Libraries and cue sheets

The left sidebar holds two different things. A library is where a presentation lives. A cue sheet is the order you run them in.

For how the whole window is laid out, see The main window.

How the three fit together

	What it is	On disk
Presentation	One deck — a song, a reading, a talk. Its slides live in it	One .pplist file
Library	A place presentations live. Every presentation is in exactly one library	A real folder
Cue sheet	The running order for one event	One .ppcue file

• A cue sheet holds links, not copies. Edit a presentation and every cue sheet that holds it shows the change.
• One presentation can sit in as many cue sheets as you like — the morning and the evening can share the same song. Inside one cue sheet it appears only once.
• Delete a cue sheet and the presentations in it stay. Delete a library and the presentations in it go with it.

The first time you open LayerCue you get a READ ME library with five short guides, a Tour cue sheet that runs them in order, and a My Stuff library with an empty New Presentation to start in. The guides are yours to delete once you have read them.

The sidebar

Cue Sheets sit at the top. The Library drawer sits below them — a flat panel across the width of the sidebar, under a thin line. Each part scrolls on its own, so a long library never pushes today’s cue sheet off the screen.

• The cue sheets get the room they need first, and the drawer takes what is left — at most half the sidebar, never less than about a fifth.
• The double-arrow button in the drawer’s header raises it to four-fifths of the sidebar, for a long sorting session. Press it again to lower it. The cue sheets stay in view either way, so you can still drag up into them.

Row	What it shows
Library name	A folder icon, open or closed, and how many presentations are inside
Cue sheet name	A list icon and the name in indigo — brighter for the one you are in — and how many presentations are in the running order
Presentation	How many slides it holds, at the right edge. An empty one shows no number and a dimmer icon

What a click does

• A library or cue sheet name — folds or unfolds it. What you see on the right does not change.
• A presentation in the Library — the right side shows that one presentation.
• A presentation in a cue sheet — the right side shows the whole cue sheet, one presentation after another, scrolled to the one you clicked. You stay in the cue sheet.

The same presentation can show up in both halves at once. The highlight — a lighter row with a thin indigo bar at its left — is on the one you clicked.

The orange bar

A short orange bar at the left of a presentation row means something from it is on stage right now, on any layer. It shows in both halves and on that presentation’s title bar on the right — whether or not an output window is open.

Making things

To make	How
A cue sheet	+ beside Cue Sheets → New Cue Sheet
A library	+ in the Library drawer’s header → New Library
A presentation	New Presentation in either + menu — or point at a library row and click the + at its right end, which picks that library for you

A new cue sheet or library opens the Rename box straight away. Name it then — a pile of cue sheets called New Cue Sheet, New Cue Sheet 2, New Cue Sheet 3 is hard to tell apart on the day.

The New Presentation dialog

Name	Starts as New Presentation, already selected, so you can just type
Which library	Required. Starts on the library you are working in, otherwise the first one. + New Library at the bottom of the list makes one on the spot
Add to cue sheet (optional)	Starts on Don’t add — or on the cue sheet you are working in, when you opened the dialog from the Cue Sheets +
From PowerPoint… · From PDF…	Make it from a file instead, into the same library and cue sheet. See PowerPoint and PDF
Create	Makes it, adds it to the end of the cue sheet if you picked one, and selects it

No two names the same

If a name is already taken, a number goes on the end — Sunday 2, and after that Sunday 3. Presentation names are checked across every library, cue sheets against other cue sheets, and libraries against other libraries. Capital letters do not make a name different. The same check runs when you rename.

Building a cue sheet

There are three ways to put a presentation in:

1. Right-click it → Add to Cue Sheet → the cue sheet.
2. Drag it from the Library drawer up into the cue sheets. Drop it on a cue sheet’s name row to add it at the end, or between two rows to put it right there. Dropping in the empty space under the last cue sheet adds it to the end of that one. As soon as you drag above the drawer, it drops down out of the way, and it comes back when you let go.
3. Pick the cue sheet in the New Presentation dialog.

If the cue sheet already holds that presentation, nothing is added — the dragged row just slides back.

Inside the cue sheets:

• Reorder — drag a row up or down. An indigo line shows where it will land.
• Move to another cue sheet — drag the row there. If that cue sheet already has it, the row slides back.
• Reorder the cue sheets — drag a cue sheet’s name row.
• Take one out — right-click → Remove from Cue Sheet. Only the running order changes; the presentation stays in its library.

Folded rows open for you

While you drag a presentation, hold still over a folded cue sheet or library for about half a second and it unfolds, so you can drop exactly where you want.

Inside a cue sheet there is no Rename, Move to Library or Delete. Do those from the presentation’s row in the Library. A presentation has one name everywhere, so a rename made from one cue sheet would quietly change it in all the others.

Organising libraries

• Move a presentation to another library — right-click → Move to Library → the library. Or drag it onto a library’s name row (it goes to the end), or between two rows of another library (it goes there).
• Reorder presentations inside a library by dragging them.
• Reorder libraries by dragging their name rows.

Every presentation lives in exactly one library, so there is no “outside any library”. Libraries do not go inside each other.

Renaming

Right-click the row → Rename, type the name, then OK or Enter. An empty name is ignored.

The name on disk follows

Renaming a presentation renames its .pplist file, renaming a library renames its folder, and renaming a cue sheet renames its .ppcue file. Characters a file name cannot hold (/ \ : * ? " < > |) become _ in the file name, and the file name stops at 80 characters. The name in the sidebar stays as you typed it.

Right-click menus

Row	Menu
A presentation, in the Library	Edit · Rename · Presentation settings · Add to Cue Sheet · Move to Library · Export to PDF… · Delete
A presentation, inside a cue sheet	Edit · Presentation settings · Add to Cue Sheet · Export to PDF… · Remove from Cue Sheet
A library or cue sheet name	Rename and Delete are the ones that apply

• Edit opens the presentation in the slide editor.
• Presentation settings sets the fades, auto-dismiss and one layer for the whole presentation. See Presentation settings.
• Export to PDF… saves the presentation as a PDF. See PDF.

Deleting

Right-click the row → the red Delete.

You delete	What goes	What stays
A presentation	It and its slides. It also leaves every cue sheet that held it	Video and image files
A cue sheet	The running order	Every presentation in it
A library	The library and every presentation in it. They also leave every cue sheet	Video and image files

Files are not erased — they go to the Trash / Recycle Bin.

• A presentation with slides asks first: Delete this presentation?, with its name and how many slides it has. An empty presentation goes without asking.
• A library with presentations in it asks first: Delete this library?, with a red line saying the presentations inside go to the trash with it. An empty library goes without asking.
• The last library cannot be deleted. You will see The last library can’t be deleted.

A library takes its presentations with it

To keep a presentation from a library you are about to delete, move it to another library first.

⌘Z / Ctrl+Z brings any of these back. The files come back out of the Trash / Recycle Bin, and a presentation goes back into the cue sheets it was in — as long as you have not emptied the Trash / Recycle Bin in between.

Undo

These can all be undone with ⌘Z / Ctrl+Z: making, renaming, moving, reordering and deleting presentations, libraries and cue sheets; adding to and removing from cue sheets; and presentation settings. The notice says what it undid — Undone — Delete cue sheet, for example.

Redo is ⇧⌘Z or ⌘Y / Ctrl+Y or Ctrl+Shift+Z.

The sidebar and the slides share one undo history of up to 50 steps, so ⌘Z / Ctrl+Z steps back through both in the order you did them.

Lock editing does not cover the sidebar

The lock stops changes to slides, but you can still make, rename, move and delete things in the sidebar while it is on. And while it is on, ⌘Z / Ctrl+Z does nothing, so a slip cannot be undone until you unlock. During the show, leave the sidebar alone. The lock itself is in Screens and going live.

Hiding the sidebar

• Click the sidebar button at the top left of the window (beside the traffic lights on a Mac), or press ⌘\ / Ctrl+\. ⌘B / Ctrl+B does the same while the slide list has the focus.
• In Edit mode the sidebar is not shown.
• When the window gets too narrow, the sidebar hides itself. Turning it back on widens the window just enough to fit it.
• While it is hidden, a picker in the bottom bar shows the current presentation’s name. Click it to jump to any presentation, grouped by library.
• With Settings › General › Remember window layout on, the sidebar opens the way you left it.

Where it is kept

Each library is a real folder on this computer, and each presentation is one .pplist file inside it, named after the presentation.

	Libraries live in
Mac	~/Documents/LayerCue/Library/
Windows	C:\Users\<you>\LayerCue\Library\

Cue sheets are .ppcue files in CueSheets, next to Library. Copy a .pplist file into a library’s folder and it shows up in that library. There is more in Where your files live.

Also useful

• ⌘F / Ctrl+F finds presentations, cue sheets and libraries by name, and presentations by the text on their slides. See Find.
• A connected AI app can make a cue sheet and fill it for you. See Connect an AI app.

---

How to put slides in and work with them is in Slides; how to send them to the stage is in Screens and going live.