Everything you need to run a service in PraiseMates — from first activation to styling what your congregation sees on screen. Most of this you'll never need to read twice.
On a brand-new install, PraiseMates shows a prompt in the middle of the window:Activate your license to get started.
You have about 20 minutes to complete signup, email verification, and sign-in before the activation link expires — if it does, just click Activate License again.
If your subscription lapses later, the same dialog reappears with Activate Licenseand Go to Dashboard options, the latter taking you straight to your account.
The left pane has two tabs for organizing your songs: Libraries and Setlists.
Libraries are permanent collections — your full song catalog, organized however makes sense to you (by language, by ministry, whatever). Click + New Library, type a name, and press Enter. Right-click a library to rename or delete it.
Setlists are for a specific service. Click + New Setlist, then use the search box under it to find songs and add them with the + next to each result. Drag songs by their handle to reorder them for the service. Right-click a setlist to rename or delete it.
Go to Import → Lyrics in the menu bar. You can select multiple .txtfiles at once. Pick which library to import into, and PraiseMates converts each file into slides automatically. If a song with the same name already exists, you'll be asked whether to overwrite it.
For the import to come out right, format your text file like this:
Amazing Grace.txt imports as "Amazing Grace").[Verse 1] or [Chorus] — to mark it as a section label instead of a lyric slide. Put a blank line after it too, so it stays its own slide instead of merging into the lyrics that follow.[Verse 1]
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
[Chorus]
My chains are gone
I've been set freeSelect a song to see its slides in the Preview column. Click Edit to make slide text editable, duplicate or delete individual slides, and drag to reorder them. Click Cancelto discard changes, or leave edit mode to save.
Double-click a slide in Preview — or click Make Live — to push the whole song to the Live panel and start presenting it.
Right-click a song in the list to rename it, delete it, or remove it from the current setlist.
Switch to Bible mode from the top bar. The left pane lets you pick a translation, browse by book and chapter, and keeps a running Schedule (drag to reorder, right-click to remove) and Verse History for the service.
In the center pane, use the search box to search by reference or by text, or just browse the current chapter. Double-click a verse to load its chapter and present it live. Right-click any verse to add it to the Schedule for later. Once a chapter is loaded, you can also select any verse in the Live column to jump straight to it.
Go to Import → Bible (XML) and select an XML export of a translation. PraiseMates reads the file's structure automatically — there's no fixed schema to match, it just needs to look like a real Bible (all 66 books, consistent chapter/verse counts). You'll get a preview where you name the translation and set its abbreviation before confirming.
The top bar switches between Songs, Bible, and Slidesmodes, with a Go Live button in the center to toggle presentation on and off, plusCue, Timer, and Clear alongside it.
The right pane shows live-updating previews of both your Crowd and Stagescreens, so you always know what's currently on each display before you change it. From there you can:
Crowd, Stage, and NDI all present the same live content, each positioned and styled independently (see Appearance below).
Click + Import Media on the bottom pane to import videos and images. These can be used either as a background loop, or a generic Audio Visual. The four buttons to the far right of this import button - the first pair will be image/video toggle, The other two will be list/grid view toggle. Click any media item in the list to set it as the current background. Right-click to rename or delete.
Switch to Slides mode to present PDFs — each page is turned into a slide image automatically. Click Import PDF, and imported files appear as a thumbnail grid; right-click to delete one.
While in Slides mode, PraiseMates responds to common presentation clicker key bindings, so most clickers work without any setup. If that doesn’t work, PraiseMates’ Remote Control is the safer bet.
Open Appearance → Live Screens from the right pane's settings stack to control both where things sit on screen and how they look, for Crowd and Stage. Both screens are edited side by side on their own canvases in one shared session, switching between Songs and Bible mode at the top.
Drag and resize each element directly on the canvas — Verse for Songs; Verse, Reference, and a second-translation line for Bible; plus Current Verse, Next Verse, Cue, and Clock on Stage. Click + Add Layer to draw a custom text box (a clock, timer, or anything else) and position it freely. Delete a built-in element to hide it and bring it back later from the hidden-layers list, or delete a custom layer outright.
Select any element to style it in the right panel — font family, weight, size, uppercase, line height, color, drop shadow, and outline — with a live preview that shows real content whenever it's available. Turn on Live Preview to see edits reflected on the real Crowd and Stage screens as you make them.
Every arrangement is saved as a named Layout. Pick one from the dropdown at the top of the dialog, or click + New to start a fresh one — every install ships with a built-in Classic Layout you can always return to viaReset to Default. The Layout you choose here is the same one shown in the right pane's Profile picker — switching it in either place updates the other.
Appearance → NDI opens the same canvas-based editor for your NDI output — but without named Layouts, since NDI only ever has one arrangement per mode.
Open Output from the right pane's settings stack for where things render, as opposed to how they look:
Click Remote Control in the right pane to get a QR code and server URL. Scan it from your phone or another device on the same Wi-Fi network to drive live bible verses and slideshow remotely — handy for handing off control without making the speaker ask for the next slide.
The Cue button in the top bar sends a short note (up to 200 characters) that appears only on the Stage screen — visible to your team, never to the congregation or on NDI/Crowd output. Use Clear in the same dialog to remove it.
The Timer button opens a stopwatch or countdown you can overlay on the Crowd and Stage previews. For a countdown, pick a quick preset (1, 3, 5, 10, 15, or 30 minutes) or enter a custom duration.
Outside of Slides mode:
In Slides mode, your presentation clicker's usual buttons work directly — see the Slides section above for the full key list.