Support & FAQ.

BITS & SETS holds your material as bits and builds sets from them. That is the whole model, and most questions are about where one ends and the other begins — so this page starts there, then covers the stage, the show log, and the backup.

Bits, beats and sets

A bit is one idea: a premise and a pool of beats. A beat is one line — a punchline, a tag on it, or the line you leave on. You write a bit once.

A setlist (a set) is an ordered pick of bits for one night, and for each bit, which of its beats you are doing. The same bit can be in ten sets with a different pick in each; editing the bit updates all of them, because there is only one bit.

A show is what happened when you performed a set. You log one from the end of performance mode, and every bit keeps its own history of shows across every set it has been in.

The three marks: > + //

Every beat has a type, shown as a coloured badge with a mark in it. Tap the badge to change it.

• > Punchline — the laugh.
• + Topper — a tag on the laugh you just got.
• // Closer — the one you leave the bit on. A set always plays it last, whatever order the beats are in.

The types matter for timing: each one gets its own pause after it, for the laugh, and you set those pauses yourself.

How long is my set?

The clock on a set is an estimate, built from three things you can change in Settings:

• Pace — words per minute, with a fast, medium and slow preset. This is what makes a long bit longer than a short one.
• Pauses — seconds added after each beat, by type, for the laugh. These do not change with the words: a one-word punchline can still get a six-second laugh.
• Between bits — seconds added for each transition.

A set can carry its own pace, and a single bit in a set can be given a fixed duration when you know better than the estimate. Give the set a target and the editor shows what is left, or what is over — five minutes means five minutes.

Performance mode

Open a set and tap Perform. One bit per screen, big type, black background in both appearances, the elapsed time at the top, and the screen stays awake for the whole set. Tap or swipe to go on; swipe back to return. A stray touch on the edge does not leave the set. At the end you can log the show, or just leave.

Logging a show

Each bit gets one of three: Killed, OK or Died, and a note if you want one — what happened, what to cut. The log is kept with the set, and each bit shows its own shows, across every set, at the bottom of its editor. A set also tells you when its bits have changed since the last show, so you know you are about to do something new.

Status, tags, languages and search

A bit is an Idea, in Testing, Working, or Retired. Retired bits stay in the notebook but are hidden when you add bits to a set. Tags are free text, separated by commas. Each bit has a language — English, French, Italian, or other — and Settings sets the default for new ones; the timing does not change with the language, only the filter does.

Search looks inside premises and beats and shows you the line it matched, with the beat's mark, so you can find a bit from three words of a tag you half remember.

Archive, and delete for good

A bit is never deleted in one move. Swipe it left in the list, or use the … menu in the editor, and it goes to the Archive in Settings, out of every set it was in. From there you can restore it — it returns to those sets — or delete it for good, and the app names the sets that lose it before you confirm. A set, on the other hand, is deleted with a swipe; the bits in it are untouched.

Backup: where it is, and the passphrase

Your material is encrypted on the phone and kept out of iPhone backups on purpose, so a new phone starts empty. The app's own backup is how it moves.

• Set a passphrase in Settings → Backup. Type it twice and confirm you have written it down. The first backup is written the moment you tap Set.
• Where it goes: one file, bits-backup.enc, in your iCloud Drive under a folder named BITS & SETS — open the Files app and it is there. If iCloud Drive is off for the app, the file is written to the app's own folder on the phone instead, and the Backup screen tells you which.
• When: automatically whenever you leave the app, if anything changed, at most once every ten minutes; or by hand with Back up now.
• Export: Export backup file hands the same encrypted file to the share sheet — AirDrop it to a Mac, save it somewhere else, send it to yourself.

There is no recovery. The file is encrypted with a key derived from your passphrase, and the passphrase is stored nowhere but your phone's Keychain. Lose it and the backup cannot be opened — not by you, not by us. Write it down somewhere that is not the phone.

Restoring on a new iPhone

• Install the app, then Settings → Backup → Restore from a file.
• Pick the file — your own from iCloud Drive if it is there, or any bits-backup.enc from Files.
• Type the passphrase for that file. Nothing changes on the phone yet.
• The app shows what the file holds against what the phone holds now: bits, setlists, shows, and when the file was exported.
• Type REPLACE and confirm. Everything on the phone is replaced with the file — there is no merge. The passphrase that opened the file becomes this phone's backup passphrase.

A wrong passphrase is refused and nothing is touched. A restore that cannot complete is rolled back whole; the app checks its own counts before it says done.

Light and dark

Settings → Appearance: system, light or dark. Performance mode is dark in both, on purpose — nothing may put a white screen in front of an audience.

iPhone only?

Yes, for now. BITS & SETS is built for iPhone first and runs as an open beta on TestFlight — the front page has the link. There is no Android build, and nothing on this site should be read as a promise of one. When there is an App Store link, the same place will carry it.

Something else?

Write to bits@grunt.be. If a timing looks wrong, the set's bit count and target with a screenshot of the editor says more than a paragraph; if a restore refuses a file, say which screen it stopped on. The precise version of the privacy promise is the privacy policy.