Overview is the first page in the System area, and it is the one to open when something feels off — or when you want to add a capability to ARC. It answers three questions in one screen: is everything healthy?, what version and license am I on?, and which of ARC’s built-in services are turned on?
Its subtitle on screen says it plainly: “System health, software, services, and preferences.”
System status
The card at the top is your at-a-glance health readout. It carries a colored dot, a headline, and a short line of guidance that changes with the state.
| Headline | What it means |
|---|---|
| Everything looks good | ARC is online and none of the checks found anything you need to act on. |
| Checking system status… | The checks are still connecting. They fill in one by one as each service answers. |
| Some status checks are unavailable | ARC is running, but one or more checks couldn’t be verified — usually a service that hasn’t answered yet. |
| 1 item needs attention / n items need attention | At least one check found a real problem. Each one is highlighted below. |
The count is additive, so three broken connections show as three items, not one. The guidance line for that state — “Review the highlighted checks below; each opens the place where you can act” — is the important bit: every check is a shortcut to wherever you fix it.
The six checks
| Check | What it tells you | Healthy | Needs attention | Clicking it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ARC core | Whether the software itself is up and running normally. | ARC is online | ARC is starting while it boots, Runtime needs attention if one of its bundled services came up in a bad state, or Live status unavailable if the page has lost contact. | Nothing — it’s a readout only. |
| License | Whether your subscription is active on this computer. | Active | Locked, Inactive, Disconnected, or Unknown. | Jumps to the License tile just below. |
| Connections | Whether the hubs, bridges, and gateways you set up are reachable. | n online · n configured, or None configured if you haven’t added any yet. | 1 needs attention / n need attention. | Opens Connections. |
| Game sessions | Whether any rooms are mid-session, and whether any ended in a failed state. | No games running, 1 game running, or n games running. | 1 failed game / n failed games. | Opens the Dashboard. |
| System logs | Warnings and errors recorded today that you haven’t looked at yet. | All quiet (nothing today) or All viewed (there were entries and you opened the logs). | 1 new error today / n warnings today, or both combined. | Opens the System logs panel — and marks everything up to the newest entry as seen. |
| Backup | When your last backup finished. | A relative time such as “2 h ago” — hover it for the exact date — or Never if you haven’t run one. | Backup failed. | Opens the Backup & Restore panel. |
Why the logs check goes quiet after you look
Opening the System logs check marks today’s warnings and errors as seen, so the tile settles back to All viewed. That is intentional — it keeps the card focused on things that are new since you last checked, not on a running tally of everything that has ever been logged.
System resources
Underneath the checks, the same card carries a System resources strip, with a Last started timestamp at its right edge — a quick way to tell whether the software restarted overnight.
| Tile | What it shows |
|---|---|
| CPU | How much processor ARC is using, with a dimmer second reading for the computer as a whole. If the Vision or Speech Recognition services are running, each gets its own small reading here too. |
| Memory | How much of the computer’s memory is in use, how much ARC accounts for, and how much is still available. |
| Stored data | The size of ARC’s data folder, plus a file and folder count. |
| Updates | Your version, the latest version, and the button that runs the update. See Updates. |
| License | Your license status, what it covers, and how long it’s valid. See License. |
Two things worth knowing. Stored data measures only ARC’s own data — the add-on runtimes you download later are deliberately left out of that figure, so it won’t jump when you install Vision. And if the readings go stale, every number reads n/a rather than showing you an old snapshot.
Built-in services
The Built-in services card is a grid of nine rows. Each shows a name, a live status line with a colored dot, and a chevron. Click one and its settings panel slides open — there’s no separate page to navigate to.
| Service | What it does | Status you’ll see |
|---|---|---|
| Staff & permissions (beta) | Your staff list, per-person sign-in, and which areas of ARC each person can reach. | No staff yet, or n staff · n active. |
| Control Station | Control-room PCs that open ARC in kiosk or windowed mode, the extra tabs they show, the installer to put on those PCs, and anything ARC has discovered on your network. | None set up, or n configured · n online. |
| Chat | Staff chat — channels, how long messages are kept, the notification sound, terminals, and the chat installer for PCs that don’t run ARC. | Disabled, Enabled · no channels, or Enabled. |
| Text-to-speech | Voices that run on this computer for hints and audio, plus the voice catalog and preview settings. | No voices, 1 voice, or n voices — counting on-device voices only. |
| Vision service | Camera discovery, live monitoring, snapshots, Moments clips, and camera-audio streaming. | Not installed, Downloading…, Update available, Disabled, Enabled, or Running. |
| Assist (beta) | Watches each game and suggests hints when a group is stuck; it can also answer help requests for you. | Off or Assist on. |
| Smart Text (beta) | Tidies hint text before staff send it — capitalization, punctuation, banned words, and your own dictionary. | Disabled or Enabled. |
| Speech Recognition (beta) | Recognizes room audio on this computer. The feature and its language model run only while it’s enabled. | Not installed, Downloading…, Update available, Disabled, Starting, Running, Needs attention, or Stopped. |
| Moments | Where session photos and clips are stored, how long ARC keeps them, how many cameras may capture at once, and a total storage limit. | The retention you’ve chosen — 7 days through 1 year, or Forever. |
Rows marked (beta) carry a Beta pill in ARC itself, with a tooltip saying the feature is still being refined. They work, but expect them to keep changing.
Outside services live somewhere else
Weather, UniFi Protect, remote access, ElevenLabs voices, and the Slack and Discord bridges are not on this page. They’re on System → Integrations, because they reach out to a company other than you. Built-in services are the parts of ARC itself.
Installing, enabling, and removing an add-on
Most of the nine services ship with ARC and are ready the moment you open them. Three do not — they’re downloaded on demand, which is where setup most often stalls.
Ready to use straight away: Staff & permissions, Control Station, Chat, Assist, Smart Text, Moments, and the built-in text-to-speech engine.
Downloaded when you ask for them:
- Vision service — the optional camera add-on. Nothing camera-related appears in ARC until this is installed and enabled.
- Speech Recognition — the feature plus its language model.
- The extra text-to-speech engine and individual voice packs, from inside the Text-to-speech panel.
The lifecycle, in order
The Vision and Speech Recognition panels are laid out identically, so learning one teaches you both.
- Install. Press Install. The row switches to Downloading…, then Installing…, with a progress bar in the panel. Leave the page if you like — the download continues.
- Enable. Installing does not turn the feature on. Flip the Enable feature toggle at the top of the panel. Until then the row reads Disabled. This is the single most common place people get stuck: the software is on disk, the feature is off.
- Check for updates. Press Check for updates and the button reports back Up to date or Update available. This button only works while the feature is enabled.
- Update. When a newer build exists, the Install button becomes Update and the row shows Update available. Same download, same progress bar.
- Uninstall. Press Uninstall to remove the downloaded files and reclaim the space.
Two guards that block Uninstall
If Uninstall won’t respond, hover it for the reason:
- “Disable the feature before uninstalling it.” — turn the Enable feature toggle off first.
- “This copy is included with ARC and cannot be uninstalled here.” — that copy shipped with the software rather than being downloaded, so there’s nothing separate to remove.
Each panel also lists Installed version and Available version so you can see at a glance whether you’re behind. Vision adds live readings for configured cameras, processor and memory use, health, and streaming status; Speech Recognition adds its memory use.
The extra text-to-speech engine follows the same Install → Update → Check for updates → Uninstall pattern, but its buttons live inside the Text-to-speech panel rather than on the Overview row. Occasionally it will tell you the available version needs a different version of ARC — update ARC first, then install it.
On an evaluation install
If you’re running ARC on a free evaluation rather than a full license, the downloadable add-ons are locked, with the message “Available on a full license — subscribe to download and enable.” Subscribing unlocks them.
General preferences
The card beside Built-in services holds five settings for how ARC looks and behaves. They save the moment you change them — there’s no Save button. If a save fails, ARC tells you with “Could not save settings.”
| Setting | Choices |
|---|---|
| Control dock position | Bottom or Top — which edge the control dock sits on when running a game. |
| Language | Match browser, English (US), or Spanish (Spain). |
| Default theme | Light, Dark, or Midnight. |
| Startup page | Dashboard or Control (first game) — where ARC opens. Control rooms that only ever run one room often prefer the latter. |
| Hint languages | Extra languages your games can deliver hints in. Empty by default, shown as None. |
Hint languages has a help icon next to it that explains the chain, and it’s worth reading before you turn one on. Your main language follows the Language setting above. Each extra language you add unlocks an optional translated field on every hint in your game editors. Staff then pick a language for a session from Session Details on the control page, and anything you haven’t translated falls back to the main hint. If you use spoken hints, each language can use its own voice, set in that game’s speech settings.
Updates
The Updates tile in the resources strip shows your Current Version, the Latest Version, and when ARC Last Checked. It checks on its own when you open the page if the last check is missing or more than half a day old.
Everything else is expressed through the single button, whose label is the state:
| Button reads | What’s happening |
|---|---|
| Check for updates | Nothing new is known. Press it to look now. |
| Checking… | A check is running. |
| Up to date | The check just came back clean. It reverts to Check for updates after a few seconds. |
| Download update | A stable update is available. |
| Early access available | A preview build is available. Optional — see below. |
| Downloading… | The update is coming down; a progress bar appears. |
| Install update | The update is on disk and ready to apply. |
| Installing… | ARC is closing to apply it. |
| Try again | The last attempt failed. |
| Updates unavailable | ARC can’t reach its updater on this machine. |
Pressing an actionable button opens a small update window that walks you through the rest. When it’s ready to install it says so clearly: “ARC will close briefly to install it, then reopen automatically.” You can close the window during a download and it keeps going in the background.
Stable updates and early access
Stable updates download quietly on their own, so the window usually opens straight to the install confirmation. Early access builds are different: they are release candidates still being tested, they are never downloaded automatically, and installing one is entirely optional. The window says as much — you can keep using your current version until the full release is ready.
Updates are blocked while a session is running
If any room is mid-session — running or paused — ARC refuses to download or install, with the message “A game is live — end or reset the session before updating.” End or reset the session first. This isn’t just a warning in the browser; the software enforces it, so there is no way to sneak an update past a game in progress.
Backups and restores are blocked the same way, with their own wording — end or reset the session first.
License
The License tile shows your License Status, the Licensed services it covers — Connect, Backup, Staff, or None — and a Valid Until date. If you own a cloud add-on, a Cloud services line appears too.
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Active | Everything is in order. |
| Locked | The license is no longer permitting normal operation — renew or update billing. |
| Inactive | No active subscription is attached to this computer. |
| Disconnected | ARC can’t currently reach the licensing service. |
| Unknown | ARC hasn’t been able to determine the status. |
When something needs your attention, an amber notice appears on the tile. These are the ones you can actually run into:
- “License expired - renew in the launcher to avoid interruption.” — or, on an evaluation install, “Your free evaluation ended — subscribe to keep your games running.”
- “This computer changed - reconnect ARC in the launcher to keep your license active.” Your rooms keep running on the cached license; this is a quick reconnect from the launcher, not a dead room.
- A payment failure, counting down as the deadline approaches: “Payment failed - update billing by date (n days left) or ARC will lock.”, then “Payment failed - ARC locks tomorrow. Update billing now.”, then “Payment failed - ARC locks tonight. Update billing now.”
When a reconnect is needed the tile also grows a red button that starts the reconnect and opens your portal in a new tab. On an evaluation install you get an Unlock full license link instead.
Deal with license notices early
Every one of these notices is fixed away from the room — in the launcher or in your account portal — and every one of them has a deadline. Sort it out on a quiet morning rather than five minutes before a group arrives.
Backup & Restore
The Backup health check opens the Backup & Restore panel, and this is where your whole setup gets protected. It shows Last backup and Next backup at the top, with a Back up now button underneath that reports its progress as it goes — preparing files, building the archive, uploading, finishing.
The panel has four sections.
| Section | What you set |
|---|---|
| Destination | Local folder writes the archive to a folder on this computer without uploading it. Cloud Backup stores the same archive in the cloud and needs the Cloud Backup add-on — without it, the option is greyed out and marked (Add-on). |
| Schedule | Frequency — Off, Weekly, Every 2 weeks, or Monthly — plus the time, and the weekday or day of month it should run. |
| Included data | Core recovery data is always included. Three opt-in checkboxes add your shared and game speech assets, your shared and game media, and your chat channels, settings, and history. |
| Restore from a backup | Pick a local .arcbak archive or preview a cloud backup, review what’s in it — source, when it was created, file count, archive size — then press Restore now. |
A backup keeps running without you
Once started, a backup runs inside ARC itself, so closing the tab or refreshing the page won’t cancel it. A cloud restore behaves the same way and ARC restarts itself when it’s staged. A local restore is the exception — it holds the page, and ARC will stop you leaving with “Wait for restore to finish before leaving this page.”
If Cloud Backup isn’t part of your license, the panel says so directly — “Cloud Backup is not available on this system yet. Local backup and restore still work.” A local backup on a schedule is far better than none.
Older links now land here
A lot of setup that used to have its own page is now a panel on Overview. If you have an old bookmark, ARC forwards it for you:
| Old address | Where it lands |
|---|---|
/staff | Overview, with the Staff & permissions panel already open. |
/system | Overview. |
/system/vision | Overview with the Vision panel open — but only while the Vision service isn’t installed or isn’t enabled. Once it’s running, this address goes to the real Vision page. |
/vision | The same, and it also keeps forwarding until at least one camera is configured. The Vision Wall needs a camera before there’s anything to show. |
Where to go next
- The System Area — what the whole System area covers and how it differs from a game’s Editor.
- Connections — the hubs and bridges the Connections check is watching.
- Vision — what the Vision add-on gives you once it’s installed and enabled.
- Integrations — the outside services that are not on this page.
- Running a Game — where the control dock position and Session Details settings show up.