Downstage is a launch platform and downstage-monitor manager for Keynote and PowerPoint — line up the decks, launch each one on cue, and run the teleprompter, presenter monitors, and phone remote from one macOS app.
Keynote and PowerPoint keep rendering every slide. Downstage launches them on cue and runs the monitors, prompter, and remote around them.
Line up every deck — Keynote, PowerPoint, PDF — in running order, and launch each one on your cue. No desktop, no Dock, no fumbling in front of a room.
Notes and teleprompter track speech on-device. Downstage prepares deterministic addresses and ordered tuples at load; optional local embeddings improve recovery after paraphrases, skips, backups, and asides.
No conversion, no re-authoring, no re-rendering: Downstage launches the real Keynote and PowerPoint, so builds and animations play exactly as the designer intended.
A zoomable light table follows the live slide, marks builds, gates calls behind ARM, messages the presenter, and keeps deck elapsed, video TRT, and a wheel-set timer visible. It runs in a phone browser.
Move and resize slide, notes, teleprompter, and clock tiles anywhere on a free-form presenter canvas, then save the layout as a preset. The program screen stays with Keynote and PowerPoint.
Continuous crash-recovery autosave. Licenses validate offline — no internet required at the venue. One show file moves the whole rig to the backup machine.
Drop in Keynote and PowerPoint files as they arrive from presenters.
Order the decks, attach scripts, shape presenter views, and pair the phone remote.
Launch every deck from one surface — nothing touches the desktop in front of the audience.
The founding cohort is intentionally small so each operator can rehearse, run a show, and get a useful response when the room exposes an edge.
No — and that's deliberate. Licensing is verified on the machine itself with a cryptographic signature. Venue networks are locked down, flaky, or absent; Downstage never phones home to let you run a show.
A founding-beta key covers your working rig: the main show Mac plus its backup, because if you run shows the way we do, the backup isn't optional.
Downstage is a macOS app built for Apple Silicon. It drives Keynote natively and plays PowerPoint decks as delivered.
Email support@downstage.technology with the kind of shows you run, your Mac and macOS version, display count, and your next rehearsal. Accepted operators receive the app and a beta key directly.
Downstage 1.0 becomes a one-time perpetual license — no subscription. Beta operators hear first when that happens, and your show files carry forward as-is.
The founding beta is invite-based so the first wave stays supportable. Tell us about the rig and show you can test; accepted operators receive the current notarized 1.0.19 build directly.
Request a beta seat