Your first talk

Bring your talk

Tap the Cue Sheet button in the bottom-right corner. Under Manuscript, tap Upload .docx to drop in the Word document you already wrote, or paste it into the box below as plain text. While you're there, give your talk a name under Talk name, or let the Word file's title fill it in. It shows above your manuscript and on your report. (A name you typed yourself is kept, and Talktempus asks before using a different Word title.) If you paste, start each section with a line beginning in # followed by its title. A Word doc's own headings do this automatically, and so does a short line you've simply made bold.

Your talk shows up on the left, already broken into sections. If you dropped in a Word doc, its text also appears in the paste box. Make any quick edits there and press Import / Update to refresh. If you'd already tweaked a section's time or starred it, Import will ask whether to keep those changes or start over.

No talk handy? Download our practice talk, a five-minute Word file you can upload.

Already have a formatted Word file, or want bold lines, starred key lines and indented subpoints before you start? Talk Prep reads your file (or pasted text), keeps your formatting, names your sections from your headings, shows a live preview of how your talk will read, and gives you text to paste straight in.

Set your time

Back in the Cue Sheet, scroll to Timer. Choose a time slot: Fixed gives each section its own minutes and shows a pace pill telling you if you're ahead or behind, and Free gives the whole talk one overall budget (Total budget) and counts your total time against it. In Fixed, scroll on to Running Order, where every section has its own minutes. Type a new number in a section's box, or use the arrows in it. Didn't set anything? Talktempus estimates a time for you from how much you wrote.

Running Order is also where you star the sections you can't afford to cut. Under Timer you can pick a pre-start countdown (3, 5 or 10 seconds) and set when the clock turns red. Under Appearance, choose dark or light, Document (one scroll) or Slide (swipe between sections), text size, and serif or sans. Tick Make this my default under View or Time slot if you always want the same setup.

Start talking

Tap Start Talk. If you've set a pre-start countdown, you'll get a few seconds before the clock goes live. Then it's just you, your manuscript, and a clock pinned at the top. In Fixed mode, the pace pill right under the clock tells you if you're on schedule, ahead or behind. The row of dots under the buttons is your progress rail. Tap one to jump to that section.

Tap the lock icon before you step up — you can still scroll through the manuscript while locked, but the controls that could interrupt your talk are disabled until you hold it down again to unlock.

Recording in segments and need a retake? Hold the pace indicator to clear its history without restarting the whole talk — the next segment reads its pace fresh, so your time budget stays consistent instead of carrying blame from the take you're redoing.

Handle the unexpected

Running long? Unlock, trim time from a section you didn't star, and lock back up. The clock adjusts instantly. The sections you starred earlier are the ones to protect.

Need to cut hard? Tap the star button next to the lock. Star mode narrows the manuscript, the progress rail and the Next and Previous buttons to just your starred sections and key lines. The clock still measures against your original plan, so the sections you skip count as time saved. Tap the star again to bring everything back where you are.

End and review

When you reach the last section, hold the checkmark button (where Next usually is) for about a second to end the talk. You'll get a session report with your planned time against your actual time, how many sections ran ahead or behind, a pace accuracy score, and (in Fixed timing) a list showing each section's actual time against its plan, with the ones that ran over in red. Tap Share My Run to send it, and untick Include exact time if you'd rather not publish how long you really ran.

Save it for next time (optional)

Sign in with an emailed code to save your talk results to your account and keep your plan on every device — new accounts get a 14-day free trial. Then add Talktempus to your home screen so it opens full-screen with no browser bar, and works with no signal at all.