Tally Light for Zoom Calls and Remote Guests

April 2026 · 4 min read

Hardware tally lights are great on set — but they stop working the moment your guest connects from another city. Their phone can't receive a wired signal. Your $400 tally box doesn't reach across the internet. The result: your remote guest doesn't know when they're live, looks away at the wrong moment, or keeps talking when you've cut away.

Cue Light solves this with a single link. Paste it into the Zoom or Teams chat. When you tap Live, their browser tab goes fullscreen green. Works over any internet connection, any device, zero install.

How to give a Zoom guest a tally light

1. Open Cue Light Go to cuelight.io/app on your phone or laptop. A room is created instantly — no signup.
2. Copy the display link Tap the Copy Display Link button. This is the URL your remote guest will open.
3. Paste it in the video call chat Drop the link into the Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet chat before you go live. Takes 5 seconds.
4. Guest opens it in a browser tab They click the link — their tab goes fullscreen black (standby). Now they're connected.
5. Tap Live when you're rolling Hit the green Live button on your controller. Their screen goes fullscreen green instantly — visible even if their phone is at arm's length from the camera.

Works with every video call platform

Why hardware tally lights don't work for remote guests

Traditional hardware tally systems (Hollyland, Cuebi, companion hardware) communicate over a local WiFi network or RF signal. The moment your guest is on a different network — a home office, a hotel room, a remote studio — the tally signal can't reach them. You'd need to physically ship them a receiver unit and have them configure it on their network. In practice, nobody does this.

Tally Arbiter, the popular open-source tally server, also runs on a local network by default. Setting it up to work over the internet requires configuring a cloud server, tunneling, or a VPN — typically another 1–2 hours of technical work on top of the initial setup.

Cue Light is cloud-native from the start. The signal travels over the internet the same way a WhatsApp message does. If your guest can load a webpage, they have a tally light.

What your remote guest sees

The display runs fullscreen — bright enough to see in peripheral vision even when the guest is looking at their camera. On mobile, Wake Lock keeps the screen on automatically so it doesn't go dark mid-interview.

Tips for remote guest setups

• Send the link before the call starts — have them open it and confirm they see the standby screen before you go live
• iPhone guests: tell them to open in Safari, not Chrome — Safari supports Wake Lock, which keeps the screen on. Chrome on iOS doesn't.
• Android guests: any browser works. Chrome on Android has full Wake Lock support.
• Prop the phone next to the webcam — so they see the tally colour without looking away from the camera
• Brief them on the colours — green = live, amber = you're next, black dot = standby

Solo operators and livestreamers

If you're streaming solo with a remote co-host, Cue Light works the same way — your co-host sees the tally on their phone while you control it from your streaming machine. No switching between windows, no shouting across Discord. One tap on your controller, their phone lights up.