Running a Friday khutbah with Live Session
Take manual control of your kiosk display for Friday prayers — run your khutbah or a slide deck, right from your phone or a tablet. New to Live Session? See Understanding Live Session Mode first.
Quick answer
Khutbah & Live Session mode isn't available until your mosque is verified — see Signing up, your trial, and getting verified. Once verified, go to Live Session, sign in, and pick the Khutbah or Lecture tab. Khutbah is pre-selected the moment you open that tab — nothing goes live until you actually press Start Camera. A deck on the Lecture tab, by contrast, goes live the instant you tap it. Tap End session when you're done to hand control back to the normal rotation.
Sign in
Live Session uses the same admin login as your admin panel. Anyone signed in to your mosque's account can start or take over a session — there's no separate PIN or role.
The View live kiosk ↗ link at the top of the page opens your actual display in a new tab, so you can double-check what's live from the same device you're operating from.
Khutbah tab
This week's Khutbah — pulled from whatever you last saved in the admin panel's Khutbah tab — is staged the moment you open this tab, with no tap needed. Staging just means it's ready on this page and in the preview; nothing reaches the actual kiosk display until you press Start Camera further down.
The Caption Bar toggle here switches between plain text captions and Image Overlays — turning the image on layers a title-card image behind your khutbah text rather than replacing it, so the text keeps showing either way. See What the congregation sees and Panel images and Caption Bar. Panel B, next to it, switches between the timetable and an uploaded image.
Lecture tab
Tap a deck from the grid to go live with it immediately, full-size on the main display — this is Slide-Dominant, the default, and it doesn't wait for anything. If you'd rather the camera take over full-bleed instead of the deck, switch the Main-mode toggle to Camera-Dominant — this one does wait: nothing changes on the kiosk until you press Start Camera. Image overlay, below that, layers a title-card image over whichever content is showing (deck or camera), the same way Caption Bar does on the Khutbah tab.
Panel B on this tab has no toggle — it shows the timetable normally and switches to the live camera automatically the instant Camera Capture is actually running.
Advance slide by slide
Use the ‹ Prev / Next › buttons to move through your deck or khutbah, on either tab. There's a live preview on this page too, facing the same way you are, so you can see roughly what the congregation sees without turning around.
If Image Overlays is on, the thumbnail grid next to Prev/Next picks which image is currently showing — Prev/Next itself still pages through your text or slides independently, it isn't replaced by the grid.
Camera Capture
Pick your camera and microphone from the dropdowns, then tap Start Camera. What that button actually does depends on what's staged:
- On the Khutbah tab, or the Lecture tab with Camera-Dominant selected — nothing reaches the kiosk until this exact moment. Pressing Start Camera is what makes it go live, all at once.
- On the Lecture tab with Slide-Dominant selected — your deck is already live (see step 3). Start Camera here just turns the camera on for Panel B, alongside the deck that's already showing.
The Live status diagram above Camera Capture shows you the real state of the kiosk, not what's merely staged on this page — Main only highlights as Camera once the feed has genuinely started. If you've pressed Start Camera and Main still isn't highlighted, the camera hasn't actually reached the kiosk yet — see Troubleshooting below.
Camera Capture unlocks once your mosque is verified — see Signing up, your trial, and getting verified.
End the session
Tap End session when you're finished. Your kiosk display goes back to its normal slide rotation right away, and the camera stops.
Switching from the Khutbah tab to the Lecture tab (or back) while something is live asks you to confirm first — doing so ends the current session completely, the same as End session, before staging whatever the other tab has ready.
Troubleshooting: the camera feed doesn't appear on kiosk
If you've pressed Start Camera and the Live status diagram still isn't showing Camera highlighted, check these in order:
- Another tab or device has the same physical camera open. Only one application can use a given camera at a time — close any other tab, app, or device (including a second /present session) that might already be using it, then press Start Camera again.
- The browser's camera permission was requested, not granted. Camera permission is per-website (per-origin) — granting it once on /present doesn't carry over to the kiosk display, since it's a different page. Check your browser's site settings for the kiosk's own address, and make sure the permission prompt was actually accepted there, not dismissed or blocked.
Common questions
Can more than one person run Live Session at the same time?
Anyone signed in to your mosque's admin account can open Live Session and take control — there's currently no separate handoff step, so it's worth coordinating with whoever else might be operating it.
What if I forget to end the session?
Your kiosk display stays on the last slide you left it on until someone ends the session or starts a new one.
Still stuck?
The Awqōt team is happy to help with Live Session.