Installation

Download, install, and activate CueSync before your first show.

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System requirements

CueSync is a self-contained app. You do not need to install anything else.

Speccing a show machine? The table above is what the app needs to run. A machine that will drive a live show wants more headroom — and, more importantly, wants to be doing nothing else. Background backups, file sync and antivirus scans are the most common cause of late cues, and no setting inside CueSync can compensate for them. Read Preparing the Show Machine before your first show.

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Download and install

macOS

1. Go to www.cuesync.live and download the .dmg for your edition.
2. Open the .dmg, drag CueSync into your Applications folder.
3. Launch CueSync from Applications. If macOS blocks the app on first open, go to System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.

Windows

CueSync is macOS-only today. Windows is in development. cuesync.live/download always reflects current availability.

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First launch

When you open CueSync for the first time, it asks you to sign in — on every plan, Free included. There are three ways in:

• Sign in with your CueSync account opens cuesync.live in your browser and brings you back signed in. Use this one if you made your account with Google or Apple, which have no password. A sign-in you leave unfinished in the browser expires: CueSync says "That sign-in has expired. Start it again from CueSync." and you start it again.
• Email & password — the account you used to download CueSync.
• License key — the key from a purchase activates this machine and signs you in.

No account yet? Sign up at cuesync.live is at the bottom of the screen.

You sign in once per machine. After that CueSync opens straight to the main window, offline too, and quitting does not sign you out. The sign-in screen never appears over a running show: if your session ends mid-show, CueSync waits until the show stops to ask.

Without a license, CueSync runs in Read-Only mode. In this state you can explore the interface and open show files, but no cues fire and no outputs connect. A banner at the top of the screen tells you your current license status.

Anything that would write a file for a desk or console is refused the same way, before it asks you to choose a folder: the grandMA3 bridge plugin (export and Install on this computer), grandMA3 and grandMA2 macros, the desk macro pack, every grandMA3 Timecode XML export, REAPER markers, the desk timecode CSV and the Unreal bake curve. A notice reads "Subscribe to … — you're in read-only mode" with a Subscribe button, and nothing is written. Exporting diagnostics for support, Looks and tour packs stay open to every install.

To start driving a rig, activate a license.

The setup wizard

After you choose a plan, CueSync runs a short setup wizard. The pages you get depend on your edition, because the two workflows genuinely differ — the wizard only ever tours screens your edition actually has.

Nothing here is permanent: every step can be skipped, and everything it sets can be changed later in Settings. Tick Don't show again to stop it appearing on future launches.

The welcome tour

Once you are through to the main window, a four-card tour offers Connect → Configure → Create → Perform, each card jumping straight to the screen it names. The fourth card follows your edition — Performance for DJ, the Show Editor for Theatre, and Cue Pads (labelled Explore) if you have no licence yet — so it can never offer a screen your edition would then refuse to open. Skip tour dismisses it. The button above it reads Start from Template on a licensed install and opens the template browser; in Read-Only it reads Try Demo Show and simply dismisses, leaving you in the demo show already loaded.

Getting either one back

Both are re-entrant, and they are not the same door:

• Help ▸ Run Setup Again… re-runs the wizard — the one that discovers outputs and scans a library. This is the one you want after upgrading edition or arriving at a new venue. It is unavailable while a show is running.
• Settings → Look & Feel → Replay tour, or Settings → About → Replay tour, replays the four-card tour the next time CueSync starts. It does not re-run the wizard.

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Activation

1. Open Settings → Account & License (or click the license badge in the bottom bar).
2. Enter your license key — the key is emailed to you when you purchase from www.cuesync.live.
3. Click Activate. CueSync contacts the license server, validates your key, and switches to your purchased edition.

How many machines. Two device registrations per solo subscription, three on a team licence — so the show machine and the laptop you prep on can both be activated, and moving between them needs no deactivation.

One of them drives the rig. Registration and live output are separate limits: only one machine at a time sends DMX, timecode, OSC and MIDI to your rig. The others run everything else — editing, prep, rehearsal against the on-screen rig — but do not reach the wire. A spare says which machine is live and stays on standby until that one quits CueSync (which hands over at once) or stops responding (it hands over on its own within a couple of minutes). So on show day the hand-over to a backup laptop is: quit CueSync on the primary, then connect the outputs on the backup. Prep, editing and rehearsal against the on-screen rig are never limited this way.

A show that comes from another computer opens with its network outputs held. When you open a show on the backup that the primary saved, a notice lists the outputs that stay off, each with the address it would dial, and offers Connect. Press it once you have checked the addresses are the rig's, or switch each output on from Network. See A show opened with its outputs held.

Freeing a registration. You only need to deactivate when you are retiring a machine or have reached the cap — again from Settings → Account & License.

Offline use: A subscription license works for up to 7 days without an internet connection before it requires a revalidation. A lifetime license works for up to 30 days offline.

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Editions

CueSync has three editions. Every edition connects all available output protocols — the editions differ in which workflows they unlock.

Screens not available in your edition are hidden from the navigation bar. If a shortcut asks for a hidden screen anyway, a notice says it isn't available in your edition and offers See editions, which opens Account & License. In Read-Only mode those screens show a gate overlay that explains which edition unlocks them.

For current pricing, visit www.cuesync.live.

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Updates

CueSync checks for updates automatically. When an update is available, a banner appears in the shell. Download and install updates between shows, not mid-set.

Install now restarts CueSync, so it checks the rig first:

• A deck playing, AutoPilot running or armed, a running show or local set, or Performance mode being open refuses the install and names the cause.
• When nothing is playing but a timecode output, the pixel wall or the beat clock is up, CueSync asks once — Restart to install? — and lists what the restart drops: the timecode output stops, the pixel wall freezes at its current look, the beat clock stops. Nothing sends a blackout.
• Quitting asks too. The confirm is titled A show is running when a deck, AutoPilot, a show, a local set or Performance mode is live, and Outputs are live when only outputs are up. A quit from the app menu, the Dock or the tray raises the window when it leaves a prompt for unsaved work, so the question is never waiting in a window you cannot see.

A required update never covers the screen you run a show from. The "Critical Update Required" dialog does not appear over Performance mode or Run Mode; a banner there says the update is required and shows its download, and in Run Mode it adds that the install will happen once your show has ended. A required update that installs unattended waits for the rig to be idle, including while CueSync is passing a moving clock on to your desk.

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Related

• The Interface — tour every region of the shell
• Settings — license, shortcuts, and all other preferences