Everything the desk does, in the order you meet it on a Sunday morning.
The service runs down the left of the desk. “Add” puts a song, a reading, slides, a notice, a video, an audio file, a picture, a camera or a screen at the end of it. Drag an item by its handle to move it, or use its menu: Edit, Move up, Move down, Remove. The first nine are numbered, and Ctrl with their number cues them.
Songs and readings usually come from the library under the monitors, below. A song can also be typed into the service: a blank line starts a new slide, and a line such as [Verse 1], [Chorus] or [Bridge] names the part under it, so the slides are labelled. Notes on an item are for you: they show in the service list and never on the screen.
The Songs tab holds every song the church sings, kept on this computer. Type in “Find a song” to look by title or by any line: “twas grace” finds Amazing Grace. The star makes a song a favourite, and “Favourites” shows only those. Double-click a song, or pick it and press “Add to the service”, to put it at the end of the service.
“New song…” and “Edit…” open the editor: the title, author, copyright and CCLI song number, and the words. The buttons above the words start a verse, the chorus, a pre-chorus, the bridge, a tag or the ending. A blank line starts a new slide; Shift+Enter adds space inside a slide. The slides show beside the words as the room will see them, smaller when they are long.
A song in the service is its own copy. Editing it there asks where the change goes: “This service only” leaves the library as it was, “Save to the library too” changes both.
“Import…” reads songs from text files, RTF files, OpenLyrics files and CCLI SongSelect’s text downloads, keeping their parts, authors, copyright and CCLI numbers. EasyWorship’s own song files are not read, because EasyWorship does not publish how they are made; copy the words out of it as text or RTF instead.
The Bible tab has six Bibles that need no internet: the King James Version, the American Standard Version and the World English Bible, which are in the public domain, and Biblica’s open Yorùbá, Hausa and Igbo Bibles, shared under a Creative Commons licence whose notice shows under them. “Import…” installs another from an OSIS or Zefania XML file; only install Bibles your church may show.
Type a reference and press Enter: “John 3:16-18”, “Jn 3 16”, “Romans 8 28”, “John 3:36-4:2” or “Psalm 23”. While you type a book the desk offers the books it could be, so “1 The” is 1 Thessalonians. After one passage, “1:3-5” alone is in the same book. Each verse is a slide with the reference under it, or “Fitted” puts as many on a slide as fit, and “Verse numbers” starts each verse with its number.
“Add to the service” puts the passage in the service. “Show now” puts it on the screen at once, from the verse you picked, and double-clicking a verse shows it live straight away.
Picking an item puts it on the preview, outlined in green. Nothing the room sees changes. The left and right arrows move the cue up and down the service.
Go live (Space) sends the preview live with the transition you chose and cues the item after it, so pressing Space again walks the service in order. At the end of the service the cue goes back to what was live. Cut (C) does the same at once. The T-bar mixes by hand: drag it all the way and the preview is live; let it go part way and the room still sees the programme.
The live item’s slides show below the monitors with their labels. The up and down arrows move a slide at a time and stop at the first and the last, so the end of a song never jumps back to the start; Home and End go to the first and the last. Pick any slide to show it; “Edit” changes the words.
As in EasyWorship, type a part and press Enter to jump to it in the live song: V2 is verse 2, C the chorus (0 too), R the pre-chorus, B the bridge, T the tag, I the intro and E the ending. A number and Enter shows that slide. What you have typed shows above the programme until you press Enter, or Esc to forget it.
A presenter remote works the desk: its next button (Page Down) moves through the slides and, from the last one, takes the cued item live, so a whole service runs on one button. Every key can be changed in “Settings…”: choose “Change…” beside an action and press the key or the remote’s button.
Every song, reading, notice and set of slides is words over a background. “Themes…” sets one style for songs, slides and notices and one for readings: the font (Manrope is built in, or pick any font on this computer, each shown in itself), size, colour (five that read on any background, or any colour you like), shadow, outline, where the words sit, the margins, capitals, and whether long words shrink to fit. It sets the background too: black, one of ten that come with Media-Bits, a picture, a video that loops silently, or a live camera. “Apply to every item” restyles the whole service at once, live item included. “Save as my style” keeps it: every new service starts with it.
An item can have a background of its own: Edit it and choose “Change…”. Two songs over the same video share it, so the video carries on from one song to the next.
Black (Ctrl+B) takes the room to black and keeps everything where it was. Clear (Ctrl+C or X) takes the words off and leaves the background playing; the next slide or the next item brings them back. Logo (Ctrl+L or L) shows your church’s picture or video over whatever is live, and stays on while you change items. Each glows red while it is on, and each has its own transition (cut, fade or zoom) and length, set with the button beside Logo, where the logo is chosen too.
“Message…” (Ctrl+Shift+A) shows an alert on the projector, never on your preview. A nursery alert is a number, such as a child’s tag, and clears itself after the time set in Settings. A message stays until you hide it; one too long for a line scrolls across. Its place, height, colours and scroll speed are in “Settings…”. Clear keeps it; Black hides it too.
Type your CCLI licence number once in “Settings…”. Every song with copyright details then shows a small line at the foot of its first slide: its title, author, copyright, CCLI song number and your licence. Settings can move it to the last slide, put it on both, or turn it off. A song with no copyright details shows nothing.
Every song that goes live is written in the song log with the date and time; showing the same song again within half an hour counts once. “Song report…” lists the songs shown between two dates, to save as a CSV spreadsheet or a PDF, or to print, for the church’s CCLI report.
Projector opens the programme in a window of its own on the second display, full screen. With one display it opens as a window you can move. The desk says where it went.
Stage display opens a screen for the people on the stage, on a third display: the words the room sees now, the first line of what comes next, and the time. “Stage message…” sends them a note, such as “Two minutes”, that the room, the projector and recordings never show. Neither window takes the keyboard from the desk.
Add → “PowerPoint or PDF” takes a deck from PowerPoint, Keynote or Impress, or a PDF. Its slides show under the monitors like a song’s: click any slide to show it, and Page Down (a presenter clicker sends it) steps through them. Go to a reading and back, and the deck is where you left it.
PDFs open as they are. A deck is converted with LibreOffice, which needs to be installed (it is free); each slide is shown as a picture, so PowerPoint’s animations and videos inside slides are not played.
A live video or audio item has its controls under the programme monitor: play and pause, a bar to move through it, its volume, and Loop. Without Loop it plays once and, at the end, goes to black or takes the next item live, as you choose there, so the room never sees a frozen last frame. Play after the end starts it again.
An audio item can play under the service: “Play under the service” in its menu. It carries on as songs and readings go live, and through Black, until you stop it from the Output row.
Record keeps the programme as an MP4 at 720 lines, with the microphone when it is on. When you stop, the recording is listed at the bottom of the desk; “Save a copy” puts it where you choose.
Stream asks for the server and stream key from your streaming service. On YouTube they are under Go live, then Stream; on Facebook, under Live Producer. The key stays on this computer. The programme records or streams, one at a time.
Save keeps the service as a .mb file with every video, picture and background inside it, the themes and the logo too, so it opens on another computer as it was. Open also reads projects saved by earlier versions and by the old Media-Bits.
Space
Go live with the preview, and cue the next item
Ctrl+Enter
Cut to the preview
↓ and ↑
Next and previous slide
Home and End
First and last slide
Page Down
Next slide; from the last slide, the cued item goes live (a presenter remote)
Page Up
Previous slide
→ and ←
Cue the next or the previous item in the service
V2 then Enter
Verse 2 of the live song; C the chorus, R the pre-chorus, B the bridge, T the tag, E the ending
A number, then Enter
That slide of the live item
Ctrl+B or .
Black, and back
Ctrl+C or X
Clear the words, keeping the background; again to bring them back
Ctrl+L or L
Logo, and back
Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+9
Cue one of the first nine items
© 2026 Daniel Effiong