Set up Boothless the right way

Install Boothless, then open it and pick your microphone input from Settings — a laptop mic works for a first run.

Paste in your Google Gemini API key, choose the language you want to translate into, and press Start. The source language is auto-detected, so there's nothing else to configure before you're live.

Boothless runs on your own Gemini API key rather than a Boothless-hosted service. Create a free key in Google AI Studio and paste it into Settings — that's the entire setup.

Translation usage is billed directly by Google based on what you actually use. Boothless never resells or marks up AI credits, so the cost you see from Google is the real cost.

Boothless works with a built-in laptop microphone, which is fine for a quick session or a small room.

For a real event, use a dedicated microphone, wireless receiver, or a feed from the venue's mixer. Translation quality depends heavily on how clean the source audio is — a direct feed removes room noise and distance from the mic, which measurably improves both transcription and translation accuracy.

The recommended signal path is: presenter microphone → mixer → USB audio interface → Boothless. Select the USB interface as Boothless's input device in Settings.

This keeps the AI listening to a clean, direct signal instead of room sound bouncing off walls and other attendees — the single biggest lever for translation quality at a real venue.

Turning on Broadcast generates a QR code that encodes your local broadcast address. That code is stable across sessions and app restarts on the same network, so it can be printed on signage or flyers ahead of the event rather than generated on the day.

Attendees scan it with their phone camera, tap Listen in the page that opens, and hear the live translation — no app, no account, on Android or iPhone.

Boothless can send its translated audio out of your computer's normal audio output device into a delegate-unit interpretation system or a tour-guide transmitter — the same hardware venues and rental companies already own.

This is a cabling choice, not a software limitation, and it can run at the same time as the QR-code phone broadcast on the same channel.

No audio detected: confirm the correct input device is selected in Windows and in Boothless Settings, and check the input level meter is moving when you speak.

Venue WiFi drops: Boothless is built to reconnect listeners automatically without resetting the session timer or losing the live stream — a brief hiccup shouldn't require restarting the session.

Port already in use: if another process is using Boothless's usual broadcast address, it falls back automatically and flags the change rather than failing silently.

After checkout, your license key is generated automatically and emailed to you separately from Lemon Squeezy's own order receipt — usually within seconds.

In Boothless, open Settings and find “Have a license key?”, paste in your key, and press Activate. If your 2-hour demo runs out first, the same activation prompt appears automatically.

You can reinstall and reactivate with the same key at any time on the licensed machine.

Feed Boothless a direct audio source rather than a laptop mic whenever the event matters — it's the largest single improvement you can make to translation quality.

Translation quality tracks the speaker's clarity: clean, grammatical speech translates noticeably better than fast, mumbled, or heavily accented delivery.

Print your QR codes ahead of time and test the full scan-to-listen flow before doors open, and keep the operator laptop on a stable connection for the duration of the session.