You may have noticed that it’s been a little while since our last update. Well, that’s because, in the last few months, we’ve seen more youth workers using Sidekick Beta than EVER BEFORE!! That’s right, your games, lessons, pick me’s, wheels, and polls have been stretching Sidekick Beta TO THE LIMIT!!

Thankfully, our intrepid team of Sidekick Beta developers has also been hard at work, making sure that the code that holds Sidekick Beta together is strong enough and stable enough to handle the thousands of you who are putting Sidekick Beta through the paces each week. And after a lot of work (and re-work, and re-re-work), we’re excited to tell you that the most recent update to Sidekick Beta has made it more stable than ever! Plus, we’ve added in a few extra bells and whistles.

Here’s what’s new:

• Bug Fixes:
  • Have you ever noticed how sometimes Sidekick Beta would flicker to black when changing slides? Yeah, we noticed that, too. And we hated it so much that it’s now GONE FOR GOOD!
• Performance Upgrades:
  • This one might be a little more difficult to point out, but hopefully, you’ll notice that Sidekick Beta is much more responsive, especially when working with larger slide decks. 🙂
• Slide Transitions:
  • You can now set your slides to fade much more smoothly! Just click the little gear icon in the top-right of the screen to set the amount of fade you’d like. Then, just sit back and watch the buttery-smooth transitions!
• Pick Me Limit Increase:
  • The original limit of 200 names in Pick Me just wasn’t enough for some users, so we bumped it up to 300! And while doing so, we also made Sidekick Beta handle Pick Me a little more efficiently, so hopefully, you’ll notice that it runs a little more smoothly, too!

And there are a TON of other tiny little fixes that we’ve been rolling out over the past few months, all in the hopes that every time you open Sidekick Beta, you’re getting the best possible experience!

Thanks for being awesome, and thanks for your patience as we continue to make Sidekick Beta the best it can be! In the meantime, we’ll keep working hard toward toward the next big release!

Obviously, we all know that Sidekick is the best thing to happen to youth ministry since that one guy wrote that one book… but did you know that Sidekick keeps getting better every single week? That’s right, each week, we release a new FREE resource that’s available exclusively to Sidekick users. And all you have to do is click the little button in the tool bar that looks like this:

And here’s what’s even better… as of May 30, 2024 (the date I’m writing this post), there are currently TWELVE premium games that are absolutely FREE in Sidekick. All you have to do is go get ’em!

And if you want to get an idea of what’s available, just scroll through the media gallery below:

And don’t forget that we’re adding new FREE content in Sidekick every single week, so be sure to check back often to see what’s new!

Sidekick has only been out for a few days, but as a result of your feedback and suggestions, we already have a few improvements and bug fixes that we want to announce! Users should start to see these over the next few hours, so you’ll definitely see them before church on Sunday.

The following features were improved:

• Presentations that are live now have an indicator on the dashboard, allowing the user to jump directly to the live presentation.
• Videos now autoplay unmuted by default.
• Videos can be set to be muted or unmuted on load.
• Added better descriptive language for Image-based Question Poll.
• Landscape view on mobile shows current slide, controls, and next slide (See below) – NOTE: This is an incremental step to make mobile better, but it’s still work in progress.

(click image to enlarge)

The following bugs were fixed:

• Muting/unmuting no longer restarts the video in Presenter
• Video play button now works when editing
• Mobile voting view now shows the actual slide (See below)

(click image to enlarge)

Plus, I have it on good authority (I just talked to one of our developers) that when you first load your presentation, you’ll notice that the slide thumbnails load A LOT (and I mean A LOT) 🔥 FASTER 🔥! Don’t get me wrong. It was already fast, but now it’s almost too fast… if that was actually possible.

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

These improvements and fixes are a direct result of users like you telling us about your Sidekick experience. I speak for our whole team when I say that our goal is to make Sidekick the best and most engaging presentation tool for youth workers around the world. And we absolutely can’t do that without you. So, seriously, thank you for putting Sidekick through the paces. And thank you even more for letting us know what you think.

You’re the best, and you deserve a day off.

And since I can’t technically give you a day off, I’ll do the next best thing and make sure you know how to contact us with questions, issues, and suggestions…

Contacting support

If you ever have any trouble using Sidekick, or if something just doesn’t seem to do the thing it seems like it should, just reach out to our support team at [email protected]. They’re all super-nice, and super-helpful!

Suggesting New Features

We’d love to hear about any feature that you think would be an awesome addition to Sidekick! Now, users can suggest new features (and vote on features that other users have already submitted) by visiting https://sidekick-tv.canny.io.