Putting live captions on the screen you already run.

What you need before you start

• A clean audio feed. A soundboard output or a headset mic on the speaker. This is the single biggest factor in caption quality — a room mic at the back of a reverberant hall produces poor text in any language.
• Network on the presentation machine. The overlay is a web page, so the computer running ProPresenter needs to reach the internet.
• Your permanent screen link. Screen setup in the Koine console shows a permanent presentation link addressed to your room — not to one event. You can set everything up on a quiet Tuesday with nothing live; the screen simply stays empty until an event starts.

The setup, step by step

1. Copy the permanent link

Open Screen setup in the Koine console and copy the permanent presentation link. Paste it once and you are done for good: it lights up with captions whenever an event is live in your room — next Sunday's service, Wednesday's class, the conference keynote — and shows nothing in between. There is nothing to re-copy between events, and the caption styling follows your saved screen settings, so a restyle in the console updates the screen without anyone touching ProPresenter.

2. Add it as a web source in ProPresenter

In ProPresenter, create a new Web element (or a Web slide, depending on your version) and paste the link as its URL. Size it to fill the output, or size it to the region you want the captions to occupy. Because the overlay's background is transparent, it layers over your lyrics and slides rather than replacing them.

In OBS or vMix the equivalent is a Browser Source; the URL is identical — see the OBS guide for the stream-side details. In EasyWorship it is a web element on the layer above your presentation.

3. Put it on the layer above your content

The overlay is designed to sit on top. In ProPresenter that usually means the Props or an upper layer, so that changing slides underneath does not remove it. Check that advancing a slide leaves the captions in place — this is the most common setup mistake.

4. Pick a look

Start from one of four presets and adjust from there:

• Lower third — a single band across the bottom. The safest choice when the screen is already busy with lyrics.
• Original + translation — both languages stacked, source above, translation below. Good for classrooms and bilingual congregations.
• Bare text — no panel, no background, just words, for when the design should come from your own template.
• Green screen — a solid chroma background for hardware switchers that cannot take an alpha channel.

The overlay is a web layer, so type, size, position and colour are all yours to set. You can also describe what you want in plain words — "thin white type, no box, bottom left" — and have the design generated for you.

PowerPoint and Keynote

Neither supports a browser source. For those, use the floating always-on-top overlay from the desktop app instead: it sits over whatever is on the screen, including a PowerPoint in presenter mode, without needing the presentation software to know anything about it.

What to check before Sunday

• Advance a slide with captions running. Confirm the overlay stays put and does not get replaced by the incoming slide.
• Look at it from the back row. Caption type that reads fine on a 27-inch monitor is often too small in the room. Go and stand at the back.
• Check contrast against your busiest slide, not your plainest one. White text on a photo background is the usual failure.
• Watch a full song. Lyrics plus captions is the layout most likely to collide; decide in advance whether you hide the overlay during worship.
• Decide the language on the screen. The main screen serves the room, so it usually shows one language — often the source language, as accessibility captions. Individual listeners get their own language on their own phones.

Screen versus phone

Worth being deliberate about. The screen serves the whole room and can practically show one language, maybe two stacked. Phones serve the individual and can show every language at once. Most rooms end up running both: source-language captions on the main screen for anyone hard of hearing, and translated captions and audio on phones for everyone who needs a different language.