Setting the Scene

Instead of a blank “waiting for host” screen, Stagehand can show a curtain with your own look and a short status message, such as Starting Soon, Back in 5, or Q&A, for the moments you’re not actively presenting.

Choosing a curtain

Six built-in presets are available from the swatch gallery at the top of the Switchboard: hover to preview, click to apply.

Up to 6 presets or custom curtains can sit in the gallery at once. Manage which ones in Settings → Curtains, where you can also reorder them by drag-and-drop.

Making your own

Beyond the built-ins, you can build a custom curtain from a gradient (up to 5 color stops, linear or radial, with an angle dial and a live preview) from Settings → Curtains → new custom curtain. Gradient curtains are free to create.

Using your own image as a full-bleed curtain, instead of a gradient, is part of Branding Pro: a one-time in-app purchase that also unlocks a custom logo, custom branding font, font size, and text color. Everything else on this page (presets, gradients, scenes) works without it.

Branding the curtain

Toggle “Show Stagehand logo” to add or remove branding from the curtain, and customize the title text shown alongside it. With Branding Pro, swap in your own logo, pick a custom font and size, and choose a custom color for both the title and the scene subtitle text.

Scene messages

Click a scene pill (Starting Soon, Intermission, Q&A, or one you’ve written yourself) to overlay a subtitle on the curtain. Scenes support an optional emoji, are fully editable and reorderable in Settings → Scenes, and persist across launches (though the active selection resets each time you relaunch, so you always start from a clean state). Up to 6 scenes can be pinned to the Switchboard at once; the rest stay available in Settings.