Show-night runbook

T-60 MIN

Rig

Updates never interrupt a live show; install them before doors.

Mac on power (not battery), lid open, sleep disabled.
Your own Wi-Fi (travel router) or the venue's production network — never the guest Wi-Fi. Give the Mac a fixed IP (a DHCP reservation on the router, or your own router): an address that changes mid-show makes every phone rescan. If the Rescan chip appears anyway (web guests must rescan), scan the code on the pairing card again on each phone that dropped.
Output display connected. Open → DETACH → pick the display → ⌃⌘F fullscreen.
Test pattern on. Walk to the back of the room, check the picture sits right on the wall. Pattern off.

T-30 MIN

Pair every phone; name each one so the rows read like the stage — "Stage L", "Drums".
Phones: full battery or power banks, camera app or browser page on screen, auto-lock set to Never (iPhone: Settings → Display & Brightness → Auto-Lock) or Guided Access — the page asks the phone to stay awake, but not every phone obeys. Every row shows Live. On the free tier a third live camera is refused with “Camera limit — enter a license to go beyond 2” on its row.
Keep unrelated video streams off the production network during the set.

T-15 MIN

Load your preset, or build the look for tonight from Filters and Effects.
Using Auto Smart Mode? Turn on Audio input in the Auto Smart Mode card and check the level meter moves with the room and the BPM matches the music. Audio out (Settings) is separate and off at every launch: turn it on only if you want the input on the speakers and in the recording.
Arm recordings if you want them — any camera, or the main output.
Power adapter plugged in and Low Power Mode off (System Settings → Battery); Copy Diagnostics should say Power: AC, Low Power Mode off.
Run the look stack you will use on stage, with all cameras live, for 5 minutes. Watch the FPS dot and Scale (hover the dot); if it sags or the Mac gets hot, see Troubleshooting → “The wall stutters or the Mac gets hot” and use fewer cameras, lighter looks or a forced Scale now, not during the show. On a 4K wall the picture is composed at the camera's resolution and upscaled.

T-5 MIN

Click BLACK on, off. Click FREEZE on, off. Know where they are without looking.
Using an external controller over OSC or HTTP? Test its panic button and check that the looks reset to the plain camera picture. (MIDI does not carry panic.)

SHOWTIME

A camera drops → its row says what happened and what to do. Cutting to another camera is one tap on its row.
The output display dies → the picture falls back to the Mac's own screen; move it back once the wall is alive again.
Everything wrong at once → BLACK, fix the problem, then release.
The media engine keeps failing → Settings → LOCAL SERVER shows a Retry chip; one click relaunches it, no app restart.

CHIPS

REC FAILED — a recording stopped because writing failed (disk full, device removed). The clip up to that point is kept and marked TRUNCATED.
LOW DISK — free space is running low; recording stops itself at the 512 MB floor.
TEST — the line-check pattern is on the wall instead of the program.
While recording or receiving cameras the Mac is kept from idle-sleeping, even without the output window.

AFTER

Stop recordings and check the Recordings card before packing — a recording that hit a problem shows a TRUNCATED chip, not silently lost. Recordings carry sound only if Audio out was on when they started.
Anything behaved oddly? Help → Copy Diagnostics into your show notes while it's fresh.