Getting started

Show Clock runs your running order — the list of everything that happens and when. It shows a big clock for the room, keeps your whole crew on the same time, and lets the band or FOH follow along on their own phones through a share link. Everything you build is saved automatically and syncs to your other signed-in devices.

Quick start

1. Open Show Clock from the dashboard.
2. In the running order, open the timetable switcher and check This timetable: the name, the stage, the show date and the time zone (it starts on your device's zone).
3. Add your slots — Doors, sets, Changeover, Curfew … — each with a start time. Or paste the schedule you were sent, or import a file.
4. Pick a clock mode: Wall, Countdown or Count-Up.
5. When the room, band or FOH should follow along, tap Share and send them the link or the QR code.
6. During the show, press Next slot when an act comes off, and tap + / − when you run late or early — every screen follows.

The operator screen

On a tablet or computer the two main areas sit side by side; on a phone you switch between them with Clock, Running order and Share at the bottom.

• Clock — the big display: the digits, the live slot, what is next and the status. Put this on a projector or a spare monitor, or press P for the Projector view (see below).
• Running order — the editable list of every slot in time order, with drag handles, live / next / done badges, and inline editing.
• Operator / Viewer — on tablet and desktop, flip to Viewer to preview what someone on your share link sees right now.

The status reads On schedule when you are on time. When you mark the show late or early, the + / − stepper shows for example 4 min late, and a banner says Running 4 min late — later slots shifted, hard times stay. A slot that runs past its end shows the overrun as +mm:ss, and after the last slot the status reads Show over.

A small badge in the top bar speaks up only when your changes have not reached your account yet — Not synced, Sign in again to sync, or Not synced — storage full. No badge means everything is synced. See Multiple devices & accounts.

Clock modes

Use the mode buttons (or press M to cycle):

The mode you pick sticks: it stays for the next slots of this timetable on this device. A slot can have its own mode (in the slot editor, or from a pasted "(45 min)"); that slot shows its mode unless you pick another one while it is live.

Warning time. One Pre-slot warning setting (in ⚙ Settings, 5 minutes unless you change it) switches the clock to its warning colour in the last minutes before the next slot. It is one setting for the whole show, not one per countdown.

Building your running order

This timetable: show date and time zone

Open the timetable switcher at the top of the running order. Under This timetable you set the name, the stage, the show date and the time zone.

• Show date — the date of the show (day 1). Leave it empty for a running order that repeats every day, like a daily briefing.
• Time zone — slot times are in this zone. It starts on your device's zone; change it when you plan a show abroad from home. Crew phones in another zone see the venue's times, labelled with the zone.

Every device runs on the server's clock, so a laptop with a wrong clock, a tablet that slept or a phone that joins mid-set all show the same numbers.

Slots

Each entry is a slot with a start time, a type (Load-in, Soundcheck, Line Check, Doors, Set, Changeover, Break, Broadcast, Curfew, Load-out, Other), a label, and optional notes, length, clock mode and attachments.

• Add a slot — use the add button at the bottom of the running order.
• Edit a slot — tap a row to open it; "More options" shows the length, the Day, the clock mode and the artwork.
• After midnight — just type the time. The day follows the time: change 23:00 to 00:30 and the slot moves to the next day of the same show night. The Day field (1 = the show date) is there to override it.
• Fixed time — tick it for a slot that must never move when you run late. Curfew, Doors and Broadcast are fixed by default.
• Reorder — drag the grip (⋮⋮), or focus a row and press Alt+↑ / ↓.
• Several timetables — keep one per stage or per festival day and switch between them. Each has its own show date, time zone, delay and share link.
• Duplicate a timetable — open the timetable switcher and pick Duplicate timetable to start the next show from this one. The copy opens as "name (copy)" — rename it right there. It keeps the slots, times, days, fixed times, stage and logo; attachments, the delay and the share link stay with the original. A future show date is kept, a past one becomes today.

Slot types have their own colours: Set amber, Changeover violet, Break copper, Doors green, Soundcheck blue, Curfew and Broadcast red.

Undo

Deleted a slot, deleted a whole timetable, or replaced the running order with a paste? A message at the bottom offers Undo for a few seconds — on phones and iPads too. After that, Undo last change in the running order's ⋯ menu (or Ctrl/⌘+Z) still takes changes back one by one.

Import, paste and export

You do not have to type everything in. Show Clock imports CSV and JSON files and pasted text, and exports CSV, JSON and iCal (.ics) — iCal is export only, for a calendar. Print / PDF prints the running order. The exact CSV columns and JSON keys are on File formats.

Paste a schedule you were sent

Import → Paste schedule reads the schedule the way it reached you — a promoter's email, a WhatsApp thread, a festival running order, an advance sheet copied out of a spreadsheet. Paste all of it, greeting and phone numbers included, and press Review:

Docks Hamburg – Saturday 14 March 2026 – Velvet Nova
[14:02, 12.03.2026] Anna: Load in is from 11am
Soundcheck 15:00 – 16:30
Doors are at seven.
20:00 Static Bloom (support) 40 min
Einlass halb acht
Hard curfew 10.30pm

• Times anywhere in the line, in digits or words — 10.30pm, 21:00 Uhr, 2000, at seven, quarter to nine, viertel nach acht, Midnight, Noon. British half seven and German halb acht both mean 19:30.
• After midnight — 12:30 after an evening slot is 00:30 that night; 25:30 means 01:30 the next day.
• An end time becomes the slot's length — 20:00–20:45, von 20 bis 21 Uhr; so do 40 min, (80 Min), for half an hour. A slot with a length counts down.
• Chat timestamps, dates, phone numbers, prices and email headers are not slots — they are listed under lines left out, never dropped silently, so you can see nothing was missed.
• The show date is read from the text. The pieces above the first slot (Docks Hamburg, Velvet Nova) are offered as chips — tap Stage or Show name on the ones that are.
• Evening show (ticked by default) reads a bare 7:00 or at 8 as 19:00 and 20:00, keeps load-in and crew calls in the morning, and puts a curfew "at 1" after midnight. 08:30, 19:00 and anything with AM/PM is always taken as written.

Nothing is added until you have looked at it. The review lists every slot with its time, label, type and length — all editable, each with the original line underneath. Amber rows are the ones worth a glance: a time read from words, a morning that was assumed, a date without a year. Untick a row to leave it out, then replace the running order or add the slots to it; Undo brings the old one back. Pasting is done by rules, not by AI.

Show Clock's own CSV and JSON can be pasted as text too — same result as importing the file.

Paste schedule — the text format

When you type a running order yourself, one line per slot is enough: HH:MM Label. The slot type is read from words in the label (Doors, Soundcheck, Line check, Changeover/Umbau, Break/Pause, Broadcast, Curfew, Load-in, Load-out), everything else becomes a Set. To set a slot precisely, add #tags anywhere in the line; a tag always beats the guessed type.

15:00 Load-in
17:00 Soundcheck #countdown 45m
19:00 Doors
20:00 Support Act #set #countup
20:45 Umbau #changeover #countdown
21:00 Headliner #set #countdown 90m #alert
23:00 Curfew // hard out, no encore

• Type — #set #doors #soundcheck #linecheck #changeover #break #broadcast #curfew #loadin #loadout #other.
• Countdown — #countdown 15m counts down for 15 minutes from the slot start. #countdown on its own counts down to the next line's time, so a changeover automatically gets the gap until the headliner.
• Count-up — #countup counts up from the slot start (open-ended); #countup 45m also records the planned length.
• Wall clock — the default; #clock forces it.
• Durations — 45m, 1h30, 45:00, 1:30:00; a bare number means minutes.
• Flags — #alert flashes the clock when the slot ends; #noadvance keeps the clock on the slot until you end it by hand.
• Notes — everything after // lands in the slot's notes.
• Times — 24-hour, or 7:00 PM; leave "Evening show" ticked so a bare 7:00 becomes 19:00.
• From a spreadsheet — copy the cells and paste; tab-separated columns are read as Time | Label or Time | Type | Label | Notes | Mode | Duration | Alert | Auto-advance. Type and mode accept the same words as the tags (Break, changeover, count-up…).

Tagged lines and sent schedules can be mixed in one paste; both go through the same review.

Show details

Set your show title, stage/venue name and a location (GPS or manual coordinates) for a sunset time and a weather readout in the top bar. The coordinates sync to your account; they never go into share links.

Running the show

• Next slot — the main button: the next slot starts now. Its planned time stays visible, struck through, beside the actual start. Keys: N, Space or →.
• Previous slot — Shift+N: makes the slot before the live one live again (for example when you pressed Next too early). Details on Remote control (Stream Deck, Companion, OSC).
• Countdown slots move on by themselves when their time is up, unless you switched auto-advance off for that slot.
• Cue — a short text for every screen on the share link ("STAND BY", "5 MIN" …), shown as a full-width banner. Key C.
• Blackout — B turns every audience screen black while you keep working; stage messages go to the artist display. Both on Blackout, stage messages, Artist link, OBS and the stage wall.
• Alerts — a slot with an alert flashes the clock when it ends. Dismiss with D or Esc.
• Projector view — the ▣ Projector button or P: big digits (about a third of the screen height on a 1080p screen), no running order, and the controls fade until you move the mouse or tap. Press P again to leave it.
• Fullscreen — F. The screen stays awake while Show Clock is open (Wake Lock).

Running late or early

When you are behind (or ahead) of schedule, you do not re-type every time — you move the timetable and every later slot shifts at once, for you and for everyone on your share link, within a few seconds.

• + on the stepper, ↑, = (or + on a German keyboard) → 1 minute later.
• − on the stepper, ↓, − → 1 minute earlier. Shift+− → 5 minutes earlier.
• Shift+= (the + key on a US / UK keyboard) → 5 minutes later. On a German keyboard there is no 5-minute key — press + five times.
• The middle of the stepper, R or 0 → back to On schedule.

What moves and what does not:

• Fixed times never move. Curfew, Doors, Broadcast and any slot marked Fixed time stay where they are. The delay moves the slots before them, and the clock shows how far you are over or under, for example +4:00 over Curfew or 2:00 under Curfew.
• Each timetable has its own delay. Stage B running ten minutes late does not move Stage A. The delay syncs to your other devices and is cleared on the next show day.
• Everyone sees it. The share link shows the shifted times too — no need to share again.

Themes, install & shortcuts

Toggle between Dark (default), Light and Hi-Con with the theme button. On phone or tablet you can install Show Clock to the home screen (Add to Home Screen) — it then opens fullscreen and works offline. Theme, text size, the warning time, the projector view and the open timetable are kept per device.

Shortcuts pause while you type in a field or while a panel is open, and keys with Alt, Ctrl or ⌘ are never shortcuts. The arrow keys belong to a running-order row when one has focus — click the clock once and they change the delay again.

Next

• Sharing — share links, Stop sharing, the link for no signal, QR codes.
• Blackout, stage messages, Artist link, OBS and the stage wall — blackout, stage messages, the Artist link, OBS and the multi-stage wall.
• Multiple devices & accounts — syncing your own devices vs. sharing to others.
• Working offline — what keeps running when the Wi-Fi drops.