The Button Pad

The Button Pad is a scrollable grid of action buttons that lives in the lower half of AutoCast's center column. Think of it as your personal control surface — a customizable panel of one-click shortcuts for anything you might need to trigger quickly during a broadcast. Hot audio drops, liner cards, internet streams, hardware switcher commands, show notes — if you do it regularly, there's probably a button type for it.

Every station's Button Pad is different, tailored to how that station operates. A talk station might fill theirs with audio beds and sound effects. A music station might have genre-specific sweeper categories, stream relays, and a row of jingle buttons. The Button Pad adapts to you.

Button Types

AutoCast supports eleven types of buttons, each with a distinct default color and a ghosted icon on the button face so you can tell them apart at a glance:

Creating a New Button

To add a button, click the + tile — the one with the dashed border and a plus sign — at the end of the button grid. The Button Settings window opens.

You can also drag an audio file or text file directly onto the + tile. AutoCast recognizes the file type, pre-selects the appropriate button type (Hot Button for audio, Text Button for text files), and opens the editor with the file path already filled in.

The Button Settings window has two columns:

Left column — a live preview of the button as it will appear, updating in real time as you type. Below the preview: three label lines (you can use one, two, or all three to write the button's name across multiple lines), and a Tags field.

Right column — the button type dropdown and the type-specific configuration area. What appears here changes depending on the button type you select.

Click the orange Save button (or press Return) when you're done. Your new button appears in the grid immediately.

Button Labels and Tags

Each button has up to three lines of label text, displayed on the button face. Keep them short — you're working with a small tile. Two lines of three or four words each usually reads better than cramming everything onto one line.

Tags are keywords you assign to a button for filtering purposes. They don't appear on the button itself — they're just search terms. For example, a button tagged "morning jocks sports weather" will show up when you search for any of those words in the Button Pad search bar. Tags are how you keep a large button collection organized and quickly findable.

Editing and Organizing Buttons

To edit an existing button, right-click it and choose Edit, or double-click it. The same Button Settings window opens with all the current values loaded.

Buttons appear in the grid in the order they were created, but you can reorder them. Right-click a button to find the reordering options.

To search and filter your buttons, click the magnifying glass icon at the lower-right corner of the Button Pad panel. A search bar slides out. Start typing — the grid filters in real time to show only buttons whose label text or tags match. Click the × to collapse the search bar and see all buttons again.

Customizing Button Colors

Each button type has a default color, but you can override the colors for any type across all your buttons. Create a file called button_colors.txt in Misc/System/ inside your Station Folder. Each line sets the color for one button type:

// My custom button colors
hotButton:#FF9900
cart:#AADDBB
textButton:#6699CC

Lines starting with // or # are treated as comments. Changes take effect the next time AutoCast reloads the button colors file — which happens automatically whenever it changes on disk.

Button Behaviors in Detail

Hot Button Playback

When you click a Hot Button, AutoCast acquires a player slot, opens the audio file, and starts playing it immediately. The button's volume boost setting (in dB) is applied to that slot's output, letting you compensate for files that are louder or quieter than your normal program level. The playback is logged to the Output Log and Now Playing file.

Hot Buttons support a long-press preview: hold the button for one second instead of clicking it, and the audio plays on your preview output device rather than going to air. The button border blinks orange briefly to confirm preview mode is active.

Cart Rotation

Cart buttons use a rotation tracker to cycle through a category of files. You configure a Cart button with a keyword, and AutoCast searches the music library's Comment field for files containing that keyword. It rotates through all matching files in alphabetical order before repeating any — so your sweeper Cart button plays Sweeper 1, then 2, then 3, then back to 1, ensuring variety.

Input Source

An Input Source button routes a specific audio input device to your main program output and starts an infinite live input session. Only one Input Source button can be active at a time — clicking a second one while another is active shows a "One at a Time" message. To end an Input Source session, use the context menu on the active deck or click the appropriate button again.

Stream Relay

A Stream button starts an internet audio stream relay through AutoCast's player. Only one stream can play at a time. The stream appears on a deck with elapsed time counting up and "∞" for remaining time. To stop it, use the right-click menu on the deck.

AutoVision

AutoCast pre-fetches the AutoVision video catalog 30 seconds after launch and refreshes it hourly, so there's no waiting when you click an AutoVision button. Videos play in the Logo panel at the top of the right column. Audio routes to your preview output — it never goes on air. A progress bar appears at the bottom of the video, and you can click anywhere on the video to pause/resume. Long-press the video to zoom it to double size for easier viewing.

Next up: Music Search & Library →