Help on LivePrompter Help

About LivePrompter

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 14:02:59 +0000

LivePrompter is essentially a Teleprompter designed specifically for musicians. It displays lyrics and chords for a song on screen and automatically scrolls through the song, so that it always displays the current part of the song.

First and foremost: LivePrompter is free – and that is completely free, no subscriptions, no advertisements, no collecting of data, no need to “phone home” – use it and have fun with it! Essentially, I built it for my own use with bands I play with, and if other musicians enjoy using it, this makes me happy! I’m grateful that I don’t need to make my living from developing software, so no need for any licensing scheme or copy protection. Some People have asked me if I have a Patreon or buy-me-a-coffee-page so I finally gave in and created a page:

I can’t connect to Dropbox – especially on iOS devices

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 14:48:04 +0000

Connecting to Dropbox on Apple’s mobile devices has been notoriously difficult. I am doing my best to make things work as described in the manual, but there have been issues outside my control that have made connections difficult.

Issues with the Dropbox App

When the Dropbox app is installed on your device, LivePrompter will automatically try to authenticate via the app instead of going through the Dropbox web page. This makes things easier, since logging on to Dropbox is typically already done – no need to type in your credentials and the two-factor code.

Song File Tags

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 14:58:28 +0000

The Basics

To give LivePrompter instructions or meta-data, we use so-called “tags” that we enter into our song file. Tags will (mostly) not be displayed on-screen but are used to give LivePrompter information on the song or instructions for displaying and scrolling the song.

Tags always have the same format:

{command:data} or {command}

So they are always enclosed in curly brackets and contain the actual command as well as the data needed after a colon. When the command alone is sufficient, there is no colon and no data part.

MidiAlert2

Thu, 02 Feb 2023 11:49:27 +0000

What is MidiAlert2?

MidiAlert is a little utility that can display pop-up message boxes triggered by MIDI commands (note and controller). MidiAlert2 is (duh) a second, re-worked version of it (more on the changes later).

I built it as a companion to Cantabile, my favorite live VST host. When playing live with VST instruments, I sometimes felt the need to flag some status information very visibly, for example to remind me that an effect is momentarily muted by a controller, or that a state change has happened.

About LivePrompter

Fri, 20 Jan 2023 22:06:14 +0000

Moving from LivePrompter classic to LivePrompter 2

Wed, 05 Oct 2022 13:52:41 +0000

If you already know your way around LivePrompter Classic (the Windows version) and already have some content ready to play with, this article will get you started with LivePrompter 2 in no time!

If you have no previous experience with LivePrompter, I’d suggest you first read the introductory articles on what LivePrompter is and what type of files it can work with.

Note

This guide was created for running LivePrompter 2 on mobile devices - the desktop versions came later; they need to be setup somewhat differently: you don’t need to sync content via Dropbox, since you can point LivePrompter 2 to your local files, just like in the original LivePrompter “classic” - just in a different way.

LyricsPrinter

Fri, 08 Jul 2022 12:49:29 +0000

What is LyricsPrinter?

LyricsPrinter is a companion tool for LivePrompter, the musicians’ teleprompter. LyricsPrinter is a simple tool to help you create printed copies of your LivePrompter song files – with a bit of fancy formatting. It uses the song files from your LivePrompter home directory and creates HTML documents that open in your default browser.

You can generate output for single songs, or you can combine multiple songs in one document. LyricsPrinter creates page break tags in the output document that most browsers should respect, so you should be able to print out a full setlist with relative ease.

Settings in LivePrompter.ini

Tue, 31 May 2022 17:17:24 +0000

LivePrompter’s settings are stored in traditional .ini files. This has proven pretty robust and useful; not only has it saved me from having to code a settings GUI, but it also allows you to use multiple different ini-files, selected at program start. Maybe you want to use LivePrompter with different song folders (one for every band) or with different display configurations (laptop screen vs. projector) and accordingly text sizes?

Just create a copy of LivePrompter.ini, make your changes to this new file and pass it to LivePrompter as a start parameter (C:\MusicProgs\LivePrompter\LivePrompter.exe CustomSettings.ini).

Embedding Pictures

Sat, 30 Apr 2022 23:29:44 +0000

If you want to show snippets of sheet music (or any other graphics) in your songs, you can embed pictures in your songs.

These pictures need to be in the JPEG or PNG format, and they should be sized so they fit on your screen, at least horizontally. LivePrompter will take the height of these pictures into account when calculating its scrolling speed.

After you have created your pictures, create a “Pictures” sub-directory of your home directory (where your songs live) – this is where LivePrompter will look for any pictures referenced in your song files.

Song Files, the Home Directory, and Dropbox

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 14:03:25 +0000

LivePrompter Song Files

OK, before we even start installing LivePrompter, we need to have some content. LivePrompter is not a lyrics editor, it only displays content we have prepared beforehand. So let’s get to creating some content!

Note

LivePrompter understands one specific format: text files (file name ending in “.txt”) following the ChordPro format. LivePrompter will not display PDF or Word documents or other formats – there are other programs that may do that; LivePrompter doesn’t!

Song files for LivePrompter are essentially simple text files that contain the lyrics of our songs with the chords sprinkled in at the right places. They look like this:

Where is the configuration file (liveprompter.ini)?

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 02:19:07 +0000

Short answer: there is no configuration file in LivePrompter 2. All settings are made in the Settings pages that you access via the “hamburger menu” (top left).

Background: the original LivePrompter (now called “LivePrompter classic” was a Windows-only software and configured via .ini files where all settings were made as text lines like “FontSize=12”. When I built LivePrompter 2, I re-worked the way it is configured and created the Settings page to make all confuguration settings using a GUI. no more liveprompter.ini.

Setlist Maker

Sat, 04 Jan 2025 17:25:04 +0000

What is Setlist Maker?

Building setlists manually is a bit of a hassle, and you can get things badly wrong when not typing the correct file names, so I built a tool to help with that. The original tool was called “Setlist Builder”, and it always felt a bit clunky to me, so in 2024 I decided to re-build it completely, using the Flutter platform (the one LivePrompter 2 is also built on). This also means that Setlist Maker is now available for Windows AND macOS.

Chords and Transposing

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 12:55:17 +0000

The basics of using chords are covered in the introductory article, but since there have been a couple of support requests and forum discussions, I thought it would be useful to create a specific article on chords and how LivePrompter deals with them.

General Format

Chords are entered in square brackets at the position in the song where they should be played. This will make LivePrompter display the chord in a separate line above the lyrics at that specific point in the text.

Song Files and the Home Directory

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 13:44:31 +0000

LivePrompter Song Files

Song files for LivePrompter are essentially simple text files that contain the lyrics of our songs with the chords sprinkled in at the right places. They look like this:

{title:Amazing Grace}
{artist:Traditional}
{key:C}
{Duration:02:04}

Verse 1:
A[C]mazing [(C7)]grace, how [F]sweet the [C]sound,
that [C]saved a [Am]wretch like [G]me!
I [C]once was [C7]lost but [F]now I'm [C]found,
was [Am]blind, but [G]now I [F]see.[C]

Verse 2:
Was [C]Grace that [(C7)]taught my [F]heart to [C]fear
And [C]Grace, my [Am]fears re[G]lieved
How [C]precious [C7]did that [F]Grace ap[C]pear
The [Am]hour I [G]first be[F]lieved[C]

Verse 3:
Through [C]many [(C7)]dangers, [F]toils and [C]snares
We [C]have al[Am]ready [G]come
T'was [C]Grace that [C7]brought us [F]safe thus [C]far
And [Am]Grace will [G]lead us [F]home[C]
And [Am]Grace will [G]lead us [F]home[C]

Verse 4:
A[C]mazing [(C7)]Grace, how [F]sweet the [C]sound
That [C]saved a [Am]wretch like [G]me
I [C]once was [C7]lost but now am [C]found
Was [Am]blind but [G]now I [F]see[C]
Was [Am]blind, but [G]now I [F]see[C]

So, they contain mostly the song lyrics, with the chords put at the positions within the text where they make sense musically. LivePrompter will then show this with the chords above the lyrics at the right place:

Using LivePrompter for Multiple Musicians

Sun, 01 May 2022 00:15:05 +0000

Custom Content – Comments and Pictures

LivePrompter can be very powerful when sharing the same song files for multiple musicians in a band. In this scenario, song files are shared e.g. via cloud storage like Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive etc. Or you can go old-school, just copying song files across all devices via USB sticks – but that gets tedious very soon, when you make frequent changes to your songs…

Song File Tags

Sat, 30 Apr 2022 23:41:36 +0000

The Basics

Tags always have the same format:

{command:data} or {command}

So they are always enclosed in curly brackets and contain the actual command as well as the data needed after a colon. When the command alone is sufficient, there is no colon and no data part.

Creating / Editing Song Files

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 14:24:09 +0000

LivePrompter Song File Format

LivePrompter uses text files (extension: “.txt”). Their file name is used to identify the song inside LivePrompter; it also is used when creating setlists. Therefore it makes a lot of sense to give your files meaningful names (why not the song title?).

Lyrics and Chords

Lyrics and chords format follows the ChordPro standard:

Lyrics are simply entered in the text file line by line. ATTENTION: LivePrompter does not do any line-breaking – anything that is too long for the screen width will be brutally truncated!

Chord Grids

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 17:19:42 +0000

New feature in version 1.4.6

What are Chord Grids?

Chord grids are an interesting feature of the ChordPro standard. They are a way to use the “Jazz Grille” format of notation within ChordPro songs. The original ChordPro implementation of these chord grids is very powerful, but also very complex. To use this feature with LivePrompter, I simplified chord grids a bit to make them fit smoothly into the overall LivePrompter concept.

SetlistBuilder (discontinued)

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 15:05:29 +0000

Note

Since I’ve now released the new setlist editor “Setlist Maker”, I won’t invest any more time in SetlistBuilder. You can still download and use it, but I really recommend the new and shiny Setlist Maker – it does all that SetlistBuilder does, but better!

What is SetlistBuilder?

Building setlists manually is a bit of a hassle, and you can get things badly wrong when not typing the correct file names, so I built a tool to help with that.

Creating / Editing Song Files

Mon, 02 May 2022 10:29:33 +0000

LivePrompter Song File Format

LivePrompter uses text files (extension: “.txt”). Their file name (without “.txt”) is displayed in the song list on the main screen, as well as in the title bar of the song display screen. Therefore it makes a lot of sense to give your files meaningful names (why not the song title?).

Lyrics and Chords

Lyrics and chords format follows the ChordPro standard:

Lyrics are simply entered in the text file line by line. ATTENTION: LivePrompter does not do any line-breaking – anything that is too long for the screen width will be brutally truncated!

Multiple Configurations of LivePrompter

Sat, 30 Apr 2022 23:35:32 +0000

< this article to be written 😉 >

Why do you need them

How to create them

How to start LivePrompter with a different configuration

Installation and Initial Configuration – Android / iOS version

Mon, 20 Jan 2025 17:20:10 +0000

Installing

OK, now you know how the necessary basics, you have a Dropbox account, and you’ve created your home directory with the first song files inside your Dropbox folder. Now is the right time to install LivePrompter on your mobile device and configure it for first use.

To install LivePrompter, simply search the Google Play Store for “LivePrompter” – you should find it at the top of the list – or use this link to LivePrompter on Google Play.

Embedding Pictures

Mon, 26 Feb 2024 11:37:08 +0000

If you want to show snippets of sheet music (or any other graphics) in your songs, you can embed pictures in your songs.

Warning

LivePrompter doesn’t automatically scale pictures to fit the screen – anything that is too large will be brutally cut off. So experiment with the pixel width for your pictures that fits your screen size and create all your pictures at the appropriate size. As a rule of thumb, a width of 800 pixels should fit on a typical 10 inch tablet. If you have high-resolution pictures that are too large for the screen, you can use the {picturesize:...} tag before that picture to scale them down (see below).

It makes sense to create your pictures with a black background, so they don’t stand out too brutally on the dark screen background. As a special service, LivePrompter will invert your pictures when you use Light Mode, so things are readable on a white background when you have an outdoor gig.

Installing LivePrompter

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 13:39:26 +0000

Using the installer

The easiest way to install LivePrompter is to download the installer from the LivePrompter web site and run it. The installer will install LivePrompter in a directory of your choosing. One thing to note: since LivePrompter’s settings are controlled by an .ini file in the program folder, it is important to install LivePrompter into a folder for which you have write access rights (which isn’t usually the case for the “Program Files” folder). So: best to use your own folder outside the “Program Files” folder (e.g. C:\LiveTools\LivePrompter\). If you really, really want to install into the “Program Files” folder, then make sure that you give yourself write access for the LivePrompter subfolder.

Windowed Mode and Multiple Monitors

Mon, 25 Apr 2022 20:55:51 +0000

Windowed Mode vs. Full-Screen Mode

By default, LivePrompter displays its lyrics and chords in full-screen mode; no window borders, no resizing… This is by design: a prompter should be just a prompter, no distractions, no multitasking.

But since some users want to run LivePrompter alongside other applications, I have implemented a “windowed” mode. If you add the following line to LivePrompter.ini, song display will open in a resizable window:

FullScreen=no

To avoid nasty side-effects, the main window will be hidden as soon as a song is displayed.

List Display Settings

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 14:41:55 +0000

The List Display Settings page lives in LivePrompter’s settings in the “Display” section. It allows you to configure how LivePrompter displays song lists in the Home and Search Screens:

List Text Size: set the text size of the song lists.

“Automatic” (the default) tries to set an appropriate text size based on the physical dimensions of your screen.
“Small” is the typical list text size for a smartphone
“Medium” would be appropriate for 8-10” screen tablets
“Large” is a size you’d use on even larger devices – or on tablets if you want just a little bit more legibility.

Use Song Colors in List: if you have given your songs colors by using the {color:x} tag, you can use this switch to enable or disable showing these colors.

Installation and Initial Configuration – Windows / macOS Version

Mon, 20 Jan 2025 10:06:16 +0000

About the Desktop Version

Now that the Android / iOS version has proven to be pretty stable, I have started to explore the multi-platform capabilities of the Flutter development framework (that’s the technical platform that LivePrompter is built on). Now you can also run your application on your desktop, both on Windows and on MacOS

If you are not already using the mobile version, I recommend you read through the first chapters of the “Introduction” section to understand the fundamental concepts, then come back here for installing and configuring LivePrompter on your desktop.

MIDI control

Wed, 31 May 2023 08:34:47 +0000

Using MIDI with LivePrompter

OK, so why would I want MIDI on a teleprompter?

There are a couple of scenarios:

Controlling LivePrompter’s buttons (Play/Pause, Next Song, Up, Down, …) via MIDI keys or pedals (e.g. from your master keyboard) without the need to have direct access to a computer keyboard or a touch screen – pretty useful for live musicians that have their hands full
Selecting LivePrompter songs from another program, e.g. a sequencer that you use for your playbacks
Selecting programs / patches etc. on a MIDI keyboard, an effects device or a light controller when selecting a new song in LivePrompter
Controlling a MIDI device at the same time as pressing LivePrompter’s keys, e.g. to synchronize song switches (next song)

Personally, I built MIDI support to synchronize LivePrompter with my favorite VST host, Cantabile (www.cantabilesoftware.com) – any time I select a song in LivePrompter, Cantabile is automatically switched to the same song, so all my sounds are ready to play immediately. Alternatively, if Cantabile is your main program, LivePrompter can also follow Cantabile sending a program change to LivePrompter on loading a song.

The Main Window

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 13:47:02 +0000

After starting, you will first see LivePrompter’s main window:

It will probably look somewhat different for you, since you will have different songs in your song folder, but you get the idea 😉

The main window has three elements:

The list selector for books and set lists (1)
The song list (2)
The “Go!” button (3)

The list selector (1) allows you to choose which songs are displayed in the song list:

The Home Screen

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 14:49:48 +0000

The Main View

After starting, you will first see LivePrompter’s home screen:

It will probably look somewhat different for you, depending on the songs you have in your home directory, but you get the idea 😉

The main screen has four elements:

The Song List (1)
The Title Bar (2)
The Search Button (3)
The “Drawer” Button, also called the “Hamburger Menu” (4)

The Song List (1) displays the current selection of songs. Tapping on any song will take you to the song screen (see next chapter), so you can actually display and scroll lyrics and chords.

Song Display Settings

Mon, 26 Feb 2024 12:29:03 +0000

The Song Display settings live in the Display section of LivePrompter’s settings page; they define the look and the behavior of your Song Page. There are a number of them, so let’s take them section by section

Metrics

Text Size: set the font size for lyrics and chords in “points”
Picture Size: define the scaling of pictures in percent – 100 means pictures will be displayed at their original size
Line Spacing: allows you to insert space between lines (in “points”). Of course, lyrics and the corresponding chords will stay fixed together, space will be inserted only between blocks of lyrics and chords
Side Margin: allows you to move the content away from the left edge of the display by a couple of points. This can be useful for smartphones, especially when stuck in bulky phone covers.

Song Display Options

Show Custom Comments: tap this field to enter a string of numbers that define which custom comments and custom pictures will be shown (see “Using LivePrompter for Multiple Musicians in a Band“). You can show multiple sets of custom comments, so “0123456789” is a valid option (e.g. if you want to use the custom comments feature to show comments in different colors).
Use Custom Transpose / Capo: select the Custom Transpose settings to use. As opposed to custom comments, transposing is exclusive, so you can only select one option.
Chords Bold: switch on to set chords in bold type
Chorus Bold: switch on to set chorus sections (denoted by start_of_chorus / end_of_chorus tags) in bold type
German Chords: display “B” chords as “H”, which is the more common practice in Germany and some other countries in Northern Europe
Remove Multiple Empty Lines: especially when using custom comments, there may be sections in songs that have multiple consecutive empty lines (since you put lines between custom comments that are skipped). This settings will clean up any accumulation of empty lines and leave only a maximum of one empty line between text.
Hide Section Titles: hides all section titles like Chorus: (lines ending in a colon)
Hide All Comments: hides all {comment:...} tags
Hide Chords: Choose if chords should be hidden
- Automatic: show chords by default, but respect {hide_chords} and {show_chords} tags
- Always: hide all chords
- Never: show all chords and ignore {hide_chords} tags

Scrolling

Automatic Scrolling: switched to on, this enables LivePrompter’s timed scrolling mode, controlled by {duration:…} and {d_time:…} tags (see “Scrolling“). When switched off, LivePrompter will fast-scroll by a full page whenever you press the Play/Pause button or its equivalent key/pedal (or if you double-tap the screen).
Fast Scrolling Speed: controls the speed of the fast scrolling when using the “move up” or “move down” buttons. Setting this to 20 is a pretty useful starting value, but if things become a blur, try lowering the value. Or speed things up if you’re more into instant “jumps” rather than scrolling.
Full Page Scroll: this defines the percentage of a page that a full page scroll (pressing Play/Pause when automatic scrolling is switched off) will advance the screen. 90 is a pretty good default value, since you’ll still see a bit of the previous page to enable visual continuity.
Half Page Scroll: with this you set the percentage of the page that pressing the “move up” or “move down” buttons will move the screen by.
Screen Focus: this defines the point on the screen (percentage from the top) where LivePrompter keeps the “current line” of your song when scrolling time-based. At the beginning of a song, when you start scrolling, the content of the screen won’t move until the “current line” has actually reached the Screen Focus, then the screen content will keep moving to have the “current line” at that position as the song progresses. Once the song finishes, LivePrompter will not scroll the song off the screen, since that serves no useful purpose, but if you need a more visual cue that your song is truly finished, use the next setting.
Trailing Blank Space: allows you to attach a bit of blank space to the end of your song (percentage of the page) to give you a better visual cue that you have reached the end of the song
Start Scrolling With Down Button: switch this to “on” to automatically start scrolling when you hit the “move down” button in “Ready” mode. This can be quite useful to the ones amongst us who tend to forget to start scrolling during the drummer’s precount and realize they need to catch up with the song. Avoids having to push two different buttons in sequence (Play and Down).

Page Layout

Header Size: sets the size of the title bar of the Song Page. Small is typical for smartphones, Medium for tablets. Large can be useful for drummers, since it makes the metronome extra-large.
Footer Size: sets the size of the bottom bar of the Song Page (contains the clock and the next song title). Again, I’d recommend Small for smartphones, Medium for tablets, Large for special use.
Buttons Bar Size: lets you adjust the height of the button bar at the bottom of the screen (the width is automatic to fill the width of the screen). Small works best on smartphones, on tablets, you can use Large for bigger fingers. New in v1.4.6: you can also choose “hidden” if you want to turn the button bar off completely. This may be useful when using MIDI commands or pedals to control LivePrompter, or if you want to use gestures only.
24 Hour Clock: set this to “off” if you live in an AM/PM country and want to avoid having to do subtractions in your head to find out the time 😉.

MidiAlert – popping up status messages

Thu, 02 Feb 2023 11:10:44 +0000

Some time ago, I built a little helper program called “MIDI Alert” that allowed you to display simple “splash” messages on screen via MIDI sysex commands. Since MIDI Alert became a very useful companion program to LivePrompter, I decided to integrate its functionality in LivePrompter to make life easier for me 😉.

How it works

I built the MIDI Alert functionality for my work with Cantabile, my favorite live VST host. When playing live with VST instruments, I sometimes felt the need to flag some status information very visibly on my LivePrompter tablet, for example to remind me that an effect is momentarily muted by a controller, or that a state change has happened.

The Song Display Screen

Sun, 01 May 2022 00:55:46 +0000

Elements of the Song Screen

The song display screen is all about your song’s lyrics and chords:

It consists of these elements:

The title bar (1): it displays the name of the current song, as well as LivePrompter’s operating mode. It changes colors according to the operating mode:
- Ready (blue): a song has been loaded and is waiting for scrolling to be started with the play/pause button
- Playing (green): a song is being scrolled

The Song Display Screen

Mon, 26 Feb 2024 12:26:19 +0000

Elements of the Song Screen

The song display screen is all about your song’s lyrics and chords:

It consists of these elements:

The title bar (1): it displays the name of the current song, as well as LivePrompter’s operating mode. It changes colors according to the operating mode:
- Ready (blue): a song has been loaded and is waiting for scrolling to be started with the play/pause button
- Playing (green): a song is being scrolled
- Paused (red): scrolling is currently paused, either by the play/pause button or by a command in the song file, and needs to be re-started manually with the play/pause button
- Countdown (orange): scrolling is currently paused by a command in the song file, but will be continued after a certain time determined by the command. You can also manually continue scrolling by pressing the play/pause button.
- Finished (purple): scrolling has reached the end of the song
The metronome (2): it displays the song tempo in BPM (if entered in the song) by alternatively illuminating the two circles
The transpose menu button (3): this button pops up a dialog that allows you to temporarily transpose a song (see below).
The song display (4): this area displays and scrolls the current song
The play/pause button (5): it starts, pauses, and continues scrolling. Also, it allows you to continue scrolling when paused by a command.
Don’t worry if scrolling does not start immediately after pressing the play/pause button at the start of the song: at the beginning of a song, there will always be a certain delay. The reason for this is that the (virtual) song position will immediately start moving down the song from the top of the page, but only when it has reached a certain position on the screen will the actual scrolling start, otherwise the top of the song would be gone from the screen too soon!
The re-start button (6): this button resets scrolling to the head of the song and also sets the operating mode to “Ready”
The scroll-down button (7): it scrolls down the song by a certain amount
The scroll-up button (8): it scrolls up by a certain amount
The next-song button (9): it skips to the next song in the set list, in the current book, or in the song folder
The previous-song button (10): it skips to the previous song in the set list, in the current book, or in the song folder
The exit button (11): it exits display mode and goes back to the home screen

The transpose menu (opened by clicking the transpose menu button – see above) allows you to temporarily transpose all chords in the currently displayed song. Any changes you make here will be immediately forgotten once you go to another song or exit the Song Display Screen – no changes will be made to your song files. If you want to make permanent changes, you need to change your song files and use the transpose, customtranspose, capo or customcapo tags (see the song tags documentation for details on this).

Scrolling

Sun, 16 Jul 2023 17:53:25 +0000

The key feature of a teleprompter is scrolling – making sure that the relevant portion of your song is on the screen when you need it. LivePrompter gives you three ways to scroll through your songs:

Automatic average-speed scrolling
Automatic variable-speed scrolling
Manual scrolling

Automatic Average-Speed Scrolling

This mode means that LivePrompter will calculate an average scrolling speed to get from the first line in your song to the last line. To calculate this scrolling speed, LivePrompter will need you to set the duration of the song using the {duration:…} tag, giving the time in minutes and seconds, e.g.

Color Settings

Mon, 03 Oct 2022 11:50:24 +0000

You can customize most of the colors on your LivePrompter Song Screen. The default settings are pretty usable, but tastes may be different, so you have a lot of freedom to customize your experience.

Since LivePrompter comes with two modes (Dark Mode and Light Mode), you can customize the colors for both modes individually.

Note that although you can customize the background color, I wouldn’t recommend it – the default settings have been thoroughly tested and make sense in most environments.

LivePrompter and Cantabile

Sat, 30 Apr 2022 23:33:52 +0000

This document describes how to make LivePrompter work with Cantabile – a host for VST plugins and instruments, specialized on using them in a live situation.

Find out everything about Cantabile at http://www.cantabilesoftware.com

Live Prompter and Cantabile – A Winning Combination

I must admit: I absolutely LOVE Cantabile – for me, it is the best way to bring your VST instruments on stage. With Cantabile, I have reduced my live setup to one master keyboard, a guitar, a laptop and an audio interface (plus a couple of pedals for sustain, expression and program change).

Keyboard Operation

Mon, 18 May 2026 14:29:43 +0000

Using an External Keyboard

In the heat of the battle of a live session, it can be useful to be able to control LivePrompter via a foot pedal, for example when you have your hands full playing a guitar or a piano. This is where keyboard control comes in.

All essential functions of the Song Screen can be operated via an external keyboard, attached via USB or Bluetooth. This includes simple USB foot pedals that can just send one programmable key – these you can get cheap on Amazon etc., but you’ll need an OTA adapter to connect them to your tablet or smartphone. Or you can get a Bluetooth pedal like the Airturn product range, which can act like a keyboard and send specific keys for their individual buttons.

Scrolling

Fri, 03 Nov 2023 11:09:37 +0000

Automatic average-speed scrolling
Automatic variable-speed scrolling
Manual scrolling

Automatic Average-Speed Scrolling

Set Lists and Books

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 13:48:36 +0000

Set Lists

When you play a live gig, you usually have a list of songs from your repertoire that you want to play through in a pre-defined sequence. OK, there are some of us who simply won’t be constrained in their creative freedom, then set lists aren’t for you…

Set lists are LivePrompter’s way of defining a certain song sequence, for a live performance or a rehearsal, so that the respective song files are displayed in this sequence. Using the next-song button or the universal key, you can then easily step through your set list.

Set Lists and Books

Fri, 03 May 2024 23:05:55 +0000

Set Lists

Keeping the Screen On

Tue, 08 Nov 2022 23:05:15 +0000

Android has the unfortunate habit of turning the screen off after some period of inactivity. For a live teleprompter, this isn’t really what you want – you want to keep your song display on without having to unlock your tablet multiple times during a gig.

So I built LivePrompter to keep the screen on and de-activate this screensaver. Since I don’t see a real use-case for having the screen lock automatically for a live teleprompter, I haven’t made this configurable – this is just automatic and should take care of itself!

Getting Help

Sun, 01 May 2022 00:58:52 +0000

If things don’t work for some reason, best is to do this:

USE THE KNOWLEDGE BASE – there is a lot of information in this documentation site that can help you get things going, so please DO read the manual. LivePrompter is a bit of a “nerdy” tool, so you’ll have to get knowledgeable about the various aspects of it.
Head to the user forums at https://liveprompter.freeforums.net/ – there is a support section, and if you post your question or issues there, others can benefit from the responses and solutions
Download the diagnostics tool in the Downloads section of the LivePrompter web site. You put it in the LivePrompter program directory (not the Home Directory!) and run it, and it will display relevant information on your installation, which will make it easier for me and others to help you. So if you’re having problems running and configuring LivePrompter, it is useful posting the content of your LivePrompter.ini and the output from the diagnostics tool
You can also get in touch via the contact form on the website, but I’d very much prefer if you could ask your question at the forum. That way, we’ll create a repository of troubleshooting information for others.

Lastly: please note that I am providing LivePrompter for free, so my ability to provide direct support is limited. I usually respond quickly to support requests, but I can’t babysit everyone through their installation and usage step-by-step. You’ll be expected to try and explore some things for yourself. Some assembly required – OK?

Text Encoding Issues and International Characters

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 11:53:00 +0000

As long as you only use the standard core English character set (“ASCII”) without any special characters, you’ll probably not come across this, but as soon as you use international characters, accents, umlauts etc or even “standard stuff” like typographic quotes, this topic will come up, and you may find that some characters in your songs don’t look as you expect them to:

The reason for this is usually Character Encoding. If you weren’t aware of it: there are different ways to code characters digitally – for more details see this W3C article on character encoding.

Getting Help

Sat, 27 Aug 2022 16:08:09 +0000

If things don’t work for some reason, best is to do this:

USE THE KNOWLEDGE BASE – there is a lot of information in this documentation site that can help you get things going, so please DO read the manual. LivePrompter is a bit of a “nerdy” tool, so you’ll have to get knowledgeable about the various aspects of it.
Head to the user forums at https://liveprompter.freeforums.net/ – there is a support section, and if you post your question or issues there, others can benefit from the responses and solutions
You can also get in touch via the contact form on the website, but I’d very much prefer if you could ask your question at the forum. That way, we’ll create a repository of troubleshooting information for others.

Multiple Configurations of LivePrompter – Profiles and Sources

Wed, 28 Dec 2022 17:58:41 +0000

Why Multiple Configurations?

As long as you use LivePrompter for one band/project and one person on a device, you may never feel the need to have multiple configurations of LivePrompter on the same device. But once you use LivePrompter for multiple bands/projects or if you want to share tablets between multiple musicians, you’ll be wanting to look at LivePrompter’s “Profiles” feature.

A Profile is essentially a package of all the settings you have made in LivePrompter’s settings pages, plus the selection of a “Source” (more on sources later). So whenever you load a Profile, LivePrompter will make the corresponding settings like text colors and sizes, showing or hiding chords, selecting custom comments and transpositions, header/footer size, etc.

Using LivePrompter for Multiple Musicians in a Band

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 23:09:16 +0000

Custom Content – Comments and Pictures

LivePrompter can be very powerful when sharing the same song files for multiple musicians in a band. In this scenario, all musicians access the same Dropbox folder (or the band leader shares a folder to the individual band members’ Dropboxes).

The advantage of this is that all musicians have the same version of the song on their LivePrompters, which is definitely a plus, compared to all the loose-leaf collections in ring binders (“hey, this is not how this song is played in MY book…”). But you may want to have some specific information for individual musicians that isn’t really relevant for the rest of the band, e.g. a reminder for the guitarist to turn the amp reeeeally loud for the solo, or for the keyboarder to switch to the right sound for his famous Hammond lick, etc.

LP Connect – Master/Slave Networking

Wed, 18 Jan 2023 22:25:47 +0000

Note: this feature is new with LivePrompter mobile version 1.2.x and higher

After building Cantabile Connection, I got some requests along the line: “why can’t I have LivePrompter remote control via Wifi without Cantabile?”. And, you know what? That makes a lot of sense! So if you want to control your band members’ LivePrompter tablets from yours, this is the way to go!

Note

There is one essential thing you need: have all your LivePrompter devices on the same wireless network – so you’ll need to bring a Wifi router to your gig and connect all your LivePrompter devices to it.

How it works

Essentially, to use LP connect, all you need to do is connect all your devices to the same Wifi network, make one of them “Master” and the others “Slaves”. Now the master will send the following information to all slaves as a “broadcast”:

Cantabile Network Connection

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 17:51:56 +0000

What is Cantabile and why a network connection?

Cantabile is my favorite VST plugin host for live performance. It allows you to use VST instruments as you would use hardware synths or effects – and better! You get ultimate flexibility while picking and choosing the best instruments and effects the plugin ecosystem has to offer, and use them in a pre-configured setup that feels like playing the ultimate workstation. If you haven’t, head over to www.cantabilesoftware.com and take a look!

MIDI Control

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 14:46:51 +0000

Note: this feature is new with LivePrompter mobile version 1.3.x and higher

MIDI control was the first means of “remote control” with the original LivePrompter “classic” version for Windows, and it is still the only way to communicate between LivePrompter classic devices and the rest of the world.

With LivePrompter mobile focussed on mobile phones and tablets, my immediate priority was to enable more direct wireless means of connectivity, so my first focus was on LP Connect and Cantabile Connect, but to keep the mobile version fully compatible with its Windows counterpart, I just couldn’t leave MIDI connectivity out. So here is MIDI Control!

MidiAlert – pop-up status messages

Wed, 18 Jan 2023 17:23:42 +0000

How it works

I originally built the MIDI Alert functionality as a separate Windows program for my work with Cantabile, my favorite live VST host. When playing live with VST instruments, I sometimes felt the need to flag some status information very visibly on my LivePrompter tablet, for example to remind me that an effect is momentarily muted by a controller, or that a state change has happened.

Syncing single songs

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 18:10:24 +0000

This is a request that came up from the user community: when editing songs on your desktop device during a songwriting or rehearsal session, it can be useful to synchronize just the changes to one song to your mobile device – keep the creative juices flowing without having to go back to the main menu, sync, and go back to the song.

Starting with version 1.5.3, you can do this on the mobile platforms (Android, iOS). How to do this? Simply do a long-press on the song title until a little pop-up menu appears:

Version History

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 13:53:17 +0000

Version 1.5.7 (build 45)

NEW: re-worked side drawer on Home Screen
NEW: option to automatically start first song on launch
NEW: react to MIDI real time messages (optional)
FIX: highlight colors don’t work within chorus blocks
INFRA: upgrade to Flutter 3.35.4

Version 1.5.6 (build 44)

FIX: bugs in diagnostic page – displaying LSB/MSB commands wrong
FIX: bug in reading MidiReceive/MidiSend – Bank Select MSB interpreted incorrectly
FIX: bug in MidiSend – missing data in “non-song” information with MIDI send data

Version 1.5.5 (build 43)

(Build 42 not published after testing. so build numbers continue with 43)

Help on LivePrompter Help

About LivePrompter

I can’t connect to Dropbox – especially on iOS devices

Issues with the Dropbox App

Song File Tags

The Basics

MidiAlert2

What is MidiAlert2?

About LivePrompter

Moving from LivePrompter classic to LivePrompter 2

LyricsPrinter

What is LyricsPrinter?

Settings in LivePrompter.ini

Embedding Pictures

Song Files, the Home Directory, and Dropbox

LivePrompter Song Files

Where is the configuration file (liveprompter.ini)?

Setlist Maker

What is Setlist Maker?

Chords and Transposing

General Format

Song Files and the Home Directory

LivePrompter Song Files

Using LivePrompter for Multiple Musicians

Custom Content – Comments and Pictures

Song File Tags

The Basics

Creating / Editing Song Files

LivePrompter Song File Format

Lyrics and Chords

Chord Grids

What are Chord Grids?

SetlistBuilder (discontinued)

What is SetlistBuilder?

Creating / Editing Song Files

LivePrompter Song File Format

Lyrics and Chords

Multiple Configurations of LivePrompter

Installation and Initial Configuration – Android / iOS version

Installing

Embedding Pictures

Installing LivePrompter

Using the installer

Windowed Mode and Multiple Monitors

Windowed Mode vs. Full-Screen Mode

List Display Settings

Installation and Initial Configuration – Windows / macOS Version

About the Desktop Version

MIDI control

Using MIDI with LivePrompter

The Main Window

The Home Screen

The Main View

Song Display Settings

Metrics

Song Display Options

Scrolling

Page Layout

MidiAlert – popping up status messages

How it works

The Song Display Screen

Elements of the Song Screen

The Song Display Screen

Elements of the Song Screen

The Transpose Menu

Scrolling

Automatic Average-Speed Scrolling

Color Settings

LivePrompter and Cantabile

Live Prompter and Cantabile – A Winning Combination

Keyboard Operation

Using an External Keyboard

Scrolling

Automatic Average-Speed Scrolling

Set Lists and Books

Set Lists

Set Lists and Books

Set Lists

Keeping the Screen On

Getting Help