Running the Show

This page covers the controls you’ll use during a call itself: the curtain, source switching, and keyboard shortcuts, each reachable in one click or one keypress without leaving your current app.

Two ways to reach your controls

The full Switchboard is the complete presenter window: curtain style swatches, scene pills, the confidence monitor, the source picker with live thumbnails, and permission warnings if something needs attention. Good for setting things up before you start.

The compact mini-Switchboard lives in the menu bar. Click the icon for a lightweight popover with quick theme and scene menus, the mini monitor, curtain toggle, and a simplified source list. Good for mid-call adjustments without a large window in the way.

If you want the mini-Switchboard to stay open instead of closing every time you click away, pin it. It becomes a small floating panel that remembers which display it was pinned to the next time you launch Stagehand.

The confidence monitor

Both Switchboards include a live mini-preview showing exactly what your audience currently sees, curtain and all. When the curtain is down, it renders semi-transparent for you only, so you can peek through and check your framing without ever exposing it to your audience.

Picking and switching sources

The source picker lists every shareable window and display, refreshed automatically every 15 seconds (force a rescan with ⌘⇧R). Live thumbnails update on the same interval so you can identify the right window at a glance.

If you switch between sources often, pin up to 2 for quick access from the Switchboard instead of scrolling the full list.

If your selected source (for example, a fullscreen slide deck) becomes genuinely fullscreen on a display, Stagehand switches to capturing that whole display instead, since window capture of true fullscreen content is unreliable, then switches back once you exit fullscreen. It never overrides a display you picked manually.

Keyboard shortcuts for staying heads-down

Beyond the curtain toggle, three more global shortcuts jump straight to a window without touching the mouse, useful when you’re deep in your source material and need to get back to Stagehand quickly:

The three “jump to” shortcuts are off by default. Turn on the ones you want in Settings → General → Permissions. None of them need any extra permission to fire — ⌘⇧F just brings your source app to the front, without targeting one specific window.