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 Control Panel (awqot.app/present), sign in, then choose who's presenting from the picker screen and enter a 4-digit PIN — there's no session until a correct PIN is entered. Once you're in, use the Camera and Slides tabs next to the preview. Tapping a tab never changes the kiosk by itself — it only decides what you can tap next. A slide deck goes live the instant you tap it. The khutbah goes live when the camera is running and you tap its tile (or when you press Start Camera with the tile ready). Tap Reset Session to clear the kiosk, or Leave session to go back to the picker.
Sign in
Live Session Control Panel signs you in with the same account as your Mosque Admin Dashboard (awqot.app/admin) — this identifies which mosque's display you're controlling. It doesn't identify who's actually presenting, though; that's a separate step next.
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.
Install Live Session Control Panel as an app (optional, once per device)
If a banner offers to install Live Session Control Panel (awqot.app/present) as an app, it's worth doing on any tablet or phone that runs Live Session Control Panel regularly — it launches full-screen with no browser address bar, and loads instantly. On Android, tap Install in the banner. On iPhone/iPad, Safari doesn't support that button — instead tap Share, then Add to Home Screen. Dismissing the banner is remembered on that device, so it won't keep reappearing.
Choose who's presenting
After signing in, you'll see a picker screen — a grid of tiles, In-house always first, followed by one tile per ustaz or ustazah currently approved at your mosque (see Understanding asatizah accounts for how an ustaz or ustazah gets added here). Tap the tile for whoever is actually presenting, then enter their 4-digit PIN. Nothing about the session starts until a correct PIN is entered — signing in alone isn't enough.
The first time anyone uses In-house on a given mosque, there's no PIN yet — you'll be asked to set one (enter it twice to confirm) before the session starts. From then on, that PIN is what's asked for every time In-house is selected.
Forgot the PIN? Tap Forgot PIN? on the PIN screen, enter the account password — the one you use to sign in to the mosque's Awqōt account (for an ustaz or ustazah, their own account password) — then choose a new PIN. The password is only used to check it's you; nothing about the account changes. To change the In-house PIN while you still know it, go to Mosque Admin Dashboard (awqot.app/admin) → Profile → In-house PIN, enter the Current PIN, then the New PIN twice (Confirm new PIN) and tap Set PIN. A wrong current PIN counts toward the same five-attempt lockout as the PIN screen.
If someone else is already live when you enter a correct PIN, you'll see who and be asked to confirm before continuing — doing so ends their session immediately and starts yours instead. A wrong PIN tells you how many attempts are left; five wrong attempts locks that PIN for 15 minutes.
If an ustaz or ustazah's PIN was reset by a mosque admin, this screen can't do anything about it — it'll tell them to sign in to their own Awqōt account to set a new one (see Understanding asatizah accounts), not to try setting it from the shared tablet.
If you switch to another app or tab and come back, this screen reappears as a lock — the session itself and whatever's live on the kiosk keep running unaffected underneath. Entering the same PIN again picks up exactly where you left off, with nothing to restart. When nothing is live, the page also locks itself after 5 minutes untouched; while something is live it doesn't lock just because you're not tapping.
To change who's presenting — for example from In-house to an ustaz or ustazah — tap Leave session (the red link at the top right of the page). It ends your session and brings you back to this picker.
Find your way around
Everything is on one page. At the top, the status bar says what is on the kiosk right now — LIVE or STANDBY — and holds Start Camera / Stop Camera and Reset Session. Under it, On the display has the Camera and Slides tabs, the Preview, and Prev / Next. Content comes next, with your tiles: the khutbah tile and your slide decks. Display settings holds the Kiosk layout, the Caption Bar / Image overlay choice and Panel B. On a wide screen, Display settings sits to the right of the Preview instead of underneath.
The status bar only talks about what's really on the kiosk. If the caption text is off but the camera is running, it says Camera live, not khutbah live.
Camera and Slides tabs
The two tabs sit in the On the display row, beside the Preview. Tapping a tab only puts you in standby for that side — nothing changes on the kiosk until you tap something. If you tap the wrong tab, just tap the other one.
- Camera tab (In-house, when a khutbah is loaded) — the khutbah is selected and ready, and your slide decks are greyed out. If a deck is still showing on the kiosk, its tile says Currently Active and stays greyed until you leave it.
- Slides tab — the khutbah tile is greyed out and your slide decks can be tapped.
The tiles are under the Prev / Next row. Asatizah have no khutbah tile and never see it — for an ustaz or ustazah, Slides shows the deck full-size, and Camera puts the camera view over it once the camera is running.
The khutbah tile
This week's Khutbah — pulled from whatever you last saved in the Mosque Admin Dashboard's Khutbah tab — is ready on the Camera tab with no tap needed. The tile is also the captions switch:
- Camera running — the first tap puts the khutbah live with the caption text on. Each later tap hides or shows the text.
- Camera not running — the first tap only gets it ready (the page says Not live yet). Press Start Camera and the khutbah goes live with the caption text on.
The tile shows LIVE only while the text is on. With the text off, the khutbah is not live — it's back in standby. The camera can still be running, which is handy for a talk or class where you want the camera but no khutbah text.
Slide decks
On the Slides tab, tap a deck and it goes live straight away, full-size on the main display. If you start the camera while a deck is showing, the camera appears in Panel B beside it — the deck stays full-size.
The page asks you to confirm in just one situation: when your tap would swap a live deck for the khutbah, or the live khutbah for a deck, because the page you were on is lost. Nothing else asks. If a deck is still on the kiosk and the camera is off, tap the khutbah tile first (and confirm) — Start Camera won't take the khutbah live until you have.
Move through slides
Use ‹ Prev / Next › under the Preview to move through your deck or khutbah. The box in the middle shows where you are, like 4 / 18. To jump, tap the number, type the caption or page you want, and it goes there at once. Tap away or press Enter and the box goes back to the number you're on. There's a live preview above, facing the same way you are, so you can see roughly what the congregation sees without turning around.
In standby, jumping only moves your place on this page — the kiosk isn't touched until that content is live.
Start and stop the camera
Tap Start Camera in the status bar. What that does depends on what's ready:
- On the Camera tab with the khutbah ready — nothing reaches the kiosk until this moment. Pressing Start Camera makes it go live, all at once, with the caption text on.
- With a slide deck already live — your deck is already showing. Start Camera just turns the camera on for Panel B, alongside it.
The Kiosk layout card under Display settings shows the real state of the kiosk, not what's merely ready on this page — A only highlights as Camera once the feed has genuinely started. If you've pressed Start Camera and A still isn't highlighted, the camera hasn't reached the kiosk yet — see Troubleshooting below.
There's nothing to pick here — Live Session Control Panel only starts and stops the camera; the video itself only ever plays on the kiosk display, never on this page. Which physical camera the kiosk actually uses is set up separately, once, on the kiosk machine itself — see "Setting up which camera your kiosk uses" below.
The camera picture in the Preview is a periodic snapshot from the kiosk's own camera, refreshed automatically roughly every 30 seconds — not a continuous video feed. It reads Connecting camera… until the first picture arrives, then a green Camera live badge shows while it's fresh. Give it a few seconds after Start Camera, and don't expect it to update smoothly; the actual live video only plays on the kiosk display itself. The Preview only refreshes while this page is on screen — see Common kiosk display issues if it seems stuck.
Start Camera unlocks once your mosque is verified — see Signing up, your trial, and getting verified.
Caption Bar and Image overlay
Under Display settings, one control covers both. With the khutbah selected it's called Caption Bar: choose Coloured bar or Image overlay. The text always sits over the image, it doesn't replace it. When the caption text is off, the left choice reads None. With a deck selected it's called Image overlay: None or Image overlay, and the image sits over your slide.
Choosing Image overlay opens your images, with a name under each thumbnail — tap one to use it. Names are set, and can be changed with Rename, from the Live tab of your Mosque Admin Dashboard. Panel B (khutbah only) switches the side panel between the timetable and an uploaded image. See What the congregation sees and Panel images and Caption Bar.
Reset Session, Leave session, Sign out
- Reset Session (status bar) — clears what's on the kiosk and stops the camera. Your display goes back to its normal slide rotation right away, and you stay signed in, ready to start again.
- Leave session (red link in the header) — ends your session and takes you back to the picker, which is how you switch between In-house and an ustaz or ustazah. It asks you to confirm, because anything live ends.
- Sign out — leaves the account altogether, and ends what's live.
You don't have to remember to end a session — one that's quiet for too long, or that runs into the next adzan, ends on its own. See Understanding Live Session Mode.
What camera your kiosk can use
The camera has to be a video device that the kiosk PC's browser can see. In practice that means:
- A USB camera plugged into the kiosk PC, or
- An HDMI capture card (it shows up on the PC as a camera). This is also how an existing CCTV or video camera gets in: connect its HDMI output to the capture card. A CCTV feed only works through a capture card.
Network camera streams — IP cameras, RTSP links, or a CCTV app's stream address — aren't supported; there's no place to enter a stream address.
Two more things have to be true on the kiosk PC:
- No other app can have the camera open. Only one application can use a camera at a time. Close anything else that might be using it — another browser tab, Zoom or Teams, or OBS. If you want OBS for your own recording or streaming, use Window Capture on the kiosk's browser window instead of letting OBS open the camera.
- The browser must allow the camera for the kiosk's own address (yourmosque.awqot.app). Permission is remembered per address, so it is separate from the Mosque Admin Dashboard's address. The first time a camera starts, the browser on the kiosk asks — choose Allow. If it was blocked, click the lock or camera icon in the address bar of the kiosk's page, set Camera to Allow, and reload the kiosk page.
Setting up which camera your kiosk uses
Live Session Control Panel only starts and stops the kiosk's camera — it doesn't choose which physical camera that is. That's a one-time setup, done from the kiosk machine itself, not from Live Session Control Panel:
- On the kiosk machine, sign in to Mosque Admin Dashboard (awqot.app/admin) and go to the Display tab.
- In the Kiosk camera section there, tap Detect cameras on this machine. This lists the cameras on that machine and shows whether the camera can be opened. If it says Could not access the camera — check permissions and connections, see Common kiosk display issues.
- Pick the camera from the list and tap Save. If your kiosk only has one camera, you can leave this unset — the kiosk falls back to whichever camera it finds first — but setting it explicitly avoids ambiguity on a kiosk with more than one.
- Use Clear (use first available) to remove a saved preference and go back to that automatic fallback.
The chosen camera is saved per mosque and survives a browser data wipe on the kiosk. What a wipe does reset is the browser's camera permission for the kiosk's own address — allow it again as described above.
Troubleshooting: the camera feed doesn't appear on kiosk
If you've pressed Start Camera and the Kiosk layout card 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 Live Session Control Panel tab) that might already be using it, then press Start Camera again.
- The kiosk's camera permission was never granted, or was reset. This can't be fixed from Live Session Control Panel. On the kiosk machine, allow the camera for the kiosk's own address (yourmosque.awqot.app), as described in "What camera your kiosk can use" above, then reload the kiosk page. You can also tap Detect cameras on this machine under Kiosk camera on the Display tab to check that the camera opens and which one is saved.
- The camera isn't a video device on the kiosk PC. A USB camera or an HDMI capture card is needed; IP and RTSP streams aren't supported.
For the exact message Could not access the camera — check permissions and connections, and for a Preview that stays on Connecting camera…, see Common kiosk display issues.
Common questions
Can more than one person run Live Session Control Panel at the same time?
Only one session can be live per mosque at a time. If someone enters a correct PIN while another occupant is already live, they're shown who and asked to confirm before continuing — confirming ends that person's session immediately and starts a new one. It's still worth coordinating with whoever else might be operating it, so a session doesn't get taken over mid-khutbah by accident.
What if I forget to end the session?
It ends on its own. After an hour with no tap, the page asks Still presenting? — tap it to carry on. If nobody taps for another 30 minutes, the session ends and the kiosk goes back to its normal display. A live session also ends at the next adzan, with a heads-up 5 minutes before, and a khutbah session has a hard limit of 45 minutes (2½ hours for anything else), counted from when it started. The full details are in Understanding Live Session Mode.
Will my tablet's screen switch off during the khutbah?
While your session is live, Live Session Control Panel asks the device to keep its screen on, so the tablet's own screen timeout shouldn't dim it in the middle of the khutbah. It only does this while something is live — not while you're still setting up — and lets go as soon as you leave or the session ends. It's a best effort: if your browser doesn't support it, the device's normal screen timeout still applies, so on an older tablet it's worth setting a longer timeout in the device's own settings. It also pauses if you switch to another app or tab, and resumes when you come back.
Still stuck?
The Awqōt team is happy to help with Live Session Control Panel.