User Guide

What is QuizCast?

QuizCast is a real-time multiplayer quiz platform built for pubs, offices, events, and home entertainment. It combines a TV display, a mobile controller, and an online studio into one seamless experience — no clickers, no paper, no faff.

The host creates quizzes in the web dashboard, runs the game from their phone, and everyone in the room plays along on their own device. The TV screen handles the rest — displaying questions, timers, leaderboards, and an AI-powered host voice that reads everything out loud.

The Three Apps

QuizCast is a system of three applications that work in sync. You are currently inside the Dashboard.

How a Game Works: The Full Flow

1. 1

   Create a Quiz Pack

   In the dashboard, build a pack manually or use the AI generator. Set the question type, difficulty, and region targeting.

2. 2

   Open the TV App

   On your TV or laptop browser, go to tv.quizcast.app. The intro screen will appear with the QuizCast logo.

3. 3

   Start a Lobby on Your Phone

   Open the mobile app, log in as host, select your pack, and tap Start Game. A 4-digit code appears on the TV.

4. 4

   Players Join

   Players open the mobile app, tap Join Game, and enter the 4-digit code. Their names appear live on the TV lobby screen.

5. 5

   Unlock Audio (Important)

   Before starting, press any key on the TV keyboard or remote to unlock audio. Browsers require a user interaction before playing sound.

6. 6

   Start the Quiz

   The host taps Start on their phone. If Show Rules is enabled, players read the rules first and confirm ready.

7. 7

   Question Loop

   The TV displays each question and countdown timer while the AI host reads it aloud. Players answer on their phones. Scores update after each round.

8. 8

   Game Ends

   A podium screen shows the final results. The host can reset to the lobby to play again with a new pack or the same one.

Game Modes

There are 15 ways to create a quiz pack from the dashboard home screen. Most have their own pack editor; Quick AI Generate and Bulk Factory build packs for you instantly. Modes marked Home Host, Venue Pro, or Studio require an active subscription at that tier or above.

AI Features

AI Question Generator

On the Create page, select a topic (e.g. "Premier League 2024") and the AI will generate a full quiz pack including questions, multiple-choice options, and correct answers. You can also set the difficulty level (Easy, Medium, Hard) and the number of questions.

AI Host Voice

The TV app uses text-to-speech to narrate every question during the game. There are two voice engines available:

• Standard (Google TTS): Free on all plans. Clear, neutral voice. Available instantly with no setup.
• Premium (ElevenLabs): Available on Venue Pro and Studio. Higher quality, more expressive narration. Can be set to a regional UK or Irish accent.

Pre-Generated Pack Audio

On Venue Pro and Studio plans, you can pre-generate all audio for a pack before the game starts. This means the TV reads questions instantly with no wait time mid-game. To do this, open your pack in the editor and use the Generate Audio option.

AI Studio Assistant

The chat bubble in the bottom-right corner of the dashboard is a full assistant, not just a help chatbot — it can actually build, edit, and manage your quizzes for you, walk you around the dashboard, help you run a live game, and answer questions using the dashboard's own help content. Everything below happens right in the chat window, in plain English — no need to know which button does what.

Building Quizzes For You

Just describe what you want and it creates the real thing in your library — you land straight on the finished pack's edit page when it's done.

• Any topic, any question count: "Create a 10-question quiz about 90s cinema."
• Name the Tune, Name the Picture, Name the Advert: ask by name and it finds the matching audio, images, or video clips automatically — you don't need to source any media yourself.
• Import your own questions: paste a list, table, or numbered set of Q&As from anywhere and it parses them into a proper quiz pack.
• Remix an existing quiz: "Remix my Music Trivia pack for Dave's 50th birthday, he loves golf" — re-themes an existing pack rather than starting from scratch.
• Seasonal & topical quizzes: "Build a Halloween quiz" or "a quiz about this week's news" — it knows today's date and researches current events where relevant.
• Full multi-round show packages: "Build an 80s movie quiz night package" generates several linked rounds at once, ready to run as one event.
• Photo-to-quiz: attach a photo of a quiz sheet, menu, poster, or landmark and it can read it and build a quiz directly from what's in the picture.

Editing an Existing Quiz

• Add, update, or remove single questions: "Change the answer to question 3" or "delete question 7."
• Bulk edits, safely: "remove all the geography questions" first shows you exactly what will be affected — nothing changes until you confirm.
• Health check: ask it to review a quiz and it flags duplicate options, mismatched answers, or other issues, then offers to fix them.
• Find duplicates across your whole library: "scan my library for repeated questions."
• Undo: "undo that" reverts the most recent edit — say "undo my last 3 edits" to step back further in one go.
• Save good questions for later: bank specific questions from any quiz, then search your saved bank when building a new one.

Show Me Where

Ask a "how do I create a …" question for any of the 16 quiz-creation buttons on the home screen (Standard Pack, Pub Quiz, Team Battle, Millionaire-style High Stakes, and more) — or a "how do I get to / find my …" question about any sidebar page (Subscriptions, Settings, Reports, Team & Workspace, and more) — and the assistant does more than describe it: it navigates you there. A glowing cursor travels across the screen to the exact button or link while the assistant talks you through it, then opens the page for you.

Running a Live Night

• Referee a disputed answer: "a player says X is also correct for Q4" — get a clear ACCEPT / REJECT / PARTIAL ruling on the spot.
• Tiebreakers: ask for one when two teams finish level — generates a sudden-death question ready to read out.
• Host banter & scripts: crowd warm-up lines, leaderboard roasts, halftime banter, or a full reading script for a round.
• Live leaderboard commentary: paste in the current scores mid-game and get dramatic commentary to read aloud.

Business & Venue Tools

• Set up a Battle of the Pubs by chatting — describes the full preview (venue details, entry fee, prize split) before anything is created, Studio tier.
• Quiz analytics: "which of my quizzes is most popular" or how many times a pack has been played.
• Retention & pacing advice: tips to keep a crowd engaged, or help arranging a quiz's difficulty curve (Warmup → Challenge → Climax).
• Tournament brackets & scheduling: plan a multi-team knockout or round-robin, or build a full timed run-sheet for a quiz night including breaks.
• Library gap analysis & recommendations: "what should I build next" or "which quiz suits a corporate crowd tonight."

Research & Fact-Checking

The assistant can search the live web — use it to verify or fact-check a quiz answer, or ask it any general knowledge or current-events question directly ("who won the last World Cup"), even unrelated to a specific quiz. It answers as your quiz master, not a generic search engine, and will often offer to turn what it just found into a quiz question.

Account Help & Troubleshooting

Ask about your own account — your tier, billing, or remaining AI/voice credits — and it checks your real account rather than guessing. It can also diagnose why a specific quiz's audio isn't working. If something genuinely needs a human, it offers to flag the issue straight to the QuizCast team for you.

Personality

Ask it to switch tone — "talk like a British pubmaster", a game show host, a trivia professor, or a pirate captain — and it adopts that voice and style for the rest of your conversation.

Voice Controls

The assistant speaks its replies aloud by default. Use the speaker icon in the chat header to mute or unmute it, and the speed badge (e.g. "1.0x") next to it to cycle through playback speeds.

Usage Limits

To keep the assistant available for everyone, each plan has a usage budget on a rolling 5-hour window plus a longer weekly cap — higher tiers get a larger budget. Small bars at the bottom of the chat window show how much of each you have left; if you get close, the assistant gives you a friendly heads-up in the chat, and if you run out it tells you exactly when it resets. This is separate from your daily AI message count and your ElevenLabs voice credits, which have their own meters in the chat window and in Settings → Profile & Defaults.

Regional AI Host Voices

On Venue Pro and Studio plans, you can choose a regional UK or Irish accent for your AI host. The voice plays on the TV screen when questions are read aloud.

How to Set Your Voice Region

1. Go to Settings → Profile & Defaults.
2. Scroll to the AI Host Voice Region section.
3. Pick your region from the dropdown (e.g. Yorkshire, Liverpool, Scottish).
4. Click Save Profile. The change takes effect in your next game session.

Available Regional Voices

If no region is set, the TV app uses your selected voice engine (Standard or Premium) with its default accent.

Global Settings Explained

Settings are split into four tabs. Changes here apply as defaults to every new game session — you can always override them in the mobile app during a live game.

Profile & Defaults

Display Name

Your name shown on the TV screen during the intro and in the host remote. Does not affect your login email.

Default Region

Sets the content targeting for the AI question generator. Choosing "UK" means AI-generated questions use UK spelling, references, and cultural context. This does NOT affect the host voice accent — that is the Voice Region setting below.

Default Difficulty

Pre-fills the difficulty dropdown when you create a new AI-generated quiz. You can override it per pack.

Voice Engine

Toggle between Standard (Google, free) and Premium (ElevenLabs, Venue Pro+). Premium voices are richer and more expressive. The switch applies to live TTS during the game.

AI Host Voice Region

Sets a regional UK or Irish accent for ElevenLabs TTS. Saves to your player profile and is picked up automatically when you start a game. Only active when Voice Engine is set to Premium.

TV Branding

Logo

Upload your pub, company, or event logo. It appears on the TV intro screen before the game begins and on the lobby screen.

Welcome Message

Custom text shown on the TV lobby screen while players are joining. Great for venue branding or sponsor messages.

Game Rules

Fastest Finger Bonus

Awards +0.5 points to the first player who answers correctly on each question. Adds excitement but can favour fast typers on phones.

Points System

Switch between Standard (1 point per correct answer) and Speed-Weighted (more points for answering faster within the timer window).

Profanity Filter

When on, player names containing common profanity are blocked at the join screen.

Default Question Timer

Sets the default countdown timer (in seconds) for each question. You can override this per-question in the pack editor.

Show Rules Screen

When enabled, the TV displays the game rules before the first question and waits for players to confirm they are ready. Use Force Start on your phone to skip this.

Show Leaderboard

Controls whether the live leaderboard sidebar is visible on the TV during questions.

Lead Generation Studio

Require Email to Join

When enabled, players must enter an email address before they can join the game. Emails are stored and can be exported as a CSV from this tab.

Export Leads CSV

Downloads all collected player emails as a spreadsheet, including player name, email, session code, and date. Useful for post-event follow-up or mailing lists.

TV Screen Overview

The TV app cycles through several screens during a game night:

Subscription Tiers

QuizCast has a free tier plus three paid plans. Upgrade inside the mobile app or on the Subscriptions page in the dashboard. Battle of the Pubs / paid Quiz Nights are a Studio feature.

Player limits and AI-quiz allowances shown here are the advertised plan figures. Exact pricing is on the Subscriptions page.

Host Controls During a Live Game

Once a game is running, the host remote on the mobile app shows these controls:

Next Question

Advances to the next question. The TV plays the AI voice and starts the countdown.

Pause / Resume

Freezes the countdown timer on the TV. All players see a pause indicator. Resume restarts the timer from where it left off.

Force Start

Skips the rules screen if players are slow to confirm ready.

Voice Button

Cycles between Standard (Google), Premium (ElevenLabs), and Cloned voice options mid-game. Requires the respective tier.

Fastest Finger Toggle

Can be turned on or off per-game without affecting your saved settings.

Play Again / Reset

After the podium screen, returns the TV to the lobby so a new game can start immediately.

Quiz Nights & Battle of the Pubs

A Quiz Night (also called Battle of the Pubs) is a full event wrapper around a quiz — for a single venue running its own night, or several venues competing at once. It adds advance team registration, an entry-fee prize pot, branded invites, and automatic reminders. It's a Studio-tier feature: find it under Quiz Nights in the sidebar, or start one with New Quiz Night.

Set your venue up once

In Team & Workspace → Venue Details, add your address, Facebook and website. These flow automatically onto every new quiz night's registration page, invite emails and shareable preview card — so teams know where to go and can follow you — and can be tweaked per event on the control panel.

The registration link

Every quiz night has a public link teams can book ahead on. As teams register (team name + headcount), the projected prize pot climbs live on the page. Share it by Email invite, Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram straight from the control panel, and add a source tag to any link to see which channel brought each team in.

Taking entry fees online (optional)

Connect card payments in Team & Workspace → Card Payments (a one-time Stripe setup). Teams can then pay their entry fee by card when they register. The money goes straight to your bank — QuizCast only takes a small platform fee and never holds your pot — and prizes are still paid in cash at the venue. Teams without a card can always pay at the door instead. To cancel a paid team, use the × on their entry to auto-refund them, up to 24 hours before the quiz starts.

Invites & your audience

From a quiz night's control panel, Email invite sends the register link to a list of addresses, and Invite past teams re-invites everyone who's registered on a previous night. The Mailing List page (sidebar) gathers every team that's ever registered with an email, plus anyone you add by hand, and lets you send a bulk invite to a new night in one click (with per-contact unsubscribe).

What teams get automatically

• A confirmation email the moment they register — with directions and an add-to-calendar button (Google / Apple / Outlook).
• Directions on the morning of the quiz — a one-tap Google Maps link that routes them to your venue from wherever they are.
• A results recap after the night — you fill in the podium and next date, and it emails everyone the winners plus a "book your team" link for next time.

Running it again

Hit Schedule next on any quiz night to clone all its settings (venue, fee, prizes, format) to the next date — weekly, fortnightly, monthly, or a custom date. You just pick this week's fresh questions.

Capacity & Late-Join Cut-off

Stop a night being overbooked, and lock the doors once it's about to begin. Both work for a standalone Pub Quiz and a Battle of the Pubs, and both are optional — leave them blank and every quiz behaves exactly as before.

Capacity

On a standard Pub Quiz pack (the Capacity card in the pack editor) set a Max players — the tables × seats fields are just a helper that suggests the total. On a Battle of the Pubs you can cap tables and total players independently. Once a quiz is full, new players/teams are turned away and the TV lobby shows a red FULL badge.

Late-join cut-off

Also in the pack editor: pick 15 / 30 / 60 minutes, 2 / 3 hours, or a custom value. Joining closes that long after you open the room — so latecomers can't pile in right before kickoff. Anyone who's already joined can always reconnect if their phone drops. The TV lobby shows the exact time joining closes.

Your Venue Inbox

When a team replies to one of your invite or confirmation emails, it lands in the Inbox on your dashboard — not a personal email account. Read and reply to threads right there; your reply is sent from your venue's address, and the team's next reply comes straight back to the Inbox. New registrations show up as threads too, so you can reply to confirm a team's spot in one place.

Frequently Asked Questions

Joining & Playing

Audio & Voices

Creating Quizzes

Game Controls

Settings & Account

Quiz Nights & Paid Events