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

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.

PPM / VU Meters, Needle VU, LUFS Meter and Button Panel can appear twice on a display. Click + beside Instance to add a second copy; right-click its chip to rename, duplicate or delete it.

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, so buttons can't be pressed there. Use a blacked-out display or a WiFi Remote.

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. Both are preset-unaware: they apply everywhere, are never saved in a preset, and recalling a preset never turns them on or off.

Hide Cursor on Blackout

The pointer disappears the moment it crosses onto a blacked-out 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 Test 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.
• LUFS: pick a Target. Reset Mode On Transport Play (the default) starts Integrated afresh every time you press Play; Manual keeps counting until you press Reset Integrated LUFS Now.

Audio Spectrum

Waveforms

Phase

Other and Visualiser

Visualiser draws a music-reactive backdrop behind every widget: Plasma, Ferro, Bubbles or Lava. It runs only while the display is blacked out.

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

Notes on screen, with New, Open…, Save and Save As…. On a blacked-out display, click in the note to type; Control-drag to move it.

Controls: Button Panel

A grid of illuminated buttons on the overlay or on a WiFi Remote. Buttons can run your DAW's transport, fire keyboard shortcuts, type text, or run a sequence of steps.

Two kinds of button

Add DAW buttons

1. Choose your DAW in Settings ▸ DAW Sync.
2. Click Add DAW Button… and pick commands from the list. Or start from the factory Transport widget preset.
3. Optionally add an After DAW Action step, such as a shortcut that runs after the command.

Add a shortcut or text button

1. Click + Add Button. It appears in the Button List and opens in Edit Button.
2. Give it a Name, a Symbol and a Colour, and choose Illumination: Momentary lights while pressed, On latches, Off never lights.
3. Under Shortcut / Sequence, click the shortcut field (it shows Press keys…) and press the key combination, for example ⌘S.
4. Add more steps with + Shortcut or + Text. Each row's BEFORE value is a pause in milliseconds before that step runs.

• Button List: drag rows to reorder, click the eye to hide a button (it keeps its settings), and use Duplicate or Remove. Right-click a row or a button on the canvas for the same options.
• Layout: Columns, Rows, Button Size and Spacing. Appearance: background, Glow Intensity, labels and symbol size.
• Recenter Button Panel brings it back if it ends up off screen. You can have two panels per display.