Themes

A theme controls how content looks on screen: the background, fonts, colours, text position, shadows and any pictures or video behind the words. The Themes tab lists them all.

Three kinds of theme

Use the All, Songs, Scriptures and Presentations buttons at the top of the tab to filter the list.

Built-in themes

Crater comes with five ready-made themes, marked PRESET:

Built-in themes can't be changed. Right-click one and choose Duplicate to get an editable copy.

Creating and editing themes

• New theme: click New theme and choose Song theme, Scripture theme or Presentation theme.
• Edit: double-click a theme, or right-click it and choose Edit.

Both open the theme editor. See Designing Themes for a walkthrough, including how to have an AI assistant draft a theme for you.

Default themes for each screen

Each kind of content has a default theme, marked PRIMARY on its tile. Anything that doesn't have its own theme uses the default.

Right-click a theme and open Set as default … theme to choose where it's the default:

• Set for Primary HDMI makes it the default on your main projection screen.
• Set for NDI Broadcast gives your live stream a different look, such as a lower third instead of full-screen lyrics. This needs Settings > NDI > Dual output mode turned on. See NDI Streaming.
• Set for (an extra output) gives a mirror screen, like a lobby TV, its own look. See Outputs.

Tiles show which screens use them with badges such as PRIMARY, NDI or an output's name.

Which theme wins

When Crater shows an item, it picks the theme in this order:

1. A theme chosen for that item: for one song in the song editor, for one presentation in its editor, or for one schedule row with right-click > Theme….
2. The theme set as default for that screen.
3. The default theme for that kind of content.

You can also set the default song theme in Settings > Song > Default theme.

Sharing themes

Exporting

Right-click a theme and choose Export…. Crater saves a single .craterheme file containing the theme plus every picture and video it uses. You can choose which of your imported fonts to bundle in as well. Fonts installed on the computer (like Arial or Segoe UI) are recorded by name only, so the other computer needs them installed too.

Importing

Click Import on the Themes tab:

• Import theme… opens a .craterheme file from another Crater user. If you already have a theme with the same name, the new one gets (Import) added to its name.
• Import theme JSON… opens a theme written as a JSON file, for example one saved from an AI assistant. See Designing Themes.
• Import font… adds a .ttf or .otf font for use in any theme.

Other actions

Right-click a theme to Duplicate or Delete it. Built-in themes can't be deleted. Deleting a theme happens straight away, so export a copy first if you might want it back.