Run a quiz with no projector at all

Every live quiz tool assumes a big screen. The host projects the question, players tap answers on their phones, and the results appear on the wall. That works in a lecture hall and fails everywhere else: a pub table, a training room where the HDMI cable has vanished, a team of six around a desk.

Phone-only mode drops the projector. Turn it on for a deck and every player's phone renders the full stage: the question, any image, the timer, the answer options, then the distribution and the correct answer at the reveal. The host runs a compact controller on their own phone.

What changes for the host

The host screen becomes a control surface rather than a display. It shows the join QR permanently, so latecomers can scan it at any point without you hunting for a slide. It shows how many people have answered. When everyone has answered a single-response question, it closes the question on its own instead of making you watch a timer nobody is waiting for.

You read the question aloud, or people read it on their own phones. Both work. The room stops looking at a wall and starts looking at each other, which for a small group is the better arrangement anyway.

What changes for players

More arrives on the phone. In projected mode a player's phone is an input device: tap an option, wait. In phone-only mode it carries the reveal too, including the distribution chart and the leaderboard, plus Co-Host's line about who climbed.

Where it earns its keep

Around a table with under a dozen people, where a projector would be theatre.

In a room where the display has failed. Flipping a deck to phone-only takes one toggle in deck settings, or a ?mode=phoneOnly parameter at present time if you want it for one session without changing the deck.

Walking sessions, workshops that move between rooms, and anywhere the audience is standing.

The tradeoff

Everyone looks down. A projected quiz gives a room a shared focal point, and that shared attention is worth something when the group is large. Above roughly twenty people, the screen is doing real work and phone-only starts costing more than it saves.

The toggle sits in the deck's settings panel under "Running it". It defaults off, so every existing deck keeps behaving exactly as it did.