A Tour of the Interface
AutoCast's main window is divided into three vertical columns, each with a distinct job. Once you know what lives where, the interface becomes second nature very quickly. Let's walk through it from left to right.
One thing you'll notice immediately: there's no title bar. No close button, minimize button, or zoom button in the corner. The window is chromeless by design, giving it a clean, appliance-like feel. You can reposition it by clicking and dragging anywhere that isn't a button or control. Press M to toggle between full-screen and your previous window size.
The Left Column — Decks and Program Log
The left column is the heart of what's happening right now. The top portion shows your player decks; below them is the program log.
The Player Decks
Three decks are stacked vertically — Deck A at top, Deck B in the middle, Deck C at the bottom. Think of them the way you'd think of turntables or cart machines in a traditional board setup: one is playing, one is cued up, and one is queued after that.
| Deck | Role |
|---|---|
| Deck A | The currently playing item. Shows artist, title, a progress bar, and elapsed/remaining time. |
| Deck B | The next item to play. Shows the predicted start time in red. |
| Deck C | The item queued after Deck B. Also shows a predicted start time. |
Each deck has a play button on the right side. Clicking it manually triggers that item. On Decks B and C, a long press (hold for one second) initiates an immediate crossfade into that item, overriding the normal timing — handy when you need to jump ahead for any reason.
You can also adjust volume on any deck by clicking and dragging vertically on the deck body — drag up to increase, drag down to decrease. The progress bar height reflects the current volume. This lets you ride a deck's level without affecting anything else.
Right-clicking any deck opens a context menu with additional options, including ending a live event early, viewing details, or manually controlling playback.
A colored accent strip on the left edge of each deck indicates what type of content is playing — music, a live input, a stream, a switcher event, and so on. The colors match the color-coding system used in the program log.
The Program Log
Below the decks, the program log shows everything scheduled for the current broadcast period — songs, commands, commercials, voice tracks, and more — in the order they'll play. Four columns give you the key information at a glance:
| Column | What It Shows |
|---|---|
| Time | The predicted start time for each item, updated continuously as the broadcast progresses. Shows "--:--" if the time can't be predicted (for example, after an open-ended live break). |
| Artist | The artist name, or the command name for automation commands. |
| Title | The song title or command parameters. |
| Duration | How long the item runs. |
The currently active item is highlighted. Items that have been skipped by timing commands are shown dimmed (if you have "Show Skipped Events" turned on in Settings). The log scrolls automatically to keep the active item in view.
You can drag items in the program log to reorder them on the fly, or drag results in from the Search Pad to insert a song at any position.
A right-click anywhere in the program log opens a context menu with options to insert items, remove items, or get information about the selected event.
The program log is color-coded by content type — music is one color, commercials another, promos another, and so on. The colors come from your Station Folder structure and can be customized. After a few hours at the console, you'll be reading the log at a glance without looking at the text.
The Center Column — Controls, Meters, and Button Pad
The center column is divided into two zones: the top section has your transport controls, VU meters, and weather display; the bottom section is the Button Pad.
Transport Controls
Six large buttons are arranged in two columns of three, sized to align with the three decks on the left. Left column:
| Button | What It Does |
|---|---|
| Start | Begins playback from the current position in the program log. AutoCast starts playing the next queued item. |
| Go Live | Opens the live microphone or board input immediately, ducking the program audio. Your mic is hot as soon as you click it. |
| Preview | Auditions the next queued item on your preview output device — the one that goes to headphones or a monitor, not to air. Lets you hear what's coming without the audience hearing it. |
Right column:
| Button | What It Does |
|---|---|
| Auto | Toggles full automation mode. When Auto is active, a green indicator dot appears and AutoCast advances through the program log on its own, playing each item in sequence. Turn Auto off to pause automation without stopping playback. |
| Help | Loads context-sensitive help into the Message Pad for whatever you last interacted with. Quick answers without leaving the interface. |
| Settings | Opens the Settings window. You can also use ⌘, (Command-comma), the standard Mac shortcut. |
VU Meters
Two narrow vertical VU meters sit between the two button columns. The left meter shows the main program output level — what's going to air. The right meter shows the live input level — your mic or board feed. Both update ten times per second, giving you a real-time read on levels without needing separate metering hardware.
The WeatherPad
To the right of the transport buttons, the WeatherPad displays the current time (large, updating every second), a weather conditions icon, the current temperature, and a sky condition description like "Partly Cloudy" or "Windy." AutoCast pulls this data from the National Weather Service API based on your station's ZIP code, configured in Settings.
Click the weather icon to expand a full multi-day forecast in the Message Pad — handy when you want to mention tomorrow's weather on-air without leaving the automation software.
The Button Pad
The lower half of the center column is your Button Pad — a scrollable grid of custom action buttons that you define. Hot sounds, liner cards, stream URLs, scripts, hardware commands — anything you might want to trigger with one click. The Button Pad is covered in full detail in The Button Pad.
A small magnifying glass icon at the lower-right corner of the Button Pad opens a search bar that filters your buttons in real time. Type a few letters and your button grid narrows to show only matching items — extremely useful when you have a lot of buttons.
The Right Column — Logo, Message Pad, and Search Pad
The right column has three stacked panels, each serving a distinct purpose.
The Logo / Art Panel
The top panel displays your station logo or album art. It also doubles as the AutoVision player — when you access training and tutorial videos from TuneTracker Systems through an AutoVision button, they play right here without interrupting your on-air audio (they route to your preview output device instead).
Adding your own logo. Right-click the panel and choose Choose Station Logo…, then select a PNG, JPG, or TIFF image. AutoCast copies it into your Station Folder and shows it in the panel. To go back to the standard logo, right-click the panel and choose Restore AutoCast Logo.
Recommended size: 400 × 342 pixels. That matches the shape of the panel exactly, so nothing gets cropped. An image with a different shape is scaled to fill the panel and center-cropped, so keep important details away from the edges. There's no benefit to a larger image — AutoCast shrinks anything bigger than 400 pixels on its longest side.
Dragging an image onto this panel doesn't set the logo — it sets a custom wallpaper for the entire AutoCast window (JPG, PNG, TIFF, HEIC). Right-click the panel for context help.
Album Art
When the song that's playing has cover art in your library, AutoCast shows it in this panel in place of your logo. The cover appears as an uncropped square on a solid backdrop whose color is taken from the cover itself, with a vinyl record peeking out from behind it. When the next song has no art, your logo comes right back.
Where the art comes from. Librarian finds cover images and stores them in the Covers folder inside your Station's Logs/Database folder, then records each image's file name in a Covers column in your library. AutoCast simply looks at that column for the song that's playing and, if it names a file in the Covers folder, shows it. There's nothing to set up in AutoCast itself.
A few things worth knowing:
- Square images look best; 800 × 800 pixels is plenty.
- Only the main program audio changes the panel. Hot buttons, carts, and live input never replace the logo or the art.
- While an AutoVision video plays, the video takes over the panel. The art returns when it ends.
- If a song's Covers entry is empty, or the named file isn't in the Covers folder, AutoCast just shows your logo. Nothing is shown as an error.
- Album art needs AutoCast 1.0.1025 or later.
The Message Pad
The Message Pad is AutoCast's communication center — a dark, scrolling text area where the software talks to you. It displays:
- The welcome message at launch
- System notifications — missing files, low disk space warnings, silence sensor alerts, reboot recovery notices
- Context help when you press the Help button
- Content loaded by
# ShowTextautomation commands — show notes, liner card text, weather summaries - Clickable links that navigate directly to settings, load specific files, or play tutorial videos
Right-clicking the Message Pad gives you options to view today's output log (what actually aired) or open the currently displayed file in your default text editor.
When you want a bigger view, press Return, or click and hold on the Message Pad for half a second, and it zooms to twice its width and height over the other panels. Press Return or click and hold again, or click outside it, to shrink it back.
The Search Pad
At the bottom of the right column, the Search Pad lets you search your music library in real time. Start typing — results appear instantly after three characters. Each result shows artist, title, and duration.
From the Search Pad, you can:
- Click a result to select it
- Double-click to preview it on your preview output
- Drag it into the program log to insert it at any position
- Right-click for options including "Listen in Preview", "Make Next-to-Play" (inserts it immediately after the current song) and "Get Song Info"
- Click and hold for half a second to zoom the Search Pad to twice its width and height, growing up and to the left. Hold again, or click outside it, to shrink it back
The Search Pad supports Boolean operators for more targeted searches: type Eagles NOT Hotel to find Eagles songs that aren't Hotel California, or Springsteen AND Born to narrow things down. Operators must be uppercase and surrounded by spaces.
The Background
AutoCast can automatically change its background image based on the time of day, season, and current weather conditions. A sunny summer afternoon looks different from a winter night — if you've set up time-of-day wallpaper images in your Station Folder, AutoCast transitions between them automatically.
You can also just drag any image you like onto the main window to set a custom background immediately. It's your console — make it look however you want.
The backgrounds included in the TuneTracker System installer are just the tip of the iceberg. We have many more backgrounds available for download — for all seasons and occasions, and completely free — at www.tunetrackersystems.com/download/MoreBackgrounds.zip.
Moving, Resizing, and Maximizing the Window
AutoCast has no visible title bar, but window management is still easy:
- Press M to maximize AutoCast to fill the screen (minus the Dock and menu bar). Press M again to restore the previous size and position.
- Double-click the very top edge of the window to minimize it to the Dock.
- Drag any background area of the window to move it around your screen.
- Resize from any edge or corner, just like a standard macOS window.
Right-Click Menus
Almost every area of AutoCast has a right-click menu. When in doubt, right-click.
| Where | What's in the menu |
|---|---|
| Program Log rows | Make Next-to-Play, Preview Off Air, Get Song Info, Edit Song Info, Show in Finder, Cut, Copy, Paste, Clone, Edit Program Log, Refresh Program Log, Flip to Another Log (see Flipping to a Specialty Log), list appearance and text size options, and Help |
| Player decks | Preview, Make Next-to-Play, Cut, Get Song Info, Edit Song Info, Show in Finder, and Help. Some items change with what's loaded: you can't cut the song that's on the air, and the last deck has no Make Next-to-Play. |
| Search Pad results | Listen in Preview, Get Song Info, Edit Song Info, Make Next-to-Play, text size, and Help |
| Button Pad buttons | Edit Button, where you set the label, tags, hotkey, and everything else about the button |
| Message Pad | Copy, Select All, View Output Log, Open Text in Editor, Get Latest TuneTracker News, text size, and Help |
| Weather icon | Choose an icon style, plus Help |
| Settings panels | Context-sensitive help for that section |
Drag and Drop
AutoCast supports drag and drop across the interface. Every drag shows a visual cue, such as a gray insertion line or a highlighted button, so you always know where your drop will land.
- Drag a search result from the Search Pad into the Program Log to insert it at any position.
- Drag a search result onto a deck row to queue it up on that deck.
- Drag Program Log rows to reorder what's coming up.
- Drag files onto the Button Pad to create or assign buttons, and drag buttons around to rearrange them.
- Drag an image file onto the AutoCast window to set it as your wallpaper.
Undo
Press ⌘Z to undo the last hand edit you made to the program log. Undo covers:
- Cut, Paste and Clone
- Make Next-to-Play, from the Program Log, the player decks or the Search Pad
- Dragging a song in from the Search Pad
- Moving an item within the log
The Message Pad confirms what was put back, for example "Undo: Cut." Undo is single-level: it remembers only your most recent edit, so press it right away if you change your mind. It also declines, and tells you so, if the log has been changed since your edit, such as by another edit or by AutoCast itself, so it never overwrites changes it didn't make. Automatic changes AutoCast makes on its own are not undoable.
Customizing Program Log Colors
AutoCast color-codes Program Log rows by the content folder an item comes from, and the same colors appear as the accent strip on the left edge of each player deck. The colors live in one plain text file, colors.json, in the Misc/System folder of your Station Folder. AutoCast creates it with these defaults the first time it runs:
| Folder | Color | Folder | Color |
|---|---|---|---|
| Music | #B0CF8B | Programs | #ECA078 |
| Commercials | #DCA388 | Sports | #7E97AC |
| News | #C5AFAB | PSAs | #DC9DAB |
| Weather | #A0BFAD | Promos | #CED283 |
| Jingles | #DAD49A | Sweepers | #DAD49A |
| AutoCast | #9ABDD8 | Default | #DCB098 |
To change a color, open the file in any text editor, change the hex value next to a folder name, and save. AutoCast watches the file and applies the change right away, with no restart. To color a new content folder, add a line with the folder's name and a hex color.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Most of AutoCast can be reached from the keyboard. The single-letter keys work whenever you aren't typing in a text field.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Playback | |
| Space | Start |
| ⇧ Space | Exact Time Start: join the schedule at the current time of day |
| A | Turn Auto on or off |
| L | Turn live input on or off (the Live button) |
| Windows and navigation | |
| S | Jump to the Search field |
| B | Open the Button Pad search bar (Esc closes it) |
| E | Edit today's program log in a text editor |
| P or ⌘, | Open Settings |
| M | Maximize the window, or restore it to its previous size |
| Return | Zoom the Message Pad to twice its width and height; press again to shrink it |
| F1 | Open this User's Guide |
| Information | |
| F | Show the full weather forecast in the Message Pad |
| W | Refresh the weather |
| O | Display today's output log in the Message Pad |
| X | Display the switcher activity log in the Message Pad |
| Program logs | |
| ⌘R | Reload the program logs from disk |
| ⌘Z | Undo your last hand edit to the program log |
| Button Pad | |
| ⌘← / ⌘→ | Previous or next color scheme |
| ⌘↑ / ⌘↓ | Brighter or darker buttons |
| ⇧⌘↑ / ⇧⌘↓ | More or less saturated buttons |
| ⇧⌘L | Lock the current look in as your new default |
| D | Reset the Button Pad look to your default |
| Option + a key | Fire the button you've assigned that hotkey |
See Adjusting Colors from the Keyboard and Assigning a Keyboard Hotkey for more on the Button Pad keys. ⌘C, ⌘X, ⌘V and ⌘A work as usual for copying, cutting, pasting and selecting.
Next up: Your First Broadcast →