The BIGtextSIGN guide

Getting started

BIGtextSIGN has two screens. The sign is what you hold up. Settings is where you build it. That is the whole app.

1. Open BIGtextSIGN. You will see the sign, with a small round button in the bottom-right corner.
2. Tap that button to open Sign settings.
3. Tap the message box and type what the sign should say. The preview at the top of the page updates as you type.
4. Tap the amber tick in the top bar — or the back arrow — to return to the sign.

There is no save button anywhere in the app. Every change is written as you make it and is still there the next time you open BIGtextSIGN.

The sign screen

The sign fills the whole display. There is deliberately nothing on it except your message and the settings button.

• The button fades, it never disappears. About five seconds after you arrive it drops to barely-there so it does not spoil the sign. It still works while faint. A tap anywhere on the screen brings it back to full strength.
• The screen is held awake while the sign is up, so it will not dim or lock in the middle of being useful. You can turn this off under Display if you would rather it behaved normally.
• The device turns to match the sign. Whichever orientation you chose in Settings is the one the sign screen uses, regardless of how you are holding it.

The settings page

Everything about the sign is on this one scrolling page, grouped into sections. A live preview is pinned to the top and stays there as you scroll, showing the real sign at the real shape, so you can judge a change without going back and forth.

Two buttons sit in the top bar. The circular arrow resets the sign you are currently editing back to defaults — it asks first, and it only affects the one showing, so the other two saved signs are left alone. The amber tick takes you back to the sign.

Message

Type anything. Line breaks are kept exactly where you put them, which is the easiest way to control how the sign breaks across lines. The text is then sized automatically to fill the screen.

ALL CAPS

Sets the message in capitals whatever you typed. Usually easier to read from a distance, and it makes better use of the screen with the condensed faces.

Keep on one line

Stops the message wrapping, even if that means much smaller text. Useful with Marquee, and for short words you want as one solid bar.

Alignment

Left, centre or right, which matters once you have more than one line.

Typeface

Eleven faces, each previewed in its own type so you can see what you are picking. They are ordered heaviest and most sign-like first.

All eleven are bundled with the app rather than downloaded, so BIGtextSIGN works with no network at all. Their licences are in the app under Settings → Fonts and licences.

Colours

Text colour and background colour each offer 14 presets. Tap the custom swatch for a full picker with hue, saturation and brightness if none of them is the colour you want.

Gradient background

Switch this on and the background fades between two colours, corner to corner. The first colour control becomes Background from and a second, Background to, appears beneath it.

Background picture

Tap Choose a picture to put a photo from your library behind the words. The first time you do this, iOS will ask for permission to access your photos.

• Fill covers the whole screen and crops the edges. Fit shows the entire picture with bars at the sides.
• Darken dims the picture behind the message. Push it up until the words read cleanly; most photos need more than you would think.
• Replace swaps the picture, Remove takes it away and returns you to the plain background colour.

Pictures you choose are copied into BIGtextSIGN's own storage, because the system may clear the cache the photo picker hands files from. Anything the sign no longer refers to is deleted when you leave Settings.

Stickers

Stickers are pictures, animated GIFs and arrows placed on top of the sign by hand. Tap Add stickers — or Arrange stickers once you have some — to open the sign at its real shape with the sticker tools.

Adding

Add a photo or GIF from your library, or an arrow. Twelve is the limit and the count is shown in the title bar.

Arranging

• Tap a sticker to pick it up.
• Drag to move it.
• Pinch with two fingers to scale and turn it at once. The size and rotation sliders do the same thing for when a fingertip is not precise enough.
• The selected sticker comes to the front, so you are never trying to move something from behind something else.
• Remove takes away the one currently selected.

GIFs and arrow stickers

GIFs animate and loop on their own. Arrow stickers can take any of the arrow animations, and you aim them by rotating them rather than with a separate direction setting.

Animation & light effects

These are two separate controls, and they stack — a sign can scroll and glow.

Animation — how the message moves

Speed applies to whichever animation is running.

Light effect — what sits over the words

Halo sizes are worked out as a fraction of the text size, so an effect looks the same whether the words are filling a phone or a tablet.

Arrow

Turn on Show an arrow for pointing people somewhere. It has its own set of controls.

• Direction — eight, from up round to up-left.
• Style — Solid (a shaft with a head), Chevron (a single bold angle) or Triple (three angles in a row).
• Placement — above, below, left of the text, right of the text, or Arrow only for a sign that is nothing but a direction.
• Size — how much of the sign it takes up.
• Colour — matches the text by default; switch Match text colour off to give it its own.
• Animation — Slide (drift along the direction it points), Pulse, Flash, Bounce, or Chase, which lights the parts up in sequence and looks best with the Triple style.

Display

• Edge margin — how much clear space to leave around the message. Less margin means bigger text; a little margin stops the words looking like they are falling off the screen.
• Portrait or landscape — a choice, not a response to how you are holding the device. The sign screen turns to match. The editor stays free to rotate so you can keep typing comfortably.
• Upside down — turns the sign through 180°, for when you are holding it out towards someone across a table or over a barrier.
• Keep screen awake — on by default. Switch it off and the display sleeps on its usual schedule.

Three saved signs

The cards at the top of Settings are three separate signs. Each card shows its message and a dot in its own colours, and one of them is selected.

• Edits go into the sign that is selected. Switching to another and back finds the first exactly as you left it.
• Reset clears only the sign currently showing.
• Nothing needs saving. The switch itself is written out immediately, so you can close the app straight afterwards.

It is a good setup for events: one sign for the name you are meeting, one for the arrow pointing at your table, one for the thing you will need again in an hour.

Home-screen widget

The sign that is showing can also live on your home screen, so it is there at a glance without opening the app.

Adding it

1. Touch and hold an empty part of your home screen until the apps jiggle.
2. Tap Edit in the top corner, then Add Widget.
3. Search for BIGtextSIGN, choose small, medium or large, and tap Add Widget.

• The widget shows whichever of your three saved signs is selected. Change the sign, or switch to another, and the widget follows.
• The message is re-fitted to each widget size, so a small square widget still gets words as large as a square allows.
• Tap the widget to open the full-screen sign.
• Widgets do not move, so the widget shows your sign without its animation. Glow and neon still show; the shine sweep does not.

Troubleshooting

My text is smaller than I expected

Almost always one of three things. A single long word sets the ceiling, because BIGtextSIGN will not split words across lines — try a shorter word, or a hyphen you put in yourself. Or Keep on one line is switched on. Or you typed a space where you wanted a line break: press return in the message box and the break is kept exactly where you put it.

Turning on ALL CAPS and choosing Anton or Bebas Neue will also buy you a noticeable amount of size.

The widget is showing an old sign

The widget is redrawn a moment after each change. If you leave the app straight after editing, the update can be held back until you next open it — open BIGtextSIGN once and the widget catches up. If the widget says to open the app, it has not been given a sign yet; opening the app sets it.

The sign will not rotate when I turn my phone

That is intended. The sign uses the orientation you chose under Settings → Display rather than following the device, so that sticker positions and the shape you designed against stay put. Change it under Display → Portrait / Landscape.

If you also have your device's rotation lock on, that will not affect BIGtextSIGN's sign screen either way.

The app cannot open my photos

Photo access is asked for the first time you choose a picture. If you declined, go to iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Photos → BIGtextSIGN and choose All Photos or Selected Photos. With Selected Photos you can add more at any time from the same screen.

If a specific file gives an error, it is usually a format the system cannot decode as an image — try exporting it from Photos first, or pick a different one.

My background picture disappeared

Pictures are copied into BIGtextSIGN's own storage when you choose them, so this should not happen — but if a sign is reset, or the app is deleted and reinstalled, the copies go with it. Choose the picture again from your library.

The screen dimmed while I was holding the sign up

Check Settings → Display → Keep screen awake is on. Note that iOS Low Power Mode can still dim the display and shorten the auto-lock timer regardless of what any app asks for.

Can I use an emoji in the message?

You can type anything the keyboard offers. The bundled typefaces do not contain emoji glyphs, so results vary by face — if an emoji is central to the sign, adding it as a sticker gives you a predictable result and lets you place and size it.

Where did my sign go?

Check which of the three cards at the top of Settings is selected — edits go into the selected one, and switching leaves the others as they were. Your other two signs are still there under the other cards.

Does BIGtextSIGN work without an internet connection?

Yes, completely. The typefaces are bundled with the app and it makes no network requests at all — by design, because a sign is usually needed somewhere with bad signal.

How do I delete everything the app has stored?

Delete the app. Your signs and any copied pictures live inside its own storage on the device and are removed with it. There is no copy anywhere else — see the privacy policy.

Contact support

Questions, bugs, or a feature you wish existed — email cavan@judgestudios.com.

To get a useful answer faster, include:

• your device and iOS version;
• the version of BIGtextSIGN;
• what you did, what happened, and what you expected instead;
• a screenshot or a photo of the sign, if it is a visual problem.