A live service gives the person at the controls no time to search. So we rebuilt the recording room around one idea: a row that never moves at the top, one large page in the middle, and every page one tap away on a bar along the bottom.
A live service gives the person at the controls no time to search.
The worship ends, the pastor walks up to the front, and in the next few seconds somebody has to know three things. Is the microphone picking up the voice? Is the translation running? Have the guests at the back actually joined? If the answer to any of them sits behind a tab inside another tab, the moment passes, and the first minutes of the sermon go by with nobody quite sure.
That was the problem with our first recording room, the screen the speaker or the media team uses to run live translation. It had grown one feature at a time. Smart Translation, Keywords, the big screen at the front, the listener preview: each one found a place in one of three crowded columns, each with its own small tabs. New speakers looked at it and froze. Experienced ones knew everything was there, and still had to hunt for it during a service.
On 16 April 2026 we released a recording room built on a different idea. We borrowed it from the way video editing software such as DaVinci Resolve organises a busy workspace: a fixed row at the top that never moves, one large page in the middle, and a bar of pages along the bottom.
Pick a page on the bar and it takes the whole middle of the screen. Nothing is squeezed into a corner, nothing hides under a second row of tabs, and nothing you need while you are live is more than one tap away.
Nothing you need while you are live is more than one tap away.
Whatever page you are on, three panels stay in view, because they answer the questions a speaker always has during a service.
On the left, how the session is going. Whether the room is live, and how long it has been running.
In the middle, the recorder. One large button starts and stops the translation. Under it, a waveform shows that your microphone is hearing you, a ticker shows your latest words as we catch them, and a strip carries tips and alerts, so a problem is shown where you are already looking.
On the right, what you have left. Your balance, kept in sight so it is never a surprise.
When you press start, the room switches to the Preview page by itself, because the first thing every speaker wants to see is their own words arriving and the translation following them.
Each page does one job, and the bar keeps them in the order you would use them before a service.
Tutorial is a short tour of every area on the screen, written for the first time you open the room. You can come back to it whenever you need a reminder.
Settings is where you choose the microphone you speak into. The default one is right for almost every device.
Languages sets the language you speak and the languages you offer, and lets you choose a voice for each one. Your guests still choose their own language on their own phone, from 200+ languages.
Smart Translation tells the translation what kind of talk it is: a sermon, a wedding, a conference session. It is also where Context Enhancer lives, so you can paste your notes or your outline ahead of time and the translation knows the names and the subject before you say them. More on Smart Translation.
Keywords is your list of names, places and terms that must come out spelled correctly, the name of your church, the guest speaker, the town. See Keywords.
Preview shows the speaker's words on one side and the translation on the other. Switch the language on the right to check that each one is coming through, before and during the service.
MulingDisplay sets up the captions on a projector, a second monitor or a TV at the front: the layout, the language in each part of the screen, the fonts and the colours. You share the screen's address with whoever runs it. More on MulingDisplay.
Listeners is everything about getting people in: the room's link, its QR code and its passcode, and who has joined. The last icon, Leave Room, ends your session and takes you back to your dashboard.
Not every church runs translation from a laptop at the sound desk. Some run it from a tablet next to the pulpit, some from the pastor's own phone. So the same design comes in a phone version: the recorder shrinks into a small bar that stays on screen, and the pages sit in a bar along the bottom that you can swipe through. The same pages, in the same order, one tap away.
Nobody in the congregation will ever see this screen. But they feel it. A speaker who can check the translation in one tap, see the microphone working at a glance and send a late guest the link without leaving the page is a speaker who is ready when the service starts, and the guest in the back row hears the opening words of the sermon instead of the end of a search.
It also means the room can grow without getting harder. When we add something new, it gets a page of its own on the bar, not another tab squeezed into a column. That is exactly what happened next.
Since April the bar has gained a page and the top row has learned new things, without the room getting more crowded.
Smart Hints got their own page in September. It sits right after Smart Translation, because both decide what happens to what the speaker says. One switch turns hints on or off for the room, and below it you choose what your guests get explained: Bible verses in full, sayings and idioms, measurements and money, places, people and more. Hints are on from the start, so most gatherings only need a look. Read the story of Smart Hints.
Church rooms show the gathering, not a meter. For a church using church passes, the panel on the left shows which pass is on this gathering, and the panel on the right shows the passes you have left, with a way to buy more without leaving the room. A prepaid gathering should not feel metered while the pastor is preaching.
The recorder now tells you how well it hears you. Since 4 October, a Mic level bar shows how loud your microphone reaches us, and a Clarity bar shows how clearly we are catching your words. If the microphone is too quiet or too loud, a warning takes the place of the ticker. A Microphone check on the Settings page lets you speak for a few seconds the way you will when you go live, so the room knows your normal level and can warn you when a gathering runs much quieter.
Setting up still takes about two minutes, and your first room is already there when you sign up.
We show you the whole room in about fifteen minutes, from pressing start to the translation arriving on the phones. Nothing is decided on the call and nothing follows it: you see it, and then you are the judge.