Everything it does
No feature is held back from any licence tier. This is the whole application, described the way the manual describes it — including the parts that are limitations rather than features.
It works like a sound desk, not a music app
The one idea the whole application is built around: where you are looking and what you are hearing are two different things.
Track 3 is playing and counting down. The cursor is parked two rows below on the track that Play will start next — move it with the remote while the music keeps running.
What you are looking at is not what is playing
Up and Down move a highlight. Nothing plays until you press Play. Browse the whole list while a track is still running, stop on the one you want, then fire it. The playing row is filled; the cursor row is outlined; you can read both from across a room.
It tells you what will play next
“Playing — track 4 of 8 · Play starts track 6.” No guessing, no discovering it live.
Or the old way, if you prefer
Switch Up/Down to change track immediately and it behaves like an ordinary player.
Choose what happens when a track ends
Play the next one, stop and cue up the next one, stop on this one, or repeat it. “Stop and cue next” is the live setting: one press of the remote, exactly one track.
Fade out on Stop
Stop ramps down over 0.5 to 15 seconds instead of cutting dead. Press Stop a second time during the fade for an immediate hard out. Pause is instant and always returns to the loaded track, not to wherever the cursor has since wandered.
Single click cues, double click plays
The mouse follows the same rule as the remote — a click moves the cursor without disturbing what is playing.
Instant-play pads
A sound wall beside the playlist. Press a pad, hear it immediately. A pad never advances the running order.
Pads dock right, left, above or below, in whatever grid shape suits the show. Here: six across, two down, under the running order.
No waiting, ever
Pads under a minute are decoded into memory when the show loads, so the first press is sample-accurate rather than merely quick. Longer beds stream instead, because decoded audio costs about 21 MB a minute and a five-minute bed does not need sample accuracy.
Play over the music, or instead of it
Interrupt stops the playlist (with a short ramp, not a click) and plays. Overlay plays on top while the playlist keeps running and ducks underneath — 25% by default, adjustable, or off. Ducking means the music drops in volume on its own while the pad sounds and comes back up afterward: the movement a sound engineer would make on a desk, easing the music fader down as you speak and back up when you are done, made for you on every cue. It is what lets a sting land over a music bed without stopping the bed.
Press it again to stop it
A pad is a play/stop toggle that fades on the second press and cuts on the third. Or set it to restart, or to layer another copy on top — useful for applause that needs to build.
Number keys fire pads
1–9 and 0 fire the first ten pads of the bank on screen, from the number row or the keypad. A cheap Bluetooth numeric keypad makes an excellent pad controller and needs no setup at all — the operating system already thinks it is a keyboard. An action you have taught a number key always wins over its pad, and if you would rather have the whole number row and keypad free for the remote, one switch turns pad firing off entirely.
Four banks, fixed positions
Pads stay where you put them so you can find one without looking. Shrinking the grid hides assignments rather than destroying them — enlarge it again and they are all still there.
Any shape you like
Choose pads across × rows down: 3 × 4 for a block of twelve, 8 × 1 for a strip along the top, 6 × 5 for thirty. The labels scale themselves to the pad rather than breaking words apart, and a padding control decides how much of each pad goes to margin and how much to the name — turn it down and a wall squeezed into a strip along the bottom of the screen stays readable, laying each pad out as a row with its key number beside the name.
Dock it anywhere, or detach it completely
Right, left, above or below the playlist, with a draggable splitter. Or pop the whole wall out into a window of its own — put it on a second screen, on a touchscreen beside the computer, or on the far side of the desk where an operator can reach it while you keep the running order in front of you. It can follow the main window as you move it, or be placed entirely freely.
Put it on a bigger screen over HDMI
It is an ordinary window, so plug a monitor, a TV or a projector into the computer and drag it across — nothing to configure. With the rows scaled up to 160px that is a running order readable from a lectern or from the wings, which is worth knowing if you are already carrying an HDMI cable for a keynote or a conference session. Put the whole thing on the big screen, or keep the running order on the main screen and send only the pad wall to the second display. One caution that catches people out: plugging in HDMI often makes the display the computer default audio output, because a TV announces that it has speakers — check the output device after you plug the cable in, at the same time you test the picture.
One audio engine, however many screens
The detached window is a control surface: it draws pads and reports presses, and every buffer, every voice and the whole audio graph stay in the main window. So there is exactly one thing making sound no matter how many windows are showing pads — which is why detaching cannot introduce a timing difference, a double-trigger, or a second output device.
Fill a wall in one drag
Drag a track onto a pad, or a file straight from Finder or Explorer. Highlight several tracks and drag them once to fill consecutive pads in order. Drag a pad onto another to move it — an occupied target swaps rather than being overwritten, and a pad that is sounding keeps playing as it moves.
Level trim per pad
Right-click for a level trim, rename, mode, stop or clear. The trim is live, so it can be adjusted while the pad is sounding.
Panic button
Esc stops the playlist and every pad at once. The Stop button in the pad header stops only the pads and leaves the music alone.
Driven by whatever you press
The keyboard out of the box, a remote if you want one, and every key of it yours to set. There is no compatibility list because there does not need to be one: press anything, and Queue Up shows you what it sent so you can give it a job. You are not buying hardware to suit the software, and you are not buying hardware at all unless you want to.
Press a button, see its code, click Learn. Keyboard shortcuts keep working — learning adds a key, it never takes one away. The four unassigned actions are for a remote with buttons to spare: one job each, no button meaning two things.
No remote required
Every action is on the keyboard from the first launch, and nothing is held back for people who own hardware. Space plays and stops, the arrow keys move the cursor down the running order, Esc stops, the number keys fire the pads. A whole show runs from the computer in front of you with nothing bought, paired or charged — a remote buys you distance from the machine, and that is the only thing it buys.
Set the keys to suit you
The presets are a starting point, not a rule. Every action can be taught whatever key you would rather use, on the same screen that learns a remote — because the app takes whatever arrives and does not care what sent it. Put Stop where your hand already goes. Give one action several keys at once, keep the presets alongside your own, or drop the ones you never touch. Bindings are single keys rather than combinations, which is the one limit worth knowing.
Pair it, and it works
If you can pair a Bluetooth remote with your computer, Queue Up can use it. The app does not care what it is or who made it: press a button and it shows you exactly what that button sent, then you assign it to any action you like — play, stop, up, down, volume, or a pad. An inexpensive clicker off a market stall and a proper media remote are taught the same way, in about ten seconds each.
Teach it your buttons
Press a button and its key code appears on screen. Click Learn, press the button, done. Learning adds a key — it never removes the keyboard shortcuts you already know. If a button was already assigned elsewhere it moves rather than silently meaning two things.
Already own one? Use that.
A presentation clicker, a page-turner pedal, a camera shutter fob, a spare numeric keypad, the remote that came with something else — if it pairs with the computer and sends anything at all, it can drive the show. Nothing needs to be bought to find out: pair it, press a button, and the app tells you what it received.
Works when the window is behind others
Media keys — play/pause, next, previous, stop — reach the app even when it is not the front window, so you can drive the show from the stage while something else is on screen.
One-button remotes are handled
If your remote only has one usable transport button, the play key can be seven different things: Play/Pause, Play/Stop with a fade, Play/Stop-and-cue-next so repeated presses walk down the running order, Play/Restart, Play/Skip straight into the next track, Play only — which can start a cue but never cut one short — or Stop only. Every one of them starts a track when nothing is playing; the choice decides what a second press does to the track you are already hearing.
More buttons? One job each
Those same behaviors are also available one per button, so a remote with buttons to spare does not need any of them to mean two things. Play, Restart, Skip to next, and Stop and cue next each bind to their own button and do exactly that on every press. They ship unassigned, because they are for spare remote buttons rather than keyboard shortcuts.
A held button is one press
Lean on the play button, sit on the remote, or leave a sticky button pressed and the track starts once — however long it is held, and whatever speed the machine repeats at. It does not stutter between playing and stopped, and it does not walk down the running order. Up, down and volume are deliberately left repeating, because holding one to scan the list or ramp the level is the point.
Honest about volume keys
Volume buttons on a remote are consumed by macOS and Windows at the driver level and cannot be captured by any application. Bind the app’s own volume to two other buttons instead. Anyone who tells you otherwise has not tried it.
Shows, saved and switched
One click reconfigures the running order and the whole pad wall together.
Favorites first, then what you opened recently. A missing drive is flagged, never quietly deleted.
Pads live inside the playlist
Saving a show saves its pads; opening one loads them. A different show is a different set of cues, not an evening of re-assigning.
Favorites
Star a show and it is one click away forever. A favorite whose drive is unplugged is flagged, never deleted — plug the drive back in and it works again.
Open where you finished
Launch into the last session exactly as you left it, straight into a chosen favorite, or into an empty list. If a favorite cannot be read at launch it restores the last session instead and tells you why, rather than silently handing you the wrong playlist.
Continuous playlists
Mark the pre-show music to play straight through while your cue list still stops after every track. The setting belongs to the playlist, so switching between them switches the behavior too.
Nothing is thrown away quietly
Unsaved changes are shown in the toolbar, and anything that would replace them asks first — with Cancel as the default button, so a stray Return can never bin a running order. Saving is always a dialog: there is no one-click overwrite to mis-click.
Build the list any way you like
Add files, add a folder (sub-folders included, in natural order), or drag anything onto the window. Drag rows to reorder — the list reflows as you go and the playing track stays attached to its song. Sort by name or by length when you want to, then fine-tune by hand.
Rename any track into a cue you can read
Filenames are written by whoever exported the file, and “03_final_MASTER_v2.mp3” tells you nothing at ten feet in a dark room. Rename it to what you actually call it — “ACT 1 WALK-ON”, “SLEEP CUE”, “after Tom’s bit”, “DO NOT PLAY BEFORE 9pm”. The row becomes an instruction to yourself, in your own words, readable from across the room at whatever text size you have set. The file on disk is never touched, and the name is saved with the show, so it is there every night after that.
Made for a dark room
Everything about the display assumes you are looking at it under pressure.
Background, highlight, text and font are all yours, and the text color follows the background automatically so it always stays readable.
Resize the text mid-show, without stopping anything
A size slider sits on the transport bar, next to the volume — not buried in a dialog. Drag it and the playlist rows scale from 12 to 160 pixels while the music keeps playing. The venue put you further from the screen than you expected, or the lights went down and you cannot read it: fix it in one gesture, between cues. The toolbar, transport and dialogs deliberately stay their normal size, so the controls never grow into the list’s space and Settings is always reachable however large you set the rows.
Volume where your hand already is
The app has its own volume, separate from the system’s, on the same bar — with a Mute button beside it. Set the computer once to whatever the desk wants and trim from here, so you are not fighting the operating system’s slider mid-show. It can be driven from the keyboard too, and bound to any two buttons on your remote.
Your colors
Background, highlight and text colors, plus the font. Text color is derived automatically from the background so it stays readable whatever you choose — until you decide otherwise.
Countdown on the playing track
The playing row shows time remaining; every other row shows its length. You always know how long you have.
Stays on top
Keep the window above everything else so the running order is visible while you work elsewhere, with a one-click toggle in the toolbar.
Print the running order — for the desk, and for the archive
Laid out for paper, not a screenshot of the screen: black on white whatever your theme, every track regardless of what is on screen, no rows split across a page break, with the playlist name, track count, total running time and date on every page. Each track shows its length and its pad reference, and a second table lists every pad — including the ones holding a file the running order never uses.
What the printout is actually for
Handing the sound engineer a sheet instead of shouting cues over a PA. Leaving something a stand-in operator can follow when you are on stage and cannot drive it yourself. Putting a running order in a festival tech pack. And keeping a dated record of exactly what you ran on the night — which, a year later, is the only way to remember what worked at that venue. The total running time on it is also the fastest honest answer to “how long are you?”.
It comes back where you left it
Window size and position, volume, key bindings, colors, pad layout — all remembered, and written to disk as you change them. The window will not close until that write has finished.
Things that matter at 8pm
The boring half. Also the half that decides whether you can trust it.
Every track with its length and pad reference, the total running time, and a table of every pad. Hand it to the sound engineer, leave it with a stand-in operator, or file the dated copy as a record of what you ran that night.
No internet required. Ever.
The application makes no network calls at all. No account, no sign-in, no phone-home, no license check waiting on a venue’s wifi. A basement with no signal is not a problem it has.
Nothing is collected
No analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting. Your files never leave your machine, and the app has no idea what is in them.
Only one copy can run
Launching it twice brings the existing window forward instead of starting a second copy that would play over the first.
Missing files are flagged, not dropped
A pad whose file has gone shows red and keeps its slot. A hole in the wall is much harder to spot mid-show than a pad that is visibly broken.
The formats you actually have
MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV, OGG, Opus and FLAC. 16-bit, 24-bit and 32-bit float WAV are all verified. Settings ▸ Files & formats lists exactly what plays and what does not, so you can check before a show rather than during one.
Copy protection: never checked, never defeated
Files from Apple Music, Spotify and Audible are encrypted and only their own apps can open them — they will not play here, and no setting will change that. Queue Up does not inspect your files for protection, does not enforce it, and contains nothing capable of removing it: a protected file simply fails to decode. What you load, and your right to play it to an audience, is yours to control.
It comes with something to play
A starter show installs with the app: two ambient beds, a walk-on fanfare, exit music, and pads for applause, a rimshot, a drum roll, a sting, a whoosh, a bell, a two-minute call, a countdown and a blackout boom. Every one of them was generated by arithmetic rather than recorded, so there is no license to observe and nothing to attribute — press Play the minute it installs, and swap them for your own audio when it suits you.
Shows that travel
Collect a show and the playlist and every file it plays are copied into one folder, with the paths stored relative to it. Put that folder on a USB stick and it opens on any machine — including across from Mac to Windows, which matters because one license covers both.
Two things it deliberately does not do
Both are choices, and both are the sort of thing you would rather find out here than after paying.
It cannot capture your remote’s volume keys
macOS and Windows both take volume keys at the driver level and never hand them to an application. No software can have them. Bind the app’s own volume to two other buttons instead — that works perfectly, and the Learn panel makes it a ten-second job.
It reads filenames, not ID3 tags
Track names come from the file name, which for show audio is almost always what you want. Rename any track to whatever you call it out loud — the file on disk is never touched, and the name is saved with the show.