Timer display

The timer screen is yours to shape. You can change what it shows, set custom fonts and colors, put a background image behind it — per level or across the whole tournament — and rearrange the content itself.

This page covers the Customize menu, which handles what’s displayed and how it looks. Three companion pages cover the layout:

Layout & content — rearranging the cells the timer is built from
Widgets — the ready-made blocks you can drop in
Content — the named text items behind every cell

Tap the display settings icon (Customize) in the top app bar. The sheet is split into two sections — Layouts, for what the timer displays, and Customize, for how it looks — with Go to level above both, for jumping the tournament to another level.

Layouts

Pick a layout; it decides what the timer screen is showing right now. It stays on screen as the levels change, until you pick another. Resetting the tournament returns the timer to the layout at the top of the list, so if you run your games on another one, drag it to the top in Manage layouts. A tournament starts with three:

Current level — the countdown, blinds, and level information
Seating — the open tables with player positions, arranged to fill the screen. It’s blank when no tables are open, and once the tournament is over
Payouts — the prize distribution, joined by the final standings once the tournament is over

Each layout has its own screen contents, font, font color, background color, and background image, so the Payouts screen can look completely different from the countdown. Styling one layout leaves the others alone: Seating and Payouts don’t take the font, colors, or background you give Current level.

Layout gallery

Layout gallery, below the list, opens a gallery of layouts, each shown as your tournament’s whole screen would look with it: the three a tournament starts with, and any that Poker Club HQ adds without an app update. One that Poker Club HQ adds can show a sample tournament instead, and when its card has dots along the bottom, swipe or drag across it to see the layout at other moments, such as a break or the final table. Once you’ve saved a layout, your own are on a My layouts tab beside Browse.

Tap one and it goes on screen. If your tournament already has that same layout, the app switches to it and adds nothing. Otherwise a copy joins the end of your list. Nothing you have is replaced, so if you don’t keep it, delete it in Manage layouts.

Your layout only counts as the same while it matches the one in the gallery: once you’ve changed it, even for a single level, picking the gallery’s one adds a copy. If your list already has a layout by that name, the copy gets a new one, such as Seating copy.

Sort and Edit work as in the widget gallery, so Edit is where you rename or delete a layout you’ve saved.

Manage layouts

Manage layouts, below that, opens your layouts in a sheet. Drag a layout by its handle to move it up or down the list, or tap the menu button at the end of its row to:

Rename it
Duplicate it, adding a copy to the end of the list that you can change without touching the original
Save to My layouts, under a name you give it, so you can use it in any tournament from the Layout gallery
Delete it, after you confirm. A tournament always keeps at least one layout

A layout’s own content goes with it: a duplicate gets a copy, and deleting the layout deletes it.

A saved layout keeps what you set for all levels and for each type of level, and carries the content its cells use, so it reads the same in every tournament, as a saved widget does. What you set for a single level stays behind. Saved layouts are stored with your account, so when you’re signed in they follow you to all your devices.

A saved layout is a copy: changing the layout in your tournament afterwards doesn’t change the one you saved. To update it, save again under the same name. The app tells you the name is already in use and asks what to do: Replace puts this layout in place of the saved one, and Keep both saves it beside the old one as a copy, such as Payouts copy.

Any layout can be renamed or deleted, the three a tournament starts with included, and Layout gallery adds back any one of them. Layout gallery, Manage layouts, and Import layouts are left out of the menu while you have unsaved Layout & content changes.

Once you’ve changed anything about your layouts, a Reset to defaults button appears at the top of the sheet. After you confirm, it puts the tournament back to the three layouts it started with, as they came: layouts you added are deleted, your changes to the others are undone, and so is any content you changed for all layouts. Save a layout you want to keep to My layouts first. To reset only the layout that’s showing, see Reset and import.

Customize

These change the layout that’s showing.

Font — a custom font for the timer text
Font color — a custom text color; clear the selection to return to the default
Background color — a solid background behind the timer; clear the selection to return to the theme default
Background image — an image behind the timer content, drawn edge-to-edge and cropped to fill
Layout & content — turns edit mode on
Show/hide chips — the chip stacks along the edge of the screen, when the tournament has chips still in play. Denominations the blinds have outgrown drop off on their own — see Chips leave the timer as the blinds pass them
Show/hide tables — miniature table diagrams showing seating, when tables exist
Reset to defaults — once the layout has something to reset; see Reset and import

Below a dividing line comes Show player photos / Show player names, which reaches past the layout that’s showing: it sets how seated players appear on those diagrams, for the whole tournament rather than per level.

Show/hide chips and Show/hide tables work wherever the chips and tables are: beside your layout, where the timer places them, or in a Chips or Tables widget, which puts them in a place of your choosing.

After the tournament ends

Once the last player is knocked out, the chips and the table diagrams drop off the screen on their own. The chips are out of play and the only seat left is the winner’s, so the screen gives the space to the results instead — see When the tournament finishes for what the layout does at the same moment.

This happens in every view, Seating included, which is left blank, and the Show/hide chips and Show/hide tables switches leave the menu, since they’d do nothing. To keep chips or tables on screen after the game, put a Chips or Tables widget in the layout. A widget stays until its own condition hides it or you switch it off, and its switch stays in the menu with it.

Choosing what a change applies to

Each customization sheet has an Update: control that decides how far the change reaches in the layout that’s showing:

this level — only the level you’re viewing
all blind levels, all break levels, or all pregame levels — every level of that type
all levels — every level in the tournament

This lets you set a calm blue background for breaks and an energetic red one for blind levels, in any layout. A change never reaches another layout. The same choice appears when you save a Layout & content edit, once the tournament allows content per level.

QR code

The QR code that lets other devices watch a live, read-only copy of the timer isn’t in this menu. It has its own button in the app bar, next to Customize, for creating, showing, hiding, and deleting it. See QR code sharing.

Reset and import

Reset to defaults appears once the layout that’s showing has something to reset. It opens a list of exactly what you’ve customized in that layout, so you can reset a single thing — the font, say — or choose All customizations to reset everything in it. Either way, your other layouts stay as they are. When a single thing is all the layout has to reset, the list shows just that, without All customizations. To reset every layout at once, see Manage layouts.

A reset never empties a layout. One you duplicated or added from the Layout gallery has no built-in version behind it, so it keeps its arrangement and its content, and All customizations returns only its font, colors, background, and chip and table switches to their defaults. To get a gallery layout back as it came, pick it in the gallery again.

Import layouts, below Manage layouts, appears once another tournament has customizations. It replaces this tournament’s layouts with another tournament’s, which saves rebuilding layouts you already like. Each layout’s font, colors, and background come with it, along with any content items the layouts depend on. If you’ve changed anything in your own layouts, the app asks before replacing them. Save a layout you want to keep to My layouts first.

Adaptive layout

The timer arranges its supplementary elements around the main content based on the space available:

The main content is scaled to fit, so the sizes you set in Layout & content are proportions rather than fixed point sizes — a layout built on a phone still fills a television.
Rows and columns set to Auto turn with the screen, a row on a wide screen and a column on a tall one. The default Current level layout does this. See Rows and columns that follow the screen.
Chips and tables sit below the timer or beside it, whichever way the screen is shaped.
Tables claim more room as more of them are in play — from about a third of the screen at three tables up to about seventy percent at ten.
The QR code panel — the code with its join code printed underneath — drops into whichever corner has room, preferring the bottom right. Only when no corner can fit a scannable code does the layout reserve a strip for it.
A layout with a Chips, Tables, or QR code widget shows that one where the widget is, and nothing of it is placed beside the layout.