Himnova Live

Formerly Lumina Live (up to 2.7.2): same app, same repository, your data stays where it was.

Free and open-source church presentation software. Slides, video, images, audio, the Bible and timers on a second screen, with the same two-step flow as EasyWorship: pick it, check the preview, and only then send it LIVE.

Website · Download · Support · Windows, macOS and Linux · English, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese

Features

• Presentations in .ppt, .pptx, .pps, .ppsx, .odp and .pdf, read and drawn by Himnova itself — nothing else to install —, including .pps hymnals with auto-advance and music: each slide's timing and the embedded audio are kept. When a presentation runs out — by itself or a step past its last slide — and past a song's last slide, the projector shows the logo, goes black, starts over, stays on the last slide or moves on to the schedule's next item; a standalone audio stops, loops or plays the next one. Each is chosen once in Settings.
• Any video or audio. Whatever the player can't decode (AVI, WMV, ProRes, AC3…) plays at once through Himnova's own media engine, built on libmpv. Nothing is converted and the original file is never touched. When a video ends, the projector shows the logo, goes black, loops it, holds its last frame or moves on to the schedule's next item — your choice in Settings.
• Bible with full-text search (accent-insensitive), favourite passages and the ones that went live recently. Ships with nine public-domain or freely licensed versions — Reina-Valera 1909, Versión Biblia Libre, King James Version, American Standard Version, World English Bible, Riveduta 1927, Diodati 1885, Almeida 1911 and Bíblia Livre —: a new install gets those of its language, and any other installs with one click, no internet. Two versions side by side for a bilingual service: two columns on the projector, each with its own reference. Import other versions in JSON, Zefania, USFX, OSIS or MyBible/MySword modules. The Reina-Valera 1960 is still under copyright, so it can't ship with the app; a file of it imports like any other.
• Songs: type or paste the lyrics — with headers like [Verse 1] or [Chorus] in English, Spanish, Italian or Portuguese, or none, and the block that repeats becomes the chorus — and the app builds the slides. One order per song, as chips you drag or a line like V1 C V2 C B C. Every slide of a song is drawn at the same size: the largest at which all of them fit. Search by title, number, author or a word of the lyrics (accent-insensitive). Live, the keys jump to a section (1–9 a verse, C the chorus, P the bridge, F the ending; Shift the previous time) and T hides the lyrics. Named themes (background, font, sizes, colours, outline, margins, lines per slide, a copyright footer with your church's CCLI licence, a fade between slides, a looping video behind the lyrics). Two languages at once: a translation under the lyrics, and live you switch between the original, both or the translation. Import from EasyWorship 6's song database (version 7 should read the same; not yet tested with one), OpenLP's songs.sqlite, OpenLyrics files (a second language comes in as the translation), SongSelect lyrics (.txt) and ChordPro files. A CCLI usage report: what went live, once a day, as a CSV.
• A look to start with: eight backgrounds and four moving ones in the library, song themes over them, a quiet background behind the verse, dressed timers and three overlays ready to fill in — all editable, and none of it touches what you already changed.
• A stage screen for the musicians on a third screen: what is live, what comes next and the time — with the song's chords over its words, which the projector never shows. Chords come in from OpenLP, OpenLyrics and ChordPro, or are written in the lyrics as [G]Amazing [C]grace.
• NDI® output: the projector's picture as a video source on your local network, for OBS, vMix or any other NDI program — to stream the service with the lyrics and slides, with the app's own sound (videos, music, hymns; it can be turned off if the stream takes the sound from your mixing desk). Turn it on in Settings › Projection; it needs NDI's free runtime, which you install from ndi.video. 1080p needs a gigabit network cable; over Wi-Fi, use 720p.
• Timers (countdown, clock, stopwatch) and overlays on top of what is projected (a lower third with the preacher's name, the church logo).
• BLACK and LOGO pause whatever is playing and resume it where it was. Without a logo image, LOGO shows your church's name over a background of your choice.
• Built for a live service: if the projector disconnects, the picture comes back by itself when it reconnects; the schedule saves itself; closing the app by accident asks first.
• A welcome on the first launch: language and theme, your church's logo, the screens, what happens at the end of a video or a presentation, your folders, the Bibles and streaming — then a «First steps» list that ticks itself as you try each thing in the real app. It reopens from Settings › About, next to the online guide.
• Saved programs, a media library that starts with the computer's Videos, Pictures, Music and Documents folders, light and dark themes.
• In English, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. The first launch follows the computer's language; change it in Settings › System.

Download

Installers are on Releases: Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit (installer), macOS 13 (Ventura) or later on Apple Silicon (.dmg) and Linux: a .deb for Ubuntu, Debian and Linux Mint, and an AppImage for other distributions. On Ubuntu 24.04 or later use the .deb: AppArmor won't let the AppImage start without --no-sandbox, which turns off a security protection. On Linux the files Himnova's media engine plays (AVI, WMV, WMA…) need the distribution's libmpv: the .deb installs it, and with the AppImage install libmpv2 (libmpv1 on Ubuntu 22.04) and libopengl0.

• The installers aren't signed yet. On Windows: «More info» → «Run anyway». On macOS: System Settings → Privacy & Security → «Open Anyway».

Updates

Himnova Live updates itself from the app. Versions up to 2.2.0-beta.5 can't: download the new one from Releases once, and from then on it can.

• Checking. About 10 seconds after it opens, the app asks GitHub whether this repository's release marked Latest is newer than the installed version. That is the only connection it makes on its own; it sends nothing about you or your church, and there is no telemetry. Turn it off in Settings › About › «Check when the app opens», or check by hand with «Check for updates».
• Downloading (about 200 MB) only starts when you press «Download», so it never competes with a livestream for the network. Before anything is installed, the file is checked against the sha512 published with the release.
• Installing. Choose «Restart and update» or «When the app closes». If something is on the projector or the schedule isn't saved, restarting asks first, exactly like closing the app. A notice appears in the control window when a new version is found, once per version; nothing about updates ever shows on the projector.
• Windows installs silently, and «Restart and update» opens the app again afterwards. If it was installed for all users, Windows asks for permission first.
• macOS: without a paid Apple signature, macOS doesn't let an app replace itself. Himnova Live downloads and checks the .dmg and opens it: drag Himnova Live to Applications and choose «Replace». Your programs, library and settings stay as they are.
• Linux: the AppImage replaces itself; the .deb asks for your password to install.

Support

Himnova Live is free, with no ads and no accounts. If it helps your church, you can help keep it going:

• GitHub Sponsors: by card, from any country.
• Cafecito: in Argentine pesos, from Argentina.

Reporting a bug or fixing a translation helps too.

Development

Requires Node.js 22 or later.

npm install          # also downloads Electron, FFmpeg and the media engine for your platform
npm run dev          # the app with hot reload
npm run typecheck && npm run lint && npm run test   # the minimum before a PR
npm run test:e2e     # end-to-end runs of the real app with Playwright
npm run package:win  # or package:mac / package:linux

Before touching code, read CLAUDE.md: it is the project's architecture and conventions guide, and docs/knowledge/ has the detail of each layer. To contribute, see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Stack: Electron, TypeScript, React, Vite, Tailwind, Zustand and SQLite (better-sqlite3 + Drizzle).

License

GPL-3.0-or-later. You can use, study, modify and share it; if you distribute a modified version, it has to stay free under the same license.

FFmpeg ships alongside the app as a separate program, under its own GPL-3.0 license (see resources/ffmpeg-NOTICE.txt), and so does the media engine with its libmpv (see resources/engine-NOTICE.txt; the engine's source is in native/). The shapes of legacy .ppt files are drawn from LibreOffice's table of Office's shapes, under the MPL-2.0 (see resources/ooxml/mso-shapes-NOTICE.txt). The NDI® output is built against the NDI SDK's headers, under the MIT license (native/ndi/include/); the NDI runtime does not ship with the app — you install it from ndi.video. NDI® is a registered trademark of Vizrt NDI AB. The bundled Bible versions are in the public domain, except the Versión Biblia Libre, © Jonathan Gallagher and Shelly Barrios de Avila under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license, and the Bíblia Livre, © Diego Santos, Mario Sérgio and Marco Teles under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Brazil license (the Almeida 1911's text is in the public domain; its digitization is the CrossWire Bible Society's, under the GNU GPL); where each text comes from and what was changed is in resources/bibles/NOTICE.txt.