New: Audio Cues for Timer Phase Transitions
Visual phase colors have always been a core part of StageTick — yellow for wrap-up, red for danger, flashing red for overtime. But what about speakers who aren't looking at the screen? Or backstage crew monitoring audio-only feeds?
Today we're adding configurable audio cues that play alongside (or instead of) the visual flash when a timer changes phase. It's a small feature with a big impact on keeping your show on schedule.
How It Works
Each timer now has two phase-cue toggles in its settings:
- Flash on phase (on by default) — the existing 3-second visual pulse on all output views.
- Sound on phase (off by default) — an audio beep that plays through the device speaker when the timer enters a new phase.
The beep pattern escalates with severity so you can tell the phase by sound alone:
- Warning — single beep
- Danger — double beep
- Overtime — triple beep
No Audio Files, No Latency
The cues are generated in real time using the Web Audio API — pure synthesized tones with zero network dependency. There's no audio file to download, no CDN to worry about, and no perceptible delay between the phase change and the sound. The browser generates the tone locally the instant the threshold is crossed.
Per-Timer Control
Not every segment needs audio cues. A 15-minute coffee break probably doesn't need a beep, but a 5-minute keynote wrap-up absolutely does. That's why both settings are per-timer — enable sound on the segments that matter and leave it off elsewhere.
You can also disable the visual flash per timer. If you want sound-only cues with no screen flash, just toggle flash off and sound on. Or keep both for maximum visibility.
Also New: Targeted Device Flash
While we were working on cue signals, we also fixed the connection flash behavior. When you flash a specific device from the connections popup, it now flashes only that device — not every connected screen. The manual flash button in the controller still flashes all views, as before.
This makes device identification much more practical in multi-screen setups. Flash a specific monitor to confirm which physical screen it is, without disrupting the speaker's confidence display on stage.
Getting Started
Audio cues are available now on all plans. Open any timer's settings, enable Sound on phase, and run the timer to hear the beeps. No configuration beyond the toggle — it just works.
For the full details, see the Timer Display Modes documentation.