What HeatCheck is

How the live room, 1–10 interest score, account types, and optional audience features work together.

The room

The room is your permanent public page. Your audience keeps it open on a phone or computer while you broadcast.

Your address is heatcheck.io/your-handle. Use that same link in your channel description, on a lower third, or in a QR code for every show. When no show is live, the page displays a holding screen. When you go live, anyone who already has it open enters the room automatically.

Voting does not require an account. A listener opens the page and drags the interest slider from 1 to 10. HeatCheck stores an anonymous voter token in that browser, so refreshing the page or opening a second tab does not count the same listener twice.

What the number actually means

The gauge shows the average interest across everyone currently in the room, on a 1–10 scale rounded to one decimal place. Two rules determine who contributes to that average and how.

Silence counts as 5 Not ignored: Someone who is present but has not touched the slider is counted as a 5, rather than left out of the average. This is deliberate: without it, three enthusiastic people in a room of four hundred would read as a 9.7. It also means a room with active listeners but few votes starts near 5 and moves as people vote. Read that as a baseline, not as a negative response.
“In the room” means recently active 30-second window: A listener counts as present while their page has checked in within the last 30 seconds. Close the tab and they drop out of the average within about half a minute. After a tab moves into the background, its last check-in remains active for up to one hour so a locked phone does not disappear from the room immediately.

Read the movement, not the value

Audiences use the scale differently, so compare the score with your own room’s baseline. The useful signal is the change after you switch segments, take a call, or read an ad. Analytics preserves those segment-level changes after the show.

Hosts and listeners

There are two kinds of account, and they see completely different apps.

Host Has a handle: A host owns a public page, runs shows from the dashboard, and configures overlays, sponsors, and branding. A host can have drafts ready, but only one show can be live at a time.
Listener Optional: An audience member who chooses to sign up. A listener account provides a profile, a display name for roll call, and points that accumulate separately with each host. It is never required for voting.

Interest votes stay anonymous

A listener account is required to check in to roll call or take part in the suggestions board. Interest-slider votes and poll responses use the anonymous voter token instead and are not attached to the listener’s account.

What you can turn on

The live gauge is always available. The features below are optional; enable them for one show or save your usual choices as the defaults for new shows.

Segments — name what the room is rating right now, so the score attaches to a topic instead of to the whole night.
Live polls — a question with up to six options, launched during a show, with live results you can include in an overlay.
Listener suggestions — your audience proposes segments and upvotes each other’s; you promote the good ones with one click.
Roll call — a check-in race at the top of the show, with points, streaks, and badges that build a listener’s history with your channel.
Stream overlays — any of the above as a graphic in OBS, Streamlabs or Streamyard.
Sponsors — rotating ad creatives on your live page, with button-click tracking.

If you are setting up for the first time, the fastest path is the next page — it gets you to a live show in about ten minutes and skips everything you do not need yet.

Accounts and roles