What’s New

Your show host now opens and closes every night in the drawer

Open a show night and a Welcome line sits above the show and a Goodnight line below it — your host bookends, drawn with the very same picks the box will play. The Transition back to the loop now lives inside the Show as a read-only marker instead of its own box, so the drawer reads the way the night actually plays.

PSAs keep their distance and protect your closer

PSAs now leave at least two songs between one another, so a weekly pick never lands right next to a regular one. And nothing slips between your closer and the transition back to the loop — a PSA that would land there is dropped instead.

The nightly auto-mix is now the Nightly Mix

One name everywhere — the set SET:IQ builds fresh for each show night is the Nightly Mix, on the calendar, in the night drawer, and in Settings.

The night drawer now shows exactly where PSAs will play

Open any night and your PSA drops are right in the setlist — megaphone rows showing which PSA plays after which song, computed with the very same seeded draws the FPP export uses, so what you see is what the box will play. The show header counts them too ("20 songs · 61m · 3 PSAs") without ever counting them as songs.

The settings rail is now a Sample Night you can see

The right side of Show Settings redraws your night as one picture: colored bands sized to how long each part really runs — warm-up, show, after hours — with album art on your welcome, first, last, and goodnight songs, tick marks where intermissions land, and ✦ marks showing exactly where PSAs drop in (with the bucket's name). Flip between a weeknight and a weekend sample, change any setting, and watch the picture move. Also fixed: time fields no longer cut off AM/PM, and the two setlist-length rows line up cleanly.

Settings slides over — with the calendar peeking out behind

Show Settings no longer covers the whole screen. The panel now slides in from the right and stops short of the left edge, so your calendar stays visible (dimmed) behind it — click that strip, press Escape, or hit ✕ to get back. Also fixed: the calendar was rendering narrower than its space even with no panel open; it fills its full width again.

PSA frequency reaches every night — and never back-to-back

A template with its own host settings was silently wiping the show-level PSA frequency and buckets, so no PSAs fired at all. Layers now resolve field by field: whatever a template or night doesn't set, it inherits from Show Settings (an explicit Off is still Off). And when two PSAs would land in the same slot, the second now waits for the next song — PSAs never play back-to-back.

PSAs stay PSAs — never regular setlist songs

Sequences designated as PSA material (host pools, buckets, or any psa-* tag) were slipping into rebuilt playlists as normal songs. They're now excluded from the body rotation entirely: they don't count toward runtime or song totals, and the "every N songs" PSA frequency counts real songs only. Hit Apply & rebuild once to clean up an affected season.

Catalog bulk edits — shift-click, shared artwork, tag broadcast

Checkboxes now understand shift-click (grabs the whole range from your last click) and ctrl-click. A new Set artwork… bulk button puts the same image on every checked song — fetch it, upload it, or paste a URL once. And tag edits went bulk the natural way: with rows checked, add or remove a tag on any checked row and the same change lands on all of them.

Song pickers search tags — and filter by one tap

Every song picker in Show Settings — including the PSA buckets and host spots — now searches your tags along with titles and artists, so you can type a tag to narrow the list. A row of one-tap tag buttons sits right under the search box too: tap psa-random and you see just those, tap again to clear. Grabbing “all my psa-random bits” is a click, not a typing exercise.

Settings read like your night now — and the rail shows tonight

Show Settings is five cards in the order a night happens — Season & hours, Warm-up, Showtime, Intermission, After hours — with plain names everywhere (Welcome and Goodnight for your host, First and Last song for the loop). The right rail draws tonight as a timeline: warm-up, show start, the setlist with its loop count, show end, after hours, lights off. The guided setup follows the same order, and everything picks sequences the same way: red pills plus one + Add button.

Templates & guided setup sit beside the save buttons

Manage templates and Re-run guided setup moved from the bottom of the settings rail into the What you'll get column as proper action buttons, right above Apply & rebuild — no more hunting the corner of the left panel for them.

Guided setup keeps its receipts

Finished wizard steps now show the answer you gave right in the progress rail ("Oct 2 – 31 · 30 nights · sunset −15m"), Show defaults is clearly marked optional with a real Skip for now button, the date strip color-codes weekends and full-show nights, and the layout cards draw the week each one builds so choosing a shape is a glance, not a read.

Settings draw the night instead of describing it

Song roles now open with a pill diagram of how a night flows (opener → songs → closer → transition, with a one-tap jump to the transition pool), Host & PSAs draws its once-per-night bookends the same way, and empty song-weight tiers shrink to a single tidy row until you add something.

Settings now show you what you'll get — live

A new column beside Show Settings redraws your season as you tinker: a dot for every night (weekends red, full-show nights dark), your first night's clocks — sunset, show start, show end, after hours — and a little bar chart of how a night flows with your energy arc. Apply & rebuild, Save without rebuilding, and Discard live right under it, always in reach.

Show Settings is one scrolling page

No more clicking section to section — settings now read top to bottom on a single page, and the left rail follows along as you scroll (click a link to jump). Full-show nights moved into Dates & hours, and Manage templates + Re-run guided setup now sit at the bottom of the rail.

PSA buckets with rules — guaranteed nightly, once a week, or on call

Make as many named PSA buckets as you need, each with its own rule: On call (the generic pile your PSA slots and frequency draw from, whole pile before any repeat), Guaranteed nightly (one of the pile plays every night — great for “one REQ:IQ explainer per night”), or About once a week (one pick on one random show night each week). The master PSA frequency is now a real setting too — every N songs from the bucket you choose — inherited by templates and overridable per night from the night drawer. Pickers now offer only designated PSAs, and the catalog rail files PSAs into their own section at the bottom.

Save settings without rebuilding the show

The settings footer now has Save without rebuilding — tinker with settings and persist them without touching the setlists you've built. Apply & rebuild stays for when you do want the season remade.

Guided setup, rebuilt — bigger, brighter, less to read

The setup wizard is now a roomy two-pane flow: a progress rail with numbered steps and checkmarks, a visual energy-arc picker (pick the shape, not the word), show defaults that open as one-line ideas and expand when you want them, and a month-strip preview of your season as you set the dates. Escape now asks before leaving once you've answered anything, and building plays a proper reveal into your fresh calendar.

Show Settings gets a section rail — and everything goes Signal Red

Settings sections now live behind a left rail — Dates & hours, Show length & build, Show defaults, Song roles & weights, Host & PSAs, Special nights, Layout & templates — one section on screen at a time, each with a note on how far it reaches. A section holding unapplied edits shows a dot until you apply. Buttons and selected states across settings and setup now use Signal Red; violet stays reserved for the template layer.

Show Settings opens full-window — room to breathe

Show Settings now slides over the whole calendar instead of squeezing into the side panel. Same sections, same controls — but on a spacious reading column with bigger labels, inputs, and hints. Closing with unapplied edits now asks before discarding them (it used to lose them silently), and Escape closes the panel safely.

Tag psa-random to fill the PSA bucket in one click

Tag sequences psa-random in your catalog and the PSA bucket shows an “Add N tagged psa-random” button — one tap adds them all, and it disappears once the bucket is caught up. The same works for psa-opener and psa-closer on the show opener/closer pools, in Show Settings and on a template’s own host spots.

Run a host on your matrix — show opener, closer & a PSA bucket

A new HOST & PSAS section in Show Settings adds a show opener that plays once per night before everything (rules & welcome), a show closer that ends the night — both separate from your setlist opener/closer, so you can run both — and a PSA bucket of one-liners. Schedule a PSA slot on any template to fire every N songs, either a specific sequence or a random draw from the bucket that uses the whole pile before anything repeats. Theme nights can customize their own host spots right on the template.

Voice-only mode for a cappella tracks

Got a recording that’s all vocals and no music? A new “Voice only (a cappella)” toggle on the upload screen tells TRK:IQ to skip stem separation and beat detection and align your lyrics straight to the singing. You get the word and phoneme tracks for singing faces — no beat or instrument tracks, since there’s nothing to read. It’s the mirror of the Instrumental toggle, so you pick one or the other, and lyrics are required.

Let each show set its own request rules

A theme template can now carry its own request policy. Keep requests on theme so viewers only ask for that night’s tag — with a live count of how many songs qualify — or close requests entirely for a hosted set, where viewers see a “Tonight’s a hosted show” note and requests reopen on their own with the next run. It all resolves live, so the REQ:IQ deck follows your schedule without a touch.

Guided setup, clearer — a centered modal with a Show defaults step

The first-run setup wizard now opens as a centered modal over the calendar (Escape and stray clicks won’t discard it) with a live summary of what you’re building. A new Show defaults step lets you set the pre-show, transitions, and after-hours that every night and template inherits — once, up front.

MAP:IQ, redesigned — a guided four-step flow

MAP:IQ (now in beta) walks you through Source → Your layout → Tune & run → Review & export in a step rail. Pick a Lights of Elm Ridge sequence and both its layout and the sequence load in one click; point at your show’s layout or upload one; run the match right in your browser; then read it back as a clean hierarchy and remap or unlink any row with a searchable prop picker before you export the .xmap.

More of a template is editable — theme, color, and pause

Open a template and you can now set its theme tag and accent color, pause it so it stops painting nights (a PAUSED pill and a ▶ bring it back), unpin a one-off date from its chip, and slide a PSA to a new slot by number.

The night view shows exactly what your box will play

A show night now includes the nightly template’s PSAs, triggers, and pre-show/after-hours overrides — in the drawer and on the calendar ribbon — so what you see matches what exports to FPP. Rows a template sets are read-only per night; a ✎ jumps you to the template to change them.

New one-sheet: Typical Show Setups

A visual guide lays out Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced show days in clock order, so you can see how every SET:IQ part — pre-show, opener, setlist, closer, transition, PSA, after-hours — fits together at a glance.

Start your season Custom — build templates before anything is scheduled

The setup wizard’s Starting layout step has a fourth option: Custom. The other three fill every night with a default show — Custom saves your dates, hours, and vibe, then opens an empty Templates panel so you can build the exact shows you have in mind first.

Work new songs in, and a Rebuild that tells you what it’ll do

Songs you add mid-season now surface at the top of the catalog in a “New — not in the mix yet” group, with one button to weave them into the nights that have room. Rebuild now asks first and spells out its scope — how many nights are open, locked, and pinned — instead of quietly doing nothing on an imported season, with an opt-in to rebuild FPP-locked nights and a Start over hatch when you want a clean slate.

Announcements that clear themselves — and a smarter Next

Every live announcement can now clear itself after 30 seconds, a minute, or five — or stay up until you dismiss it — so a “last song at 9” banner tidies itself away. Quick-fire pills ask you to confirm the timing before they send. And the Live deck’s Next button now skips to the first song in your Up Next list, the one you can actually see queued.

A tip jar — support the work

A new Support page in IQ Studio makes it easy to chip in. Buying a sequence is still the best way to give back, but you can also leave a one-time tip — pick a preset or type your own amount — through a secure Stripe checkout. No account needed, and no payment is ever required.

Long tracks finish processing

Very long tracks — a 25-minute effects bed, a full ambient loop — used to time out mid-analysis. TRK:IQ now waits long enough for them to finish, so a long instrumental comes back with its timing tracks like any other song.

Play now on a request actually plays it

Tapping Play on a live-queue request used to clear it without sending it to the show; it now inserts the song and marks it “Next” until the box picks it up, so a double-tap can’t double-book it. The Up Next list also stops jumping ahead while a request is on the air.

Skip the lyrics step for instrumental tracks

Got a track with no vocals — a sound-effects bed, an ambient loop, a pure instrumental? A new “Instrumental track (no lyrics)” toggle on the upload screen tells TRK:IQ to skip the lyrics step for that run. The beat, bar, and instrument timing tracks still generate as usual, and the Lyrics step reads “skipped” instead of stalling out on a silent vocal stem.

Preview — watch your show play, live, from anywhere

The operator console has a new Preview tab that renders the sequence your box is playing right now — your whole yard as a live pixel view, running off the same show clock the viewer phones use. See it in true 3D (orbit and zoom the scene) or flip to a flat 2D view, turn on the synced lyrics and optional in-browser audio, and check that lights, words, and sound all line up — from the couch or the curb. Any song with a render on file shows up here.

The “next show” countdown lands on a real show night

The offline page’s countdown could latch onto a leftover request window from an old season or a test and count down to a night with nothing planned. It now targets the next night that actually carries a SET:IQ setlist, so the timer always points at a real show.

A deeper Analytics tab — demand, engagement, and a song scorecard

Analytics now splits into Tonight and Season views with new sections: how much demand your safeguards turned away (and why), an engagement funnel from page view to played song, the night’s request arc, new-versus-returning visitors, and a sortable per-song scorecard of requests, plays, skips, and fatigue. Crowd Pick rounds get their own margins and turnout view.

Listen along — your show's audio on viewers' phones

Turn on phone audio (Audio tab: confirm your music rights, flip the toggle, pull your MP3s straight off your FPP box) and a “Listen along on your phone” button appears on the viewer page. One tap and the song plays from the viewer's phone, in sync with the lights — full quality, no laggy stream, about 5 MB per song. A live PA-offset knob lines phones up with your yard speakers, and FM keeps working like always.

Geofencing — keep requests and phone audio local

A new Safeguards section limits your show to the people actually at it. Stand at your display, tap “Use my current location,” pick a radius, and out-of-range viewers can't request songs or stream the phone audio — a live listen stops shortly after someone leaves the area. Off by default, fail-open by default, and viewer locations are checked in the moment, never stored.

Karaoke lyrics nudge

Lyric lines landing early or late on the karaoke screens? A new card on the Live tab (web and pocket console) steps the lyric timing in 250 ms nudges — positive shows lyrics later — and saves push live to every open karaoke screen.

The plugin can send your song audio to the cloud

fpp-SETIQ 1.2.6 powers the new “Pull from FPP” button on the Audio tab: it uploads the exact MP3s your show plays, so phone audio always matches what's on the box. It re-checks hourly while audio is enabled, so a swapped file updates itself.

Up Next stays visible on big playlists

Shows with a long nightly rotation no longer lose the Up Next list on the viewer page.

New comparison: REQ:IQ vs. PulseMesh

Weighing phone-audio options? A new side-by-side covers sync quality, setup, pricing, and the big difference: REQ:IQ's audio lives on the same viewer page as requests, voting, and karaoke — one page, one QR code, one plugin.

Analyze a show you've already uploaded

The TDY:IQ landing screen now offers your existing Studio IQ shows — one click analyzes a show's stored layout, no file hunting. And after a tidy-up, “Save to a show” stores the cleaned layout on the show so the rest of the tools use it.

Clearer naming boxes, safer renames

The naming editors now walk left to right — your current style, a live example, and the applied pattern — so you can see exactly what you're picking. TDY:IQ also refuses to propose a rename that would make a name worse: if the new pattern would drop information a model's current name carries, it leaves that name alone.

Fairer report-card grades

File health no longer collapses a decent layout to an F over a couple of issues, and a clean file grades like one.

TDY:IQ — tidy up your xLights layout

A new Studio IQ tool (in beta) cleans up the layout debt that builds up over seasons. Drop in your xlights_rgbeffects.xml and TDY:IQ proposes a plan you tune: one consistent naming style for models and groups, the groups you never finished (including “minus” groups like All − No Spinners), and real spinner submodels in place of the stock ones. It keeps your folders as-is, and every rename is alias-safe, so no sequence breaks. You review each change, then download a verified tidied copy — your original file is never touched.

The nightly show is now a full template

The nightly auto-mix is a real, editable template now — give it its own pre-show and after-hours, add triggers and PSAs that apply to every night, and its per-night PSAs export to FPP. You can also remove the nightly show entirely (a “Remove the nightly show?” confirm keeps you safe) and bring it back any time with “＋ Restore nightly show” in the Templates list.

Build a new template as a live show day

Creating a template now drops you straight into the full show day — pre-show, playlist, PSAs, triggers, transition, and after-hours are all editable up front, instead of creating a stub and reopening it. Pick a Fixed playlist (you choose the songs, same order every run) or a Fresh rotation that’s auto-built at creation.

Pulling a season from FPP just works now

A run of import fixes: “runs forever” schedule rows (undated, or FPP’s 2019→2099 boilerplate) now import instead of silently dropping, Lead In / Lead Out openers and closers come in as songs, a plain pull into a fresh season actually fills the calendar, and a successful push no longer reads back as an empty playlist. When nothing can be placed, SET:IQ now names the exact reason: an outdated plugin sending names only, no catalog matches (with example .fseq names), or a schedule pointing at playlists the box never sent.

A banner when your box pushes to SET:IQ

When your FPP box pushes its playlists and schedule up, a calendar banner — “Your FPP pushed its playlists & schedule” — offers a Review & import button, so a push never looks like it did nothing. The pull modal now also labels push and pull times separately (“box pushed 7/4 2:31 PM · last pull 7/4 2:05 AM”), so a stale snapshot is easy to spot.

Removing a run from one night clears its band

Taking a recurring template off a single night (the ✕ on the Tonight strip) now actually clears its band from the calendar, instead of leaving a “ghost” band on days you’d already removed it from.

Weekends can start at their own time

Weekend nights now have their own start time, separate from weeknights — set a full weekend window, not just an end time, so a Saturday can open later (or earlier) than a Tuesday.

Song roles and special nights live in Show settings

Song Roles, Song Weights, and Special Nights are now collapsible cards inside the docked Show Settings panel, next to your dates and hours — no more opening a separate modal to reach them. Show Settings is one scrolling panel you can work through top to bottom.

The energy arc is back on template days

The little energy-arc sparkline on a calendar day used to disappear the moment that day carried a template band — which, now that every show day has one, meant it was hidden almost everywhere. It’s back: any day with enough real BPM data shows the arc again, read across the whole night’s setlist.

Start your show at sunset, not by the clock

Set your start time to follow the sky. Enter your ZIP and pick an offset — 30 minutes before sunset, right at sunset, and so on — and SET:IQ looks up your local sunset and starts the show from there. It re-checks sunset for every night of the run, so your start drifts a minute or two night to night, just like the real thing. A sun chip on the calendar shows when it’s on.

A heads-up when two shows overlap

When a template and the nightly mix — or two templates — would play at the same time on one night, the night drawer shows a friendly nudge: which runs collide, and a suggested split of the evening into back-to-back windows. One tap applies it; “Keep as is” dismisses it for that night.

Run a season with no nightly mix at all

The nightly auto-mix is now just another template — one whose playlist rebuilds each night — so you can delete it and run a season made only of fixed templates. Those days get the same rich calendar cells (composition ribbon, opener → closer art, metrics) as nightly seasons do.

Drive a night from the Tonight run strip

Open a show night and a strip of run pills — every template plus the nightly mix, in clock order — sits across the top. Click a pill to focus that run, edit its template, or remove it from just tonight (the template itself stays put). You can add a short-sequence cue as a trigger too, and every part card now collapses so the drawer opens playlist-first.

Start the show from your phone

The pocket operator console now offers the same launch buttons as the studio when the box is idle — Start Tonight’s Show, or pick any night’s SET:IQ playlist to run. We also dropped the duplicate Skip button from the On Air card, since the transport row right below it already has Next.

Your whole season on one calendar

Fresh nightly and Templates used to be two modes you switched between — now they’re one calendar. A nightly auto-mix builds a fresh set for every show night, and you layer fixed templates (a weekend loop, a theme night) onto the days that repeat. Both live on the same calendar and both push to your box, so there’s no mode to manage anymore.

Edit a night without a pop-up: the docked Inspector

Click a night and a side panel slides in that never covers the calendar — so you can keep dragging songs in from the catalog while you work. It lays a night out in clock order (pre-show → show → transition → after-hours), and the same panel holds your template list, the template editor, and the new-template setup.

A calendar you can actually read at a glance

Each night now shows a composition ribbon (pre-show → show → transitions → after-hours, sized to real time), the opener and closer as album art, and a slim band for every fixed template running that day. Page freely between months, or switch to a stacked Season view, and fill an empty day with one tap.

Turn season warnings into one-click fixes

The new Season fix plan lists every warning — a night running long, a song landing twice, a missing BPM — as a suggestion with an Accept button. Fix them one at a time, or hit Accept all and undo if you change your mind. A clean season just reads “Nothing to fix.”

Run a template on a single night

Drag a template from the Inspector list onto any date to run it there once — a one-off marked with a pin, without touching its weekly pattern. The day’s ⊕ menu does the same, plus “add a night” or “new template on this date.”

Tweak one night without changing the rest

A single night can now override the show’s pre-show, after-hours, and triggers just for that date — the night card marks what you’ve edited, with a link to revert. Great for a one-off late night or a special-event trigger.

Up Next never runs dry

The Up Next list is now a revolving door: it reads your active playlist straight from the SET:IQ plan, follows the song on air, and loops back to the top so it’s never empty — and it stays put even while a viewer request is playing. On the Live deck it’s a numbered rotation you can Jump into.

Countdowns that match the real songs

Now Playing and every queue estimate now use each song’s true run time and your player’s live schedule signal, instead of assuming a flat four minutes. The “time remaining” and the wait on a queued request stay accurate however deep the line gets.

See your place in line

After a viewer requests a song, its tile shows an In Queue overlay with its spot in line (#3) and a live countdown to when it should play. The moment it starts, that flips to a green On Air badge.

Start any night’s show from the yard

The Live tab’s new Start a show launcher counts down to showtime and starts tonight’s playlist with one tap — no walk back to FPP. Open “Play a Different Show” to pick any night from a calendar and run that setlist on the box right now, handy for a test or a re-run.

Crowd Pick puts every nomination on the ballot

Voting rounds now show all the songs people nominated, not just two, and the winner plays next and won’t be offered again on the following ballot. In voting mode the viewer button reads “Nominate for the vote” and flips back to “Request” the moment Auto drops back to the jukebox. A finished round no longer flashes its old result when the page refreshes.

Overnight schedules stay on the right weekday

A show that runs past midnight now exports its schedule pinned to the weekday it actually starts on, instead of spreading across “every day.”

Requests reliably show up in the queue

A run of viewer-queue fixes: requests always appear in the live queue (and read the show’s own timezone), no more false “queue’s packed” or bogus “you’re #N,” the queue stops flashing during a request, Up Next art matches your catalog, and a looping playlist no longer crashes the viewer page.

Requests stay open whenever the box is playing

If your player is actually running — an early start, a re-run, a test — the viewer page takes requests even outside the hours SET:IQ planned. A live show now wins over the schedule clock, so nobody’s turned away while the lights are on.

Yard-sign QR codes keep your logo

An uploaded logo now embeds correctly in the center of your Yard-sign QR code, instead of dropping out when you download it.

Pull an existing FPP season into SET:IQ

Already built playlists and a schedule on the box? Pull from FPP reads them into your season — it re-dates the schedule to your season’s range and overwrites the calendar with what’s on the box, so SET:IQ becomes the single source of truth.

Paste a whole block of lyrics into the editor

The Lyric Editor now has a paste box: drop in a full block of words and tap Import. Paste a real LRC block and the timing comes in with it; paste plain lyrics and they come in untimed for you to sync. The import is undoable.

Find synced lyrics for songs with a subtitle

Auto-fetch used to miss songs whose title carries a subtitle — like “Ghostbusters (I’m Not Afraid).” It now matches those titles and always tries for real synced timing before falling back to plain text, so more of your catalog gets scrolling karaoke.

Clearer “watch for this” teasers

The AI-drafted “watch for this” moment on each song now describes the motion your audience actually sees — light chasing down a strand, a color rippling across the roof — instead of printing raw xLights effect names, and it varies its wording instead of leaning on “erupts.”

Dropped-in .xsq colors stick the first time

Dropping an .xsq file onto a song in the catalog drawer sometimes needed two tries for the color palette and favorite prop to stay. They now save on the first import instead of flashing in and vanishing.

Catalog enrichment picks up where it left off

Leave the catalog mid-enrichment and it no longer re-fetches songs it already finished. Each song is checkpointed as it completes, so the next visit works on the ones still left.

A three-step setup checklist on the Live tab

Before your show is ready, the Live tab now walks you through three steps — build your catalog, set up branding, and plan the show in SET:IQ — each linking straight to where you do it. Once all three are green, the tab becomes your live console.

Edit a song’s lyrics and timing right in the catalog

Open a song in the catalog and tap Edit & sync to fix its lyrics and timestamps in the same TRK:IQ editor — paste new words, re-time a trimmed verse, and the changes save back to the song. No need to round-trip through TRK:IQ.

Play your opener and closer just once a night

Openers and closers have a new “Play once per night” switch in Show settings. Turn it on and SET:IQ sends them to FPP’s Lead In and Lead Out — so your sign-on plays once at the top of the night and your sign-off once at the end, instead of looping with the rest of the show.

Tidier FPP schedules for odd-day Templates

A Template that runs on a weekday combo FPP has no shortcut for — Wed + Sat, say — now exports as one recurring entry per weekday instead of a separate row for every date. A whole season of Wed + Sat is two entries on the box, not a dozen.

Drag a song straight into an open Template

You could already drop a catalog song onto a Template card. Now you can drag one right into an open Template drawer too — and it’s pinned, so a rebuild won’t drop it.

Quick Pick a season setup in one tap

SET:IQ now runs in two modes — Fresh nightly or Templates — and new Quick Pick cards build a whole season for you in one tap: One big show (a single all-season loop), Fresh every night, or a Weekend & weeknight split. Tap a card, then fine-tune. The header also marks which mode is live with a “pushes to FPP & REQ” badge, so you always know what your box will get.

A clean slate when your catalog is empty

Delete your catalog and SET:IQ now clears the leftover templates and calendar with it, instead of leaving stale ones behind. An empty template board stays empty — with buttons to create one or Quick Pick a setup — rather than quietly resurrecting a blank Template.

Trigger rows stop piling up on the box

Volume and command triggers now push to FPP as named Command Presets, so the on-box plugin can recognize its own rows — they no longer duplicate every time you pull, and you can find and delete them in Manage Playlists. (Update the fpp-SETIQ plugin to get it.)

Jump straight to the Lyric Editor from pasted lyrics

Pasted your own lyrics? A new Lyric Editor button sits right there in the lyrics card — one tap opens the full editor to line up timing, no extra steps.

A tidy start before you have a catalog

The Showtime card, Schedule, and Analytics now wait quietly until your show has songs, with a short “set up your season first” note instead of an empty countdown or blank calendar. They appear on their own the moment a catalog exists.

A friendly message when nothing’s requestable

When your catalog has no songs to request yet, the viewer grid now says “No songs available to request right now” instead of showing a blank page — so visitors know the app is working.

Start the show from a pre-show Showtime card

Before doors, the Live tab opens with a Showtime card that counts down to your start time and previews tonight’s setlist. One tap on “Start show now” kicks the show off from the yard — it jumps your box to the opening song, no walk back to FPP. The card steps aside once you’re on air.

Fewer false “offline” alarms

A box that’s clearly playing no longer flips to “offline” just because its heartbeat lagged, and a box standing by before the show now reads “idle” instead of “offline.” The “Start show now” button no longer gets stuck on “Starting…” either.

Pick the right lyrics when there’s more than one

When LRCLIB has several synced versions of a song, TRK:IQ now shows them in a short list — artist, line count, length, and a preview — so you can pick the one that matches your track. If the top match looks like a different language or mix, you get a heads-up to choose another or paste your own.

No more phantom “Saved”

SET:IQ now reads your season back after writing it, so a save that didn’t reach the cloud is honest about it — you’ll see “saved on this device only” instead of a green “Saved” that didn’t stick.

Drop a PSA into your show

Slot a PSA — a station ID, a “tune to 88.1” spot, a “thanks for visiting” — right into a Template. Pick the sequence and the song it plays after, and it shows up on the show-day chips and the calendar. New sequences whose names look like announcements get tagged for you on import, so they’re easy to find.

Schedule Templates on a full calendar

The Templates view has a new Calendar layout with a Templates rail down the side. Drag a Template onto a day to set which days it runs, hold Alt while you drop for a one-off date, and click any day to open the Template running it. The cells are full size now, matching the per-night calendar.

Switch how you run the season without losing work

A run-mode switcher now sits in the header — Fresh nightly, Templates, or One big show. Each mode keeps its own content, so flipping between them never clobbers the work you did in the other two.

Transitions don’t pad your runtime

Transitions and after-hours sequences now sit in their own box at the bottom of a Template, separate from the numbered playlist. They loop between shows, so they no longer count against your runtime-versus-target math.

See pre-show and after-hours on every night

In Fresh-nightly mode, each night’s drawer now shows your pre-show and after-hours at a glance, with one button to edit them in Show settings.

Fire a PSA mid-show

A new Fire a PSA strip on the Live deck plays an announcement sequence next, ahead of the request queue. Tag a sequence “psa” in your catalog, pick it from the list, and hit Play now — handy for a quick “we’re live till 9” without leaving the booth.

A pre-show readiness check

The Live console now opens with a Pre-show check that confirms the important things before doors: your FPP plugin is connected, sequences are synced, your public link is claimed, requests are armed, and the volume is up. It tucks itself away once everything is green.

Styled QR codes for your yard sign

The Branding tab now builds a Yard-sign QR code for your viewer page. Pick a style — Classic, Signal Red, Midnight, Evergreen, Plum, or Custom colors — drop your logo in the center, and download it as a PNG or SVG. It follows your link, so it never goes stale.

Type timestamps to a tenth of a second

The Timestamp Editor now accepts times written to a single decimal, like 1:31.4 — not just two, like 1:31.41. Both still work.

Guest purchases find your account

Bought sequences as a guest, then made an account with the same email? Those purchases now link to your account automatically, so your downloads and order history show up without you asking.

One-click theme nights

When a tag in your catalog has enough songs to fill a night — a dozen kids songs, say — SET:IQ now offers it as a ready-made Template. Tap a chip in the “Theme nights ready” strip and it seeds a Kids Night (or Spooky Night) from just those songs and opens the wizard to fine-tune.

Jump to any song in your rotation

The Live deck’s Up Next list now has a Jump here control on every row. Hover or tap a song and one tap sends the show straight to it on your player — no waiting for the queue to drain.

Run your show as Templates

Instead of planning every night by hand, build reusable Templates — a named playlist that runs on the days you pick (every night, weekends, every Wednesday). Choose how you run the season: a fresh setlist each night, one big show on a loop, or a handful of seasonal Templates.

Each Template runs your whole show day

A Template holds it all — a pre-show before doors, the main playlist, an after-hours loop, and triggers that fire commands like volume or lights at set times. Set a pre-show or after-hours just for one Template, or let it inherit your show default.

Build a Template with a guided wizard

Add template walks you through it step by step — the dates and which days it runs, the pre-show, the playlist (filter by tag, rebuild, and sort), the after-hours, and triggers — so a new Template is ready in about a minute.

Board or List, and drag to build

See your Templates as cards or a compact list. Drag a song from the catalog onto a card to add it, drag songs inside a Template to reorder them, and hover a show-day chip to see exactly what’s inside each step.

When two Templates share a day

If an everyday Template and an every-Wednesday Template overlap, the more specific one wins on Wednesdays — and SET:IQ shows a heads-up so you know which Template is running when.

New sequences tag themselves

When you import from your show folder or FPP, any sequence you rendered this season gets a “new” tag automatically — so it’s easy to feature what’s new this year.

Synced lyrics that match what actually plays

TRK:IQ now reads each song’s true runtime and re-times the real LRCLIB lines to fit it. The words line up with your sequence even after you trim or edit a song — and the original wording and capitalization stay intact.

Watch & Learn videos right in Help

Help now has a Watch & Learn section with short training videos that play on the page — no leaving for YouTube. The Catalog, SET:IQ, and REQ:IQ videos are live, and search covers videos too.

Preview karaoke right in the song editor

Open a song in the catalog and tap Preview karaoke to see exactly how the synced lyrics will scroll on a viewer’s phone — without leaving the editor or pushing anything live.

A clearer song editor

The song detail drawer is now laid out in tidy cards — Identity, Audio, Show programming, Guest copy, and Lyrics — so finding and fixing one song’s details is faster to scan.

Upload SVG logos and artwork

Every image picker — show logo, branding, and song art — now accepts SVG files alongside PNG and JPG, so a crisp vector logo uploads as-is.

Reset your password from the sign-in screen

Locked out? The IQ Studio sign-in splash now has a “Forgot your password?” link that emails you a secure link to set a new one.

Re-open the setup wizard any time

A new Guided setup button in Show settings re-launches the first-run wizard, so you can walk back through your dates, hours, and preferences whenever you want.

The Connect FPP window stays put

Clicking outside the Connect FPP window no longer closes it while you’re copying your show key. Close it on purpose with the X or the Got it button.

The xSchedule plugin runs its own setup screen

The native xSchedule plugin now hosts its own page in your browser instead of relying on xSchedule’s built-in web view, so Scan and Pull open and work reliably.

Crowd Pick voting — the curb picks the next song

Turn on Crowd Pick and viewers vote between songs from their phones. Live tallies climb, a countdown runs, and the winner plays next — with a little confetti when it lands. Voting is free and doesn’t use up a viewer’s requests.

Pick how the next song gets chosen: Queue, Vote, or Auto

On the Live deck, choose Queue (play in request order), Vote (a Crowd Pick round every time), or Auto — which flips to voting once enough people are watching and falls back to the queue on quiet nights.

Safeguards moved into a side drawer

Open Safeguards as a side drawer right from the Live tab. It now holds the new Auto-Voting controls and the Request Alerts watchdog, so the settings sit where you’re already running the show.

Tired songs show why they’re resting

When a song hits its play limit for the night, it now appears dimmed with a “Retired for tonight” label on the viewer grid — so people see why they can’t request it instead of just getting bounced.

Volume now syncs both ways

Change the volume on your FPP box and the REQ:IQ Live slider follows along. Volume used to flow only from the console to the box; now it mirrors back.

Real lighting cues and colors on song cards

Each song’s detail card now shows the lighting cue count and the actual color palette read from your sequence, and the “watch for this” moment is tied to a real lit-up moment in the show.

Generate lighting cues and colors on demand

In the catalog you can now build each song’s lighting cue count and color palette right in your browser — one song or in bulk — and re-run it whenever you like. No local sequence file? It falls back to a cloud decode.

Stop a catalog pass mid-run

A new Stop button cancels a long catalog import or enrichment pass instead of making you wait for it to finish.

One FPP Hub per show

Pushing and pulling with your FPP box now lives in a single FPP Hub — connection status, your show key, two-way sync, and layout-file upload (rgbeffects + networks) all in one place.

Shows that run past midnight

SET:IQ now handles show hours that end after midnight, so a 7 PM-to-1 AM night plans and exports to FPP with the right dates.

See what came from your box

A new read-only Mapping screen shows which nights and songs came from your FPP box versus SET:IQ. The auto-builder leaves FPP-locked nights untouched, so it never overwrites edits you made on the box.

REQ:IQ vs. Remote Falcon, side by side

A new help article lines REQ:IQ up against Remote Falcon, feature by feature — voting, jukebox requests, safeguards, player setup, and more. Feature groups are collapsible, so you can skim straight to what matters.

Run your whole show from the Live tab

The Live tab is now a control console. Play, pause, skip, restart, or stop the show and set the volume right from REQ:IQ — Now Playing, the controls, and the live queue all sit together in one deck.

Lock requests to the tags you choose

Want a kids-only stretch or an all-spooky set? Tap one or more tag chips on the Live deck and the viewer page only offers songs that match — turn the locks off to allow everything again.

Send a live announcement to every phone

Type a message and push a banner to every viewer page at once — “turn your radio to 88.1,” for instance. Save the ones you reuse, and clear the banner with one tap when you’re done.

No more Offline flash when the viewer page loads

The viewer page now shows a brief “Connecting…” state while it checks on your show, instead of flashing the Offline screen for a moment when the show is actually live.

House Rules starter set shows up for everyone

Operators who had already saved a name or logo were seeing an empty House Rules list. The three starter rules now appear for every operator the first time you open the editor.

Snappier moving between Studio tools

Switching tabs in Studio IQ no longer flashes a “Checking access…” spinner every time. Access is checked once when you arrive, so jumping between tools is instant.

Energy arc for every night

Shape each night by tempo — build up, peak in the middle, wind down, or hold steady. Song BPM now guides both which songs play and the order they play in. The old “Variety” control is now “Repeat avoidance” with clearer choices.

Tidier Show settings

The Show settings drawer is now grouped into clear sections in the order you set a show up — Dates, Show hours, Preferences, and on down. The first three open automatically; the rest stay tucked away until you need them.

Upload your show logo

Add a logo right in the Branding tab — upload an image file instead of hosting it somewhere else and pasting a link. Pasting a link still works.

Something to see when the show’s off

When the show isn’t running, visitors can read your House Rules and browse the full lineup instead of hitting a dead page.

Clearer request messages

When a request can’t go through, the viewer now explains why, and the live queue timing is more accurate.

Phone polish on the viewer

Song detail no longer jumps or scrolls unexpectedly on phones, and the Suggest and About tabs use a compact header.

Help tooltips stay on screen

The little info tooltips around Studio IQ no longer get clipped at the edge of the screen.

Redesigned the audience request experience

A cleaner viewer flow: tap a song for a detail card, watch your request move through the queue in real time, and undo a mis-tap right from the button.

Song detail cards with real stats and an AI blurb

Each song now shows its effect count and most-used prop, plus an AI-drafted blurb and a “watch for this” moment — anchored to a real lyric and the colors the sequence actually uses.

The viewer page is now your brand

The header shows your show’s name, logo, font, and accent color as a marquee that collapses into a sticky live bar as visitors scroll.

Brand defaults, set once

Enter your name, tagline, About story, socials, and FM station once as account-wide defaults; each show then overrides just its own color, font, and logo.

Redesigned schedule day drawer

A roomier day drawer with the night’s playlist, request-window timing, and per-day safeguards, plus season summary stats on the calendar.

A more powerful catalog table

The catalog now shows Key, effect and prop counts, and whether each song has lyrics, a blurb, and a hype moment — every column sortable. Bulk actions (fetch art/lyrics, tag, show/hide, AI cleanup) live behind row checkboxes so they only touch the songs you pick.

Smarter, quieter catalog enrichment

Album art, BPM, tags, and lyrics fill in once on the first load, then only when you ask — no more re-running the whole pass every time you open the catalog.

Your sequences never leave your computer

Pointing Studio IQ at your xLights show folder now shows a confirmation screen with exactly what’s read on your machine versus uploaded — your MP3s and sequence files stay local, and you can opt each part in or out before anything is sent.

Tag-only nights

Build a night from a single tag — a kids-only night, a spooky-only night — and SET:IQ fills it from just those songs.

Help & Docs support center

A full docs library: guides for every tool, step-by-step FPP and xSchedule setup, and direct downloads — including the Elm Ridge Bridge.

Catalog seeds itself from your FPP media

The FPP plugin now reads ID3 tags from your media files, so your request catalog fills in with real titles and artists — zero uploads.

Elm Ridge Bridge for xSchedule

Live now-playing, Up Next, and viewer requests for xSchedule users — one small app next to your player.

Request lifecycle on the viewer page

Requests now move pending → playing → played in real time, and viewers can cancel a mis-tap within a few seconds.

Pull from SET:IQ on the FPP box

Paste your show key once, then pull every night's playlist and the season schedule onto the box in one click.

Richer calendar metrics

Each night now shows its tempo arc, runtime versus target, and warnings at a glance.

Drag-and-drop on the calendar

Reorder a night's setlist or drag songs straight in from the catalog rail.

Show setup wizard

Season dates, weeknight and weekend hours, runtime targets, and openers/closers — all in one guided setup.

Full credit for group-cascade mappings

Coverage numbers no longer undercount props that get their effects through a mapped group.

FPP and xSchedule season export

Download your whole season as FPP playlists or a single xSchedule .xml.