Backstage stage clock — green room countdown display_
+ / − running-late offset
C copy the share link
Guide — every backstage screen on the same clock in five minutes
Add each slot with a 24-hour start time (2030 or 20:30), a name and a length in minutes. Use + Changeover for turnarounds.
Give the event a name, pick a 12- or 24-hour clock and when the countdown should warn: 5, 10 or 15 minutes before the end.
Copy link or show the QR code, and open it on the green room TV, the tablets and the crew's phones.
On each display press F or ⛶ Fullscreen. The screen is asked to stay awake.
Show slipping? Shift every slot with Running late (+ / −), then re-share the link.
What is in here
The wall clock, who is on, a big countdown of the time they have left, a progress bar across their slot, and who is next with the time until they are due on. A colour band across the top gives the state at a glance.
- Purple
- Before the first slot (doors or before show)
- Green
- On stage, plenty of time
- Yellow · Orange
- At the warning point · last 5 minutes
- Red
- Overtime, flashing and counting up
- Cyan · Grey
- Changeover · curfew, show finished
Acts and changeovers are both slots. A changeover is shown in cyan and dashed in the running order, so nobody mistakes it for a set.
- Start
- 24-hour time, 2030 or 20:30
- Min
- Slot length in minutes
- Midnight
- A slot earlier than the one above it is the next day
- Curfew
- End of the last slot; add a 0-minute slot as a marker
- Example
- Load example fills in a full evening
Every screen works out the countdowns from the wall clock and the schedule in the link, so screens with the same link agree without talking to each other.
- Link
- Running order, event name, late offset, clock format and warning time
- ▦ QR code
- Scan it from the green room door
- Clock check
- Corrects a wrong device clock, warns past 30 s
- Offline
- Keeps counting once the page has loaded
There is no pause button. Instead you shift the whole schedule and re-share the link, or have people re-scan the QR code.
- −5 −1 +1 +5
- Running-late offset in minutes, or Reset
- + −
- Same, one minute at a time
- C
- Copy the share link
- F · Esc
- Fullscreen · exit
Anything with a browser works: a TV stick, a tablet taped to the wall, a laptop, a phone. The display makes no sound; all signals are visual.
- Wake lock
- Fullscreen asks the screen to stay on
- Burn-in
- The layout shifts by a pixel every minute
- 🎙 Level
- Optional mic meter as a rough "band still playing" sign
A free green room countdown display for gigs and festivals
Backstage Stage Clock is a free stage timer and green room countdown display for bands, festivals and stage managers. You type the running order once and share one link. Every screen that opens it shows the same thing: who is on, how long they have left, who is next and how long the changeover is. There is no account, no server and no limit on the number of screens.
Why it needs no operator and no server
Most stage timers are built for conferences, where someone at a laptop runs a countdown live for one speaker at a time. That is why they ask you to create an account and a room, and then limit how many screens can connect. That suits a keynote. It does not suit live music.
A gig runs to a day sheet. The set times are fixed hours or weeks in advance, and nobody backstage wants to press start. They want to walk into the green room, look at a screen and see how many minutes the band on stage has left and how long until they are on. Anyone can work that out from the running order and the time of day.
So the running order is put into the link itself, and every screen works out the countdowns from the ordinary wall clock. Two screens with the same link agree because they do the same sum at the same time, not because they are connected. There is no room to join and no connection to drop, so a festival can run twenty displays off one link. The trade-off is that there is no live "hold the clock" button; you move the whole schedule with the running-late offset instead.
What the green room display shows
The display answers the four questions people ask backstage.
- Who is on: the act's name, big enough to read from the door.
- How long they have left: a large countdown and a progress bar. It turns yellow at the warning point (5, 10 or 15 minutes, you choose) and orange in the last 5 minutes. If the act runs over, it turns into a red, flashing overtime counter that counts up, because an act eating into the changeover is the most useful thing a stage manager can spot early.
- Who is next and when: the next slot's name, start time and time until it starts, so the next band knows when to move.
- What state the show is in: a colour band across the top that reads from the far side of a dark room. Purple before the first slot, green on stage, cyan in a changeover and grey once the last slot has ended and the display shows curfew.
How to type a running order
Type start times as 24-hour times, 2030 or 20:30, and lengths in minutes. The display can show a 12-hour or 24-hour clock, separately from how you typed the times. A running order that crosses midnight needs no special handling: a slot that starts earlier than the one above it is treated as the next day, so 22:00, 23:15, 00:30, 01:45 works exactly as written, the way club nights and late stages are usually printed.
Add changeovers with + Changeover. For the crew they are the busiest part of the night, so they get their own cyan countdown to the next act. If you leave a plain gap between two acts instead, the display treats the act before it as running over and shows overtime, with the next act's start time underneath. Use changeover slots for turnarounds, intervals and breaks.
The end of the last slot counts as the curfew; after that the display switches to a dim curfew state. If your curfew is a hard licensing time rather than the end of the headline set, add it as a final slot of 0 minutes so it shows in the running order as its own marker.
When the show runs late
Shows slip. You do not have to retype the schedule: the running-late offset shifts every slot at once, one or five minutes at a time, and Reset puts it back. The offset is part of the link, so re-sharing it, or asking people to re-scan the QR code on the green room door, brings every screen back into line. Nothing in the running order itself changes.
Only one person edits the schedule. There is no shared state, so nothing can conflict: the stage manager owns the running order and shares a new link when it changes.
Getting it onto every screen
Build the schedule on a laptop or phone, then press Copy link, show the QR code, or use Open display. Send the link to the TV however you normally would: scan the QR code, send a message, or type a shortened link into the browser on the TV stick. Once it is up, the display needs no input.
The link gets longer with a big running order, because the whole schedule really is in it. A typical festival day fits fine. If an app mangles long links, use the QR code or a link shortener.
Running several stages is one link per stage. Put the stage in the event name, for example "Main Stage · Saturday", and it shows under the clock, so a screen in a shared production office is clear.
Screens left on all day
Anything with a browser works: a TV stick, a spare tablet taped to the wall, a laptop on the monitor desk, a phone in the tour manager's pocket. The display scales down to phone size, and the countdown stays the largest thing on screen. The schedule editor works on a phone but is easier on a laptop.
Fullscreen asks the browser for a screen wake lock, which keeps most phones, tablets and laptops awake. Some browsers and TV sticks ignore it; if a display keeps going to sleep, set the device itself never to sleep. The layout also moves by a pixel every minute to reduce the risk of burn-in.
The display never makes a sound. A screen that beeps in the middle of a quiet acoustic set, possibly near a live mic, is a liability, so all signals are visual: colour, size and the flashing overtime counter.
Wrong clocks and no wifi
A cheap tablet's clock is often a few minutes out. When the page loads it compares the device clock with the web server's time and corrects for the difference, so a drifting display still counts down correctly. If the difference is more than 30 seconds it also warns you, because a badly wrong clock is worth fixing on the device.
Once the page has loaded it needs no network: everything is worked out in the browser, so the display keeps going with the wifi gone. Open the link while you still have signal and leave the tab open. The QR code needs a connection to draw; offline, copy the link instead.
Sound level on the display
A green room TV has no feed from the front-of-house desk, so the display takes its state from the schedule, not from the audio. The optional 🎙 Level button shows a meter from the display device's own microphone, a rough sign that the band is still playing. For proper measurement with A- and C-weighting, LAeq and peak levels, use the online decibel meter.
Not only for festivals
Anything that runs to a published order works the same way: a conference agenda, a church service with a countdown to the start, a sermon and a closing worship set, a school production, a prize-giving or a comedy night with five acts and a compère.
Private and free
The running order exists only in the link and in your own browser's local storage. There is no server part, no database and no account. Besides the page itself, it only loads the site's shared theme files and web font, the QR code library and a cookie-free analytics script. It is free, with no signup, no trial and no device cap.
Keyboard shortcuts
F fullscreen · Esc exit fullscreen · + / − running late by a minute · C copy the share link. Shortcuts are ignored while you type in a field.
More tools for the show
Check the level with the online decibel meter, tune the backline with the guitar and instrument tuner, set a click at soundcheck with the online metronome and BPM counter, and put a message on the same screen with the LED scrolling banner. More on the music tools page.