch (A–D) if this meter should watch something other than Input A.

The rest of the page is presentation: Show Momentary / Short-Term / Integrated hide any reading you don’t want, Show Target Line and Target Zone Band draw the target on the scale, and Max Hold, Scale Marks, Labels and Warning Colour tune how it looks from across the room.

The three dynamics meters

These sit beside the LUFS Meter and answer different questions:

• Loudness Range (LRA), in LU — how much the loudness moves across the programme. A heavily compressed master might read 3–5 LU; an orchestral recording 15 LU or more. Use it to check a master isn’t flat, or that a podcast isn’t swinging.
• Average Dynamics (PLR), in LU — the programme’s highest true peak minus Integrated. A whole-programme figure: how much headroom sits above the average level.
• Dynamics (PSR), in LU — the true peak of the last 3 seconds minus Short-Term. A live reading that falls as you compress or limit harder, so it is the one to watch while you work.

Resetting

Integrated, Loudness Range and Average Dynamics all measure “since the reset”, and they restart together.

• Reset Mode ▸ On Transport Play starts them afresh each time the DAW rolls — right for checking take after take.
• Reset Mode ▸ Manual keeps counting until you press Reset Integrated LUFS Now — right for measuring a whole song or programme in one pass.
• Reset All Inputs restarts every input at once.

Audio Spectrum

Waveforms

Phase

Musical

BPM Detector and Key Detector are new in this beta. They listen to the audio and estimate its tempo and key. They are detection tools: treat the result as a good guess, not a measurement, and check it by ear.

• BPM Detector: shows the detected tempo, with an optional beat pulse and status line. When the music stops, the last tempo stays on screen, dimmed and marked HOLD, until it locks again, you reset it, or the DAW starts playing. Click the faint ↺ in its corner to reset.
• Key Detector: shows the detected key and the current chord, with Key, Chord, Key + Chord, History, Compass and Spectrum views. Under Notation, Key Code adds None, Camelot, Open Key or Both alongside the key name, and Accidentals chooses Automatic, Sharps ♯ or Flats ♭.

The six Key Detector views

One widget, six ways of showing what it hears. Change it with Show on the Key Detector’s page.

Captured a few seconds apart on the same track, so the chord differs between views.

Saving what it heard

The Key Detector keeps a history of what it detected, and the Export section of its settings page turns that into a file. Set Range first — Selection (when you've dragged over part of the History view), Current Session or Entire History — then:

• Copy puts it on the clipboard.
• Export… saves a file: MIDI File, PDF, Text (Markdown), CSV or JSON. A save dialog asks where it goes.
• Print… prints the same thing.
• You can also drag the history straight out of the settings page into another app.

For MIDI there are three extra choices: MIDI Timeline (Automatic, DAW Timeline or Observed Time), MIDI Timing (Detected, or Beat Aligned to tidy chords onto the beat) and MIDI File Start.

Visualiser

Visualiser draws a music-reactive backdrop behind every widget. It runs only while the display is blacked out. Styles: Oil Slick, Golden Bloom, Night Sky, Event Horizon, Sacred Mirror, Chaos Garden, Lumen Veil, Aurora Field, Reaction Bloom, Magnetic Orchid, Tidal Lotus, Firefly Grove, Julia Drift, Murmuration, Voronoi Dream, Moiré Cathedral, Impossible Tunnel and Afterimage Garden.

Multichannel Audio

Two Meter Bridge widgets show many channels at once, up to 64, from the device chosen in Settings ▸ Multichannel Audio. Meter Bridge PPM shows bars; Meter Bridge VU shows one needle per channel.

1. Choose the feed

In Settings ▸ Multichannel Audio, pick the device, then Choose Channels…. The channels you tick become Meter Bridge channels 1…N, in order.

2. Name and order the channels

Channel Names is one list shared by every bridge on every display, so you name a channel once.

• Name: click a row's name and type, for example Kick or Bass DI.
• Add an emoji: select rows, then click an emoji (🥁 🎸 🎤…) to add it to every selected channel. ⇧-click selects a range, ⌘-click adds to the selection. Add your own emoji to the palette with Paste emoji(s)… and Add; right-click one you added to remove it.
• Reorder: drag the ≡ handle. This changes where a channel is shown, never which input it is.
• Hide: click the 👁 eye. The name, order and pairing are kept for when you show it again.
• Reset Order & Show All undoes reordering and hiding. Clear All Names removes every name.

3. Show the channels you want

Each bridge shows a window of channels: from its Starting Channel, for as many as its count. The window never wraps back to channel 1. Within it, your Channel Names order is applied and hidden channels are left out.

• Stereo Pairing (PPM bridge): click the 🔗 link icon, or ⌥-click a channel number, to pair it with the next channel so they share a meter.
• Meters Per Row and Rows (VU bridge) are linked, so no channel is ever left out.
• Use a PPM bridge and a VU bridge together on different ranges.

AU Plugins

Plugin Meters (beta) shows a third-party Audio Unit meter's own interface on this display. See Plug-ins ▸ Plugin Meters.

Utilities

Cutout

A see-through window in your blackout. DarkStage draws nothing inside a Cutout, so the real app window behind the overlay shows through, and your clicks inside it reach that app. Keep your DAW's edit window, a video, a plug-in or a web page in view while everything around it stays dark and full of meters. Nothing is captured or streamed; it's simply a hole.

1. In Utilities, open Cutout and click Add Cutout. A Cutout appears on the canvas and the widget switches on.
2. Set its Width and Height. Move it by dragging it on the canvas, or Control-drag it on the blacked-out display.
3. Under Target Window, choose the Application and Window you want to see. Status reads FOUND when DarkStage can see it.
4. Click Position Window. The window moves and resizes to sit exactly under the Cutout.
5. Black out the display. The window shows through, and you can click and type in it.

Image

Show a still picture: a studio logo, a sponsor mark, an artist's artwork or a room plate.

1. Open Image and click Choose Image…. PNG or JPEG, up to 64 MB. The widget switches on.
2. Choose Fit (shows the whole picture) or Fill (covers the widget and crops the overflow). Neither stretches the picture.
3. Set Opacity, Width and Height, then drag it into place.

• The picture is copied into DarkStage, so moving or deleting the original file doesn't break the display or any preset using it.
• Transparent PNGs stay transparent, so a logo sits cleanly on the black.
• The Image always sits behind other widgets, so you can use it as a backdrop.
• Use Replace Image… or Remove Image to change it. Images also work on WiFi Remotes.

Notepad

A text note on the overlay — lyrics, a cue list, a session checklist — that you can edit live while the screen stays blacked out.

1. In UTILITIES, switch on Notepad. It appears on the canvas.
2. Click into the note on the blacked-out display and type. Control-drag to move it, or drag it on the canvas.
3. Under Document, use New, Open…, Save and Save As… to keep notes as files, so a cue sheet comes back next session.

Appearance is under Text Style: Family, Size, Line Spacing and Alignment, with Padding, Corner Radius and Border Opacity for the panel around it. Width and Height size it.

Now Playing

Shows what Apple Music or Spotify is playing: title, artist, and optionally artwork, album, progress and time. The layout adapts to the widget's size. With Transport Controls on, its ⏮ ⏯ ⏭ buttons act on that player without bringing it to the front.

• Layout: Standard, or Artwork / Hover, where the cover fills the widget and hovering over it shows the track, progress and transport controls.
• The first time the widget shows a player, macOS asks once whether DarkStage may control it (Automation). Click OK. If you don't allow it, the widget shows Not playing for that player.
• The Transport buttons on the widget's page (Previous, Play / Pause, Next) act on the player shown, and are what you click to assign one to a Button Panel key.
• Only Apple Music and Spotify are supported. Browsers, YouTube and other players are not shown.

Artwork. Spotify supplies its own covers. For Apple Music, a track in your library uses its own cover; for a streamed track DarkStage looks it up in the public Apple catalog, then the exact copy in your library. When no reliable cover is found, a placeholder is shown rather than a cover that might be wrong.

MIDI Piano

A playable on-screen keyboard. It makes no sound itself: each key sends MIDI notes to the destination chosen under MIDI ▸ Destination, usually DarkStage MIDI Bus, which your DAW sees as the MIDI input DarkStage MIDI. Set the Lowest C, number of Octaves and Note Labels, and optionally add Pitch Wheel, Mod Wheel and Sustain under Performance Controls. See Settings ▸ MIDI.

Cameras

The CAMERAS group holds Camera Feeds (show a Location's camera on this display) and Device Camera (a local preview of this Mac's camera). See Cameras.

Controls: Button Panel

A grid of illuminated buttons on the overlay or on a WiFi Remote. Keys can run your DAW’s transport, fire keyboard shortcuts, type text, run a sequence of steps, send MIDI, or control DarkStage itself. Add knobs, spread controls over several pages, and save the whole thing as a layout.

Full Button Panel guide — buttons, sequences, pages, knobs, layouts and tutorials →

Hover Panel

A pop-up panel of Button Panel keys that belongs to the display itself, not to its layout, so recalling a preset never changes it. Use it for preset and scene recall, page navigation or DarkStage controls you want within reach but not always on screen. Find it under Controls ▸ Hover Panel.

• Turn on Enable Hover Panel (off by default).
• Reveal: Click the Display (the default) or Assigned Action Only, where only a key with Show, Hide or Toggle Hover Panel opens it. Edge Tab adds a small tab at the screen edge.
• Auto-Hide: Never, 2, 5, 10, 20 or 30 seconds (default 10 s). It never hides while a key is held. With Tap Anywhere to Dismiss, a click outside the panel just closes it.
• Position & Size and Hover Presets (load a factory panel or save your own) are on the same page. Show Hover previews it in the editor.