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Locks

See how Moonshine hands editing rights to one person at a time, and how to take something over when you need it.

Some things in a show are safe to edit at the same time — a shared surface can be sculpted by several people at once. Other things are not: two people dragging the same projector's keystone, or reordering the same playlist, would fight each other. Moonshine protects those with a lock: one person holds editing rights, everyone else sees the same controls but cannot change them until it is released.

You rarely claim a lock deliberately. Locks are claimed for you as a side effect of what you select and which tab you open.

What claims a lock

Doing this Claims
Selecting a projector That projector
Opening the Warp tab with a projector and surface active That projector's warp on that surface
Opening the Mask tab The selected projector's mask
Opening the Playback tab The playback editor
Selecting a node in the scene graph That node

Moonshine claims the resource the moment you land on it. If someone else already holds it, no claim is attempted — you just get the read-only view described below.

Note

The Scene tab does not take a lock on the surface itself. Selecting points and shaping geometry there is collaborative by design — see Editing a surface together. Structural actions in the Scene, like baking a warp, are still lock-protected.

Reading the indicator

The lock indicator is a small pill that appears next to whatever it protects — in a sidebar header, on a projector row in the selector, on a card title, or in the top-right of an editor.

Pill State
Amber, pulsing dot, Acquiring lock... Your claim is in flight. It resolves in a moment. On tight layouts this reads Acquiring...
Green, pencil icon + padlock button You hold it. The pencil means You're editing this; the padlock is the release button.
Orange, name is editing + Request access Someone else holds it.
No pill at all Nobody holds it, and nobody is trying to.

When someone else holds a lock, the controls it protects are dimmed and stop responding to clicks, so there is no way to make a change that would be silently thrown away. Read-only navigation still works — you can look at a locked projector's settings, you just can't type into them.

Releasing a lock

Every claim you hold is released when you sign out, close the window, or lose connection — so a packed-up laptop never leaves a projector stranded. Before that, claims come back at different moments depending on what they protect:

Claim Comes back when
A projector You select a different projector
A scene-graph node You select a different node
A warp on a surface You leave the Warp tab
A projector's mask You select a different projector
The playback editor You leave the Playback tab

Clicking the padlock on the green pill releases a claim on the spot, wherever you are. This is the deliberate hand-over: no navigating, no signing out.

You hold at most one lock of each kind at a time. Take over a second projector and your claim on the first is dropped for you.

Tip

Note what is not in that table: a mask claim does not come back when you leave the Mask tab, only when you move to a different projector. If a collaborator can't paint on a projector you were masking earlier, select a different projector — or click the padlock on the green pill.

Requesting access

When someone else holds what you need, ask for it rather than hunting them down.

  1. Find the orange name is editing pill on the item you want.
  2. Click Request access. The button changes to Request sent and stops accepting clicks.
  3. Wait. The holder decides.

The holder gets a notification that stays on screen until they act on it:

Your name is requesting edit access to Projector 2

It carries two buttons, Grant and Deny. The same two buttons also appear inline on their green lock pill, next to the words your name requests access — so they can respond from wherever they happen to be looking.

They choose What happens to you
Grant The lock transfers to you immediately. The pill turns green and the controls become live.
Deny Nothing changes and you are not notified. The button simply becomes Request access again, so you can ask later or go and talk to them.

Only one request can be outstanding per item. While someone else's request is pending, your button reads Request pending and is disabled.

Warning

Nothing is taken by force. If the holder is away from their screen, the request sits unanswered — there is no timer that auto-grants it. The quickest unblock is to close the browser window they left open, which releases their claims immediately. Failing that, an administrator can revoke their session, after which the claim lapses within a few minutes.

Messages you may see

Message What it means
name is editing Projector 1 — switched you to Projector 2 When you connected, the projector you had selected last time was already claimed, so Moonshine moved you to a free one rather than dropping you onto a read-only screen.
Couldn't update - name is editing this A change was rejected because someone claimed the item between your click and the change arriving. Nothing was applied; try again once they release it.
Lock denied You asked for access to something that is no longer held — the owner released it between the pill appearing and your click. It is already free, so just select it.