The Spectate app iconSpectate

Spectate help for the Pro

Spectate shares one display, window, or app with everyone in the room. They open one address in a browser; nothing to install on their side.

This is the help built into the app, reachable from its Help menu in its own window, with a list of sections down the side.

Installing

First launch

Sharing your screen

Video or JPEG

Participants get the screen as video when their browser can play it: H.265 where it is offered, H.264 everywhere else. Video costs the room roughly a thirteenth of what the older picture-per-frame path costs, so a full room stays sharp. A browser that can play neither gets the picture-per-frame stream, as before, and one participant on that path costs about as much airtime as ten on video. The page picks by itself and switches back to pictures if the video path fails, so nobody has to do anything.

The moment you stop moving, the full-quality frame arrives as before, sized to each participant’s own screen. That is the frame to judge colour and detail on; the video in between is for following along.

To pin a path for a test, add ?force=h264, ?force=hevc or ?force=mjpeg to the address. Codec choices and any fallback are written to this Mac’s log with the browser that reported them.

Participant uploads

Recording sessions

Record this session with my voice, in “Your participants”, records what you share, with your voice from the microphone, into the recordings folder you chose in Settings › Recording. Record every session, on that same Settings tab, turns the toggle on by default. Stopping sharing ends the file; changing the source mid-session ends one file and starts another. The line under the toggle shows the running time and size while recording. Show in Finder, under the toggle, opens the recordings folder.

Workshops. Every recording belongs to a workshop, a folder of its own inside the recordings folder. With the toggle on, clicking Start first asks which workshop this session is for: pick one from the list, or type a new name such as “Cadillac Ranch, October”. The workshop you used last is already selected, so pressing Return keeps it. Nothing is shared until you confirm, and Cancel starts nothing. If you switch the toggle on after sharing has begun, the same question appears, and Cancel turns the toggle back off. Once you have answered, changing the source or restarting during that share does not ask again.

Participants see only the recordings from the current workshop, the one you last recorded into. Recordings from earlier workshops, and any made before workshops existed, are not shown and cannot be reached by typing an address. Recordings…, under the toggle and in the Share menu, lists the current workshop’s recordings with date, time, length and size. Switch Hide on for a recording and participants no longer see it; switch it off and it comes back. Hiding never moves or deletes a file, and Show in Finder in that list opens the workshop’s folder.

A week after a workshop’s newest recording, the workshop is moved automatically into an Archive folder inside the recordings folder, and participants stop seeing it. Nothing is deleted. To bring an archived workshop back, drag its folder out of Archive in Finder and back into the recordings folder, then pick it the next time you press Start.

Participants get the recordings at http://<name>.local/downloads while Spectate is running on this Mac on the room network. Give them that address and tell them to download before you pack up; the page shows how many people are downloading and roughly how long theirs will take. The waiting page shows a Downloads button whenever there is a recording for them to download, before you share and after you stop, so you do not have to keep sharing. The line under the toggle shows the same while downloads run, so you know when it is safe to unplug.

With Write a transcript on, under the record switch in “Your participants” or in Settings › Recording, Spectate writes a plain text transcript of what you say while it records. It is made on this Mac as you speak; nothing leaves the Mac. When the recording ends, a Transcript link appears beside it on the downloads page. The line under the toggle says whether the transcript is being written, and if not, why. Transcripts need macOS 27, and the speech model for your language is downloaded once, so open Spectate on a network before the workshop. A recording made with the switch off has no transcript.

The transcript is made automatically, on this Mac. How good it is depends mostly on the speaker: speaking clearly, at a steady volume and close to the microphone makes the biggest difference, and an external microphone helps. Strong accents can trip it up. Most transcripts should be usable. If transcripts come out poor, raise the microphone level.

Microphone level, under the microphone picker in Settings › Recording, is the input level of the microphone you chose. It is the same control as System Settings › Sound › Input, so changing it changes your voice in the recording and in the transcript together. It stays where you leave it, and it follows changes made in System Settings. Some microphones, such as a Bluetooth headset or an iPhone used as a microphone, have a level the app can’t set; the slider is dimmed and says so. For those, use the microphone’s own controls, or System Settings › Sound › Input.

Check microphone level, next to the level, listens for up to 30 seconds and shows a meter, so you can talk, watch it, and move the level. The word beside the meter says Too quiet, Good or Too loud, based on your loudest moments over the last two seconds. Raise the level until your speaking voice reads Good. Nothing is recorded. The check stops when you click it again, when you close Settings, or when you start sharing, and it is off while you share. While a recording runs, the recording line in “Your participants” shows the same meter, so you can see that your microphone is picking you up.

With Record this session on, the card shows a Microphone level meter before you start, so you can set your level while you get ready. While it runs, macOS shows its orange microphone dot, and a Bluetooth headset switches to its lower-quality call mode. Both go back to normal when the meter stops.

Connection and status

Beside Start, the window’s status words say what is shared and since when, for example “Sharing Synthetic Display since 19:02”. The connection line underneath says how the room is doing in plain words, for example “Connection good. 6 people watching.”

If something needs your attention, one line appears under the address on Say this to the room, with a What to do link that opens this page at the matching section.

Spectate picks the motion rate each second from a bandwidth budget (300 Mbps by default, meant for a room where viewers sit near the router). More viewers means a lower rate, never below 4; a single viewer on Ethernet gets 20.

Network tips

Updates

Spectate looks for a new version once a day and when it launches. Those automatic checks wait while you are sharing, so no dialog lands mid-workshop. When one is ready you see a dialog with what changed and an Install button; nothing installs until you say so. To look right now, choose Check for Updates… from the Spectate menu, where Settings and About also live; that check runs even while you are sharing.

Settings

There is no config file any more. Everything it held is in Settings, from the Spectate menu or ⌘,. A config.json from an older version is read once, the first time this version starts, and then renamed config.json.imported; nothing is read from it again.

The folders, the toggles and the Wi-Fi name take effect the moment you change them. The name viewers type, the port and the four video numbers are handed over when the app starts, so they take effect the next time you open Spectate; each of those settings says so on screen.

Settings live on this Mac and are remembered between launches. A vendor build ships its own starting values underneath, and your changes sit on top of them, setting by setting.

Branding the idle screen

A brand block in the profile a vendor build carries puts a logo or name and your own message on the idle screen, the tab title, and this page. Nothing is drawn while the screen is shared.

"brand": {
  "name": "Your Company",
  "waiting": "Waiting for your Pro to start sharing",
  "disconnected": "Reconnecting to your Pro’s screen",
  "image": "~/Library/Application Support/Spectate/brand/logo.png",
  "font": "~/Library/Application Support/Spectate/brand/Lato-Regular.woff2",
  "color": "#E2791B"
}

image (png, jpg, gif, webp, svg) and font (woff2, woff, ttf, otf) are files on this Mac; Spectate serves them to viewers itself, so they work with no internet. Without an image, the name is shown in color.

A vendor build of Spectate carries its own name and branding built in, and what you change in Settings sits on top of it, setting by setting: changing the port leaves the vendor’s name and branding alone.