Creating Presentations

Presentations are the core of Chapel Screen. Each presentation is a rich text document that you edit in the browser and project live to your audience.

Creating a Presentation

Click New Presentation on the Presentations page — your own, or a team's to create it for that team. Chapel Screen asks for its name first (at least 2 characters); type it and press Enter or Create Presentation, and the presentation opens in the editor under that name. Cancel creates nothing. You can rename it later in the presentation's settings.

The Editor

When you create or open a presentation, you'll see the editor. It works like a familiar word processor — type your content, and use the toolbar to apply formatting.

The editor supports:

• Bold, italic, and underline text
• Headings (multiple levels)
• Bullet and numbered lists
• Tables
• Text alignment (left, centre, right, justify)
• Superscript
• Blockquotes
• Images
• Videos

Everything you type is saved automatically and synced in real time. If you're working with a team, you'll see their changes appear as they type, complete with coloured cursors showing who's editing where.

Inserting Bible Passages and Songs

Press Insert Content in the editor toolbar to put a Bible passage or a song from Chapel Screen's own library at the cursor. The picker has one search field: a reference typed into it ("Psalm 23", "John 3:16-18 NIV") is recognised as you type and shown first, so Enter inserts it; below it the search lists songs — the built-in catalogue and the songs you and your teams have added — and Bible chapters whose words match. Choose an entry and it is inserted as ordinary content you can edit.

• A passage is laid out with the reference as a heading, verse numbers in superscript, each verse a presentation point and the full reference, with its translation, as the slide's footer. Without a translation in the reference, the passage comes in the default of the team the presentation is shared with (when it is shared with exactly one), else your own, else the King James Version.
• A song is laid out with its title on a slide of its own, whose footer names the song and its copyright notice, and the lyrics following verse by verse, each line a presentation point, so the words are shown alone.

A song that needs a licence, or a Bible translation that is not free, is added only while the presentation is edited in the context of a team whose church is on the paid plan: the editor opened from that team's pages, its address under the team's. Every song and translation is still listed; where one cannot be added here it carries a small Paid plan sparkle, and choosing it opens a dialog instead. When the presentation is shared with a paid church's team you belong to, the dialog is Add it in team with Open in team, which opens the same presentation under that team so you can add it there; otherwise it shows what the paid plan adds. What is already on the slides is never checked or taken away, whatever the plan.

Understanding Presentation Points

Presentation points are the navigation points in your presentation. When you present to an audience, you step through your content one point at a time — much like advancing slides, but more fluid.

Chapel Screen creates presentation points automatically from your text. Each sentence becomes a point, so your content flows naturally without needing to manually split it into slides.

You can also mark certain points as skip points. Skipped points still appear on screen, but the presenter won't pause on them — the content is visible as part of the surrounding context, but the controller jumps past them during navigation.

Page Breaks

Page breaks control how your content is divided into visual slides. There are two types:

• Soft page breaks — suggest a good place to split content. In individual display mode, the layout engine uses these as natural break points when content overflows the screen. In block mode, every soft break creates a new slide.
• Hard page breaks — always force a new slide, regardless of display mode.

Insert page breaks from the editor toolbar when you want explicit control over slide boundaries.

Special Elements

Beyond text and formatting, the editor toolbar lets you insert several special elements into your presentation.

Click an element to select it. Where there is no line of text above or below it — between two images, say, or after a QR code at the end — a + Paragraph above or + Paragraph below button appears on its edge and gives you a new line to type on. For a table, use Add paragraph above or Add paragraph below in its toolbar's Table menu. With an element selected, Enter adds a line below it and Shift+Enter a line above.

To move an image, video, QR code or countdown timer, drag it by the grip at its top left corner. Dragging from anywhere else on it selects, as dragging across text does.

Images

Insert images from the toolbar or by dragging a file into the editor. Each image has a sizing option that controls how it fills the slide:

• Full Screen — the image fills the entire slide, replacing the background
• Actual — the image displays at its original pixel size
• 100% / 75% / 50% / 25% — the image scales to that percentage of the slide width

Every image is converted in your browser before it is saved: it is scaled to at most 2048 pixels on its longer side and saved as a picture, so a phone photo's metadata (where and when it was taken) never goes into the presentation and the file stays small enough to open quickly on every screen. An SVG becomes a picture of what it draws, and an animated GIF keeps only its first frame. A file that is not an image, or an image still over 2 MB after shrinking, is refused with a message; up to eight images can be dropped at a time.

Videos

Insert a video from the toolbar and choose a file from your device. The video uploads directly from your browser and is then processed for streaming — short clips are typically ready within a minute; longer videos take a little more time. You can keep editing while it processes.

• Videos can be up to 2 GB per file. A team's presentations share their church's video storage: 2 GB on the free plan, 10 GB on the paid plan. Your own presentations, shared with no team, have 2 GB of their own. The church's settings show how much of its storage is used, and your profile shows your own. Sharing a presentation with a free church's team needs room for its videos in the church's 2 GB.
• Most common formats work (MP4, MOV, and anything your phone records) — the video is converted automatically during processing.
• If an upload is interrupted, reopen the presentation and choose the same file again — it resumes where it left off.

Like images, each video has a sizing option:

• Full Screen — the video plays over the entire slide, above the theme background
• 100% / 75% / 50% — the video scales to that percentage of the slide width

A video is a presentation point of its own — when presenting, navigate to it like any other point and playback controls appear in the controller. See Playing Videos for presenting with video and getting audio working on your screens.

You can copy a video block into another presentation — both presentations then share the same video, and it only counts once towards your storage. Removing a video block frees its storage automatically about a week later — within that week, undo restores it harmlessly. Deleting a presentation frees its videos sooner, unless another presentation still uses them.

QR Code

Insert a QR code by entering a URL. The QR code is generated dynamically and scales with the presentation theme. Useful for sharing links with your audience during a presentation — they can scan it directly from the projected screen.

Countdown Timer

Insert a countdown timer that counts down to a target time (in HH:MM format). When the countdown reaches zero, the presentation automatically advances to the next point. Choose from several visual styles:

• Flip Clock — animated flip digits
• Movie — classic film countdown
• Modern — clean digital display
• Loading — progress bar style

The timer runs live in both the controller preview and the viewer.

Tables

Insert a table with Insert Table in the editor toolbar. Tables resize to fit the slide. Everything else about the table — adding or removing rows and columns, merging or splitting cells, header rows — is in the table's own toolbar.

While the cursor is in a table, a small toolbar appears just above it with four menus:

• Row — insert a row above or below, or delete the row
• Column — insert a column to the left or right, or delete the column
• Cells — merge the selected cells (drag across cells to select them), split a merged cell, or make a cell a header cell
• Table — turn the header row on or off, add a paragraph above or below the table, or delete it

To change a column's width, drag the right edge of any of its cells. The slide keeps the columns in the same proportions as the editor shows them. On a touch screen columns keep their widths, as resizing needs a mouse.

Slide Headers and Footers

A slide can have a header and a footer, shown at the top and bottom of the slide: useful for persistent information like titles, copyright notices, or CCLI licence numbers. Put the cursor in the slide and press Slide Header or Slide Footer in the toolbar: the cursor moves to the end of the one the slide has, or into a new empty one, which is removed again if you leave it empty. Inside a footer, you can insert a CCLI Licence placeholder that automatically displays your team's licence number.

Blank Slides

Insert a blank slide to create a deliberate pause or visual break in your presentation. Unlike blanking the screen from the controller, a blank slide is part of the content and appears at a specific position in your presentation points.

Presentation Settings

Open the presentation settings from the ellipsis menu (⋮) in the editor toolbar. The settings panel has three tabs: Theme, Options, and Sharing.

Naming Your Presentation

The presentation name appears at the top of the settings panel. Click on it to rename your presentation. The name is used in the presentations list and when searching.

Theme Tab

Choose how your presentation looks by selecting a theme. You'll see a grid of available themes — both the built-in system themes and any custom themes you've created or have access to through your teams. Click a theme to apply it; a checkmark shows which one is currently selected.

For more on creating your own themes, see the Custom Themes section.

Options Tab

The Options tab controls how your presentation content is displayed on screen. These settings affect all viewers and channels unless a channel overrides them.

Text Size

Controls how large text appears on the viewer screen. Choose from three presets:

• Small — fits more content on screen, good for text-heavy presentations
• Regular (default) — balanced for most uses
• Large — maximum readability, ideal for song lyrics or short announcements

Slides

Controls how your content is split into visual slides:

• Individual (default) — content is split into slides at soft page breaks when it would overflow the screen. This gives a traditional slide-by-slide feel.
• Continuous — all your content appears in a single scrolling view. Only hard page breaks create visual separations. The viewer scrolls to keep the current presentation point visible.

Reveal

Controls whether upcoming content is visible or hidden:

• Show All (default) — all content on the current slide is visible at once. The audience sees the full slide while you navigate through presentation points.
• Hide Upcoming — only content up to the current presentation point is visible. Lines appear one by one as you advance, keeping focus on what you're currently presenting.

Slide Content

Controls how many lines of content appear on each slide. This only applies when slides are set to Individual mode and devices are in landscape orientation.

• Auto (default) — the layout engine decides how much fits on each slide based on the screen size
• Block — each section between soft page breaks becomes its own slide
• Four — up to four lines per slide
• Two — up to two lines per slide
• One — one line per slide, for maximum impact

Highlight

When enabled, the current presentation point is visually emphasised with the theme's highlight colour. This helps your audience follow along when multiple points are visible at once — particularly useful in continuous mode or when reveal is set to show all.

Header and Footer

Turn on Hide the header and footer to show the slides without their header and footer — a song's copyright notice or a Bible passage's reference, for example. Every screen showing the presentation hides them, and the content can then use the space to the edges of the screen. The editor still shows them, so you can edit them whatever this option says. To hide them on one channel only, such as a stage screen, use the channel's Options override.

Sharing Tab

Teams

Share your presentation with any team you belong to. All members of that team will be able to view, edit, and present it. You can share with multiple teams at once, and remove a team's access at any time.

Privacy

Controls who can view your presentation via its link:

• Public access (default for a new presentation) — anyone with the link can view the presentation in read-only mode
• Private — only you and members of teams you've shared it with can see it

A private presentation is marked with a padlock: beside its title in the editor and the controller, on its card in your presentations and on the dashboard, and in its row on an event page. Click the padlock to open the presentation's settings on this Sharing tab.

The Sharing tab also shows a QR code and direct link you can share with others.

For more on working with teams, see the Teams section.

Deleting a Presentation

Only the owner of a presentation can delete it. When you delete a presentation, it's also removed from any events that include it. This action cannot be undone.