TALKTEMPUS
Documentation
Every feature, in plain language
New to Talktempus? The tutorial walks through your first talk start to finish in about five minutes. Come back here whenever you want the full detail on something specific.
On this page
Importing a manuscript
Drop in a .docx file and Word's own heading styles become your sections automatically. Bold, italic, underline, and highlights carry over, and bulleted lists come through as lines, so what you see is what you wrote. Never applied a Heading style? A short line that's bold from end to end (and nothing else) is recognized as a section heading too, so a manuscript formatted by hand still splits correctly.
If your document has a real Word Title (and Subtitle), that becomes your Talk Name automatically. If the field already holds a name that came from a sample or an earlier import, the new title replaces it. If you typed the name yourself, Talktempus keeps it and asks whether to use the Word title instead, so a name you set by hand is never replaced without your say.
The converted text also lands in the paste box, in exactly the format you'd type or paste yourself. That makes it the quickest place to fix a stray line or add a section break: edit it there, then press Import / Update to refresh. If you've changed section times or priority stars in the Cue Sheet, Import asks whether to keep those changes or start fresh; sections with the same title keep theirs.
No talk to try it with? Download the practice talk, a five-minute Word file. You can also paste plain text directly. Mark where one section ends and the next begins with a line starting in #, followed by the section's title. To format as you type, use *italic*, **bold**, __underline__, and ==highlight==.
Three more marks work in pasted text. Start a line with - to make it a subpoint, and indent it two spaces per level to nest it (up to three levels deep). Start a line with ★ to mark it as a key line, which shows with a teal bar and a star in your manuscript. Put a ★ at the end of a heading to star the whole section. Stars are part of Pro, so a free account simply ignores them.
Text color and font size don't carry over from Word, so if you mark up your talk that way, switch to bold, underline, or a highlight for the parts that need to stand out.
Didn't set a time for a section? Talktempus estimates one from the word count at about 130 words per minute, in half-minute steps, and the import summary tells you the total up front, so nothing starts at zero and nothing is a mystery.
Starting from a rough outline or an unsectioned manuscript? Talk Prep finds the natural breaks for you, names each section, and gives you text formatted exactly the way it's described above, ready to paste straight in. Nothing you paste there is saved.
Talk Prep also formats for you. If you already have a mostly formatted talk, press Upload .docx: Talk Prep keeps your bold, italic, underline, highlight, bullets and numbered lists, uses the Word Title (and Subtitle) as the talk name, and turns Heading styles into named sections. If you made headings by hand with larger text instead, short lines that are clearly bigger than your body text and don't end in a period are treated as headings too. Bold alone is never a heading, because bold is emphasis. The file is read in your browser and is never uploaded anywhere. Pasting from Word or Google Docs keeps the same formatting, and a line that is just # Title is treated as a section heading. Click into any block to edit it, and press Enter where you want it to split in two (Backspace at the start joins it back). To format a phrase, select it and press B, I, U or Hi under the block (or Ctrl or Cmd with B, I or U). With nothing selected, those buttons format the whole line, and pressing one again removes it. Other buttons add a key-line star or a section star, and turn a line into a bullet or an indented subpoint. They stack, so a phrase can be bold and underlined. The live preview shows exactly how it will read in Talktempus. Talk Prep says how it found your sections, and you can correct it: select a line (or a phrase) and press H to make it a section heading, which becomes the section's title and starts a new section there, and press H again to undo. Tick Build an outline from my formatting under your talk to add an optional outline step above the review. It is off until you turn it on. Each section lists the phrases you made stand out, meaning starred lines and anything bold, italic, underlined or highlighted, as indented lines, and a section with no emphasis gets its first sentence. Keep what you want, edit it, delete the rest, add more formatting, then press Copy outline (it pastes into Word or Docs with its formatting) or Use this outline to build your sections from it. Refresh from my formatting rebuilds it. It all happens in your browser, and nothing is saved. If you paste an outline instead of a manuscript, Talk Prep recognizes it: a short first line becomes the talk name, and numbered or Roman-numeral items become sections. Letters, dashes and sub-numbers sit under a section as subpoints, indented to match. If an outline has no numbers or Roman numerals, its lettered or dashed top-level items become the sections instead, and a lone "1." with no "2." is treated as a subpoint. It works even when the indentation is lost in the paste. Copy the talk name into the Cue Sheet's Talk name box. The practice talk is available as an outline too.
Setting the time
Open the Cue Sheet and scroll to Running Order to see every section listed with its own minutes. Type a new number in a section's box, or use the arrows in it, and the Total run time at the bottom adds them up. In Free mode, you set one Total budget for the whole talk instead. The countdown recalculates immediately, even mid-talk.
You can also choose between two timing modes:
- Fixed — the clock counts down against the schedule you set, and tells you if you're running ahead or behind.
- Free — there's no per-section schedule. The clock counts up your total time against one overall budget, which you set in the Cue Sheet under Total budget. It shows how much is left as you get close, and how far over you are if you pass it. Jumping between sections never resets your time.
Under Timer you can also set Turn red at, the number of minutes remaining when the clock changes color to warn you, and a preferred color for the clock's bar. Pick the pre-start countdown here too: off, 3, 5 or 10 seconds.
In the Cue Sheet, tick Make this my default under Time slot or View to have Talktempus open that way every time on this device.
Making it easy to read
Open the Cue Sheet and look under Appearance. Theme switches between dark and light. View switches between Document, one continuous scroll through your whole manuscript, and Slide, where each section is its own full screen you swipe between. Your timing works the same either way. Text size has A− and A+ buttons, and Font switches the manuscript between serif and sans. These apply to a running talk, so you can adjust mid-talk if the room's lighting changes.
Tick Make this my default under View to keep Document or Slide for next time. Test your settings in the actual room before people arrive, from where you'll be standing.
Running a talk
Tap Start Talk and the manuscript takes over the screen: a pinned header shows your current section and a live clock, with the rest of the screen given to what you're reading from.
In fixed mode, a pace pill tells you where you stand: on schedule, or how far ahead or behind you're currently running. It updates as you read, not just at the end of a section.
Hold the pace pill (or the reset icon next to it) to clear its history without restarting the whole talk. This is built for retakes: if you're recording a talk in segments and need to redo one, a hold wipes whatever ahead/behind drift piled up before it, so the next segment's pace reading starts clean and your time budget stays consistent from that point on — instead of the pill carrying blame from a take you're about to throw away.
If you've turned on a pre-start countdown, tapping Start Talk gives you a few seconds to get set before the clock and manuscript go live.
Use the transport controls under the header to move between sections, restart the current one, or pause. You can also tap any dot on the progress rail to jump to that section. Everything works with a single tap, except finishing and unlocking, which take a deliberate hold. To finish, go to the last section and hold the checkmark where Next usually is. That brings up your session report.
Locking the screen
A single tap on the lock icon locks the transport controls, so a stray tap in the middle of a talk can't skip a section or stop the clock. You can still scroll and swipe through your manuscript while locked; only the controls that could interrupt the talk are disabled, including the star button. Unlocking takes a deliberate hold, for the same reason.
Ending a talk also takes a deliberate hold, for the same reason: nothing that matters should happen by accident.
Priority sections and star mode
Star the sections that matter most from the Cue Sheet. If a talk runs long and you need to cut material on the fly, the stars tell you at a glance what to protect and what's safe to trim. You can star single lines too, using the ★ marks described under importing or the star buttons in Talk Prep, so the sentence that has to land stands out inside its section.
When you do need to cut, tap the star button in the row of controls, next to the lock. Star mode narrows your manuscript, the progress rail and the Next and Previous buttons to your starred sections and key lines. A section with starred lines shows only those lines, and a starred section with none shows in full. The clock still measures against your original plan, so the sections you skip count as time saved and the pace pill shows you catching up. Tap the star again to bring everything back at the same spot. It needs at least one starred section or line, and like all stars it's part of Pro.
Reading your report
Every completed talk ends with a session report: your planned time against your actual time, how many sections ran ahead of or behind plan, and an overall pace accuracy score for the whole run. In Fixed timing the report also lists every section with its actual time against its planned time, so you can see exactly which ones ran over. Sections you skipped in star mode are marked skipped. Sharing the report includes the same list, and unticking Include exact time keeps only a plain ran over, ahead or on pace for each section.
Share the report in a tap, or leave the exact times out if you'd rather not publish how long you really ran. Reports are only saved to your history if you're signed in; see below.
Accounts and plans
You can run a talk without creating an account, up to ten minutes, with one overall time budget (Free timing mode). Nothing about that use is tracked, and Talktempus simply runs in your browser. Section-by-section timing (Fixed mode), priority stars, the pre-start countdown and naming a talk need a free account, which starts your 14-day Pro trial.
Signing in (with an emailed code — no password) saves your talk results to your account and keeps your plan on every device. New accounts get a 14-day free trial with full access. If you'd rather subscribe right away, tap Buy now at the top right of the app or on the homepage, choose monthly or yearly, and pay on Stripe's secure checkout. For pastors: we know how important Sundays are. If a trial ends, the first Sunday after it stays fully open, so you are never cut off while preparing or preaching on a Sunday. After that, starting a new talk requires an active Pro subscription; a lapsed or canceled account can't start a new talk until it resubscribes. Your manuscripts stay on your device. If a renewal payment fails, your Pro access stays on while the payment is retried, so a card problem never locks you out on a Sunday.
Offline and installing
Talktempus is built to run with no signal at all. Load it once, and it works in a church basement, a hotel ballroom, or a conference hall with terrible wifi.
Add it to your home screen for a full-screen app with no browser bar:
- iPhone / iPad: tap the Share button in Safari, then "Add to Home Screen."
- Android / desktop Chrome: use the install icon in the address bar, or the browser's own "Install app" prompt.
Talktempus updates itself quietly in the background. When a new version is ready, a small "Talktempus was updated" notice with a Reload button appears at the bottom of the screen. It never shows while a talk is running — only before you start, or after you've closed your session report — and it never reloads anything on its own. If you'd rather not deal with it, dismiss it and the update simply arrives the next time you open the app. Not seeing something new? Close the app fully and open it again (an installed copy can take one extra open to catch up).
Either way, your manuscript never leaves your device. See the Privacy Policy for the complete, honest list of what Talktempus does and doesn't store.