You can get started today with Bitfocus Companion—even if you don’t own a physical Stream Deck—and I don’t want that to be a barrier to entry. In this video I walk you through using Companion’s built-in Emulator, which lets you control your buttons from any device on your network, right in a web browser. No paid apps required. I show you how to launch the Companion GUI, verify you’re on the right IP address (and even how I use 127.0.0.1 when things get weird), and why clicking buttons inside the edit screen is not how you want to run an actual event. Then we build an Emulator step-by-step: go to Surfaces, add an Emulator, set your startup/current page, and open it so it behaves like a real control surface—with “go to page” actions and all. After that, I pull it up from my phone by going to the Companion IP address and adding /emulator, and I even show how to save that page as a home screen icon so volunteers can launch it fast. Finally, we talk networking: if your IP address changes, your shortcut breaks—so I recommend setting a static IP on your Companion computer or doing a DHCP reservation in your router to keep things consistent.