TriviaCON

A portable live quiz host for events.

TriviaCON is a self-contained desktop app for running trivia quiz nights. The host drives the game from a control panel while contestants follow along on a separate game screen — a projector, TV, or second monitor. One machine, two displays, no networking.

Write your quiz once, save it as a single shareable file, and host the whole night from one window. Scoring stays in your hands — the app never guesses who was right.

Features

• Three question types. Single-answer (one fixed answer, revealed as-is), multiple-choice (a set of lettered options, one correct), and list (a numbered set of items revealed one-by-one as the audience names them).
• Rich-text authoring. Format questions and answer options — bold, emphasis, and more — with a built-in editor. Drag to reorder answer options.
• Media per question. Attach one image, audio clip, or video to any question. The audio-only flag hides the video and shows a visualizer instead — so a clip never gives the answer away.
• Manual scoring. You award and deduct points per team, live. The app never auto-scores, so a judgment call is always yours to make.
• Jump anywhere, anytime. Splash, category board, questions, and the final ranking are display states, not a fixed sequence — move between them freely as the night unfolds.
• Self-contained quiz files. Everything — questions, answers, and all attached media — lives in one portable .tcq file that's easy to back up and share.
• Polish and English interfaces, switchable in Settings — and fully localizable, so more languages can be added.

Screenshots

Every phase has two views: what the host sees on the control panel, and what the audience sees on the game screen.

Builder — write your quiz

Categories, rich-text questions, answer options, and optional media (image, audio, or video) per question.

Category board

The host picks the next question; the audience sees a live board of what's been played.

Control panel	Game screen

A question

Media plays on the game screen. The audio-only flag hides the video and shows a visualizer instead — so a clip never gives the answer away.

Control panel	Game screen

Final ranking

Manual scoring throughout, then a staged reveal of the standings.

Control panel	Game screen

Download

Grab the latest build for your platform from the Releases page:

Platform	File
Windows	triviacon-x.x.x-win.zip — extract and run triviacon.exe
Linux	triviacon-x.x.x.AppImage — chmod +x, then run
macOS	triviacon-x.x.x-mac-x64.zip or -arm64 — extract and run TriviaCON.app

No installation required. TriviaCON is fully portable — run it from a USB drive, a shared folder, or anywhere you like, and it leaves no trace on the host machine.

Try it out

Want to see a finished quiz before writing your own? Grab the demo quiz — 41 MB — and open it from the toolbar.

It's a whole quiz night in one file: 15 questions across four categories, seven teams with scores already set for a staged ranking reveal, host-only notes, a splash screen, and every kind of media the app supports — images, audio, video, and video played audio-only so the footage never gives the answer away. All media is AI-generated and free to redistribute.

Running a quiz night

1. Launch TriviaCON — the control panel opens automatically.
2. Open or create a quiz file (.tcq) from the toolbar.
3. Build your quiz in the Builder tab — categories, questions, answers, and optional media.
4. Set up teams in the Game Runner tab before you start.
5. Open the game screen — click the monitor icon and point a projector or second display at it.
6. Run the game — pick questions from the control panel; reveal answers, award points, and track standings live.

Quizzes are saved as .tcq files — a ZIP archive holding the quiz data and all attached media, so they're self-contained and easy to share.

The interface is available in Polish and English; switch languages in the Settings tab.

Reporting issues & suggestions

Found a bug or have an idea? Open an issue and include what you were trying to do, what happened instead, and your OS and TriviaCON version.

Contributing

TriviaCON has a deliberately narrow, fixed scope — it's a single-machine, host-driven, manually-scored quiz tool, and it stays that way on purpose. Some things are permanent non-goals: networking and player devices, automatic scoring, automated game flow, AI-authored quiz content, and cloud/accounts/telemetry. The host is always in command, and the app leaves zero trace on the machine it runs on.

Bug fixes, translations, docs, and polish are very welcome. Before proposing a feature, please read CONTRIBUTING.md — it lays out the design principles and non-goals so a good idea doesn't turn into a rejected PR.

For developers

Read CONTRIBUTING.md before you start coding. TriviaCON has a deliberately narrow, fixed scope — the design principles and permanent non-goals there will save you from building something that can't be merged.

Prerequisites: Node.js v24 recommended (see .nvmrc — it's what CI builds on, and what Electron bundles). v22.22.2+ and v26+ also work; Node 20 is no longer supported. Plus pnpm v10+ (npm i -g pnpm or via Corepack). This project uses pnpm exclusively — npm install is blocked by a preinstall guard to avoid lockfile drift.

git clone https://github.com/TriviaCon/triviacon.git
cd triviacon
pnpm install
pnpm dev          # dev mode with hot reload (both windows)

The first pnpm dev after a fresh clone downloads ~100 MB. Since Electron 42 the npm package no longer fetches its binary during pnpm install, so pnpm dev and pnpm start run install-electron first to fetch it on demand. Later runs are instant. If you invoke electron-vite directly and hit Error: Electron uninstall, run pnpm exec install-electron once.

To pick up the Node version in .nvmrc, use nvm:

nvm install       # installs the version from .nvmrc
nvm use

On Windows, nvm-windows doesn't read .nvmrc — run nvm install 24 && nvm use 24 instead.

Other scripts:

pnpm build:win     # Windows (zip)
pnpm build:mac     # macOS (zip, x64 + arm64)
pnpm build:linux   # Linux (AppImage)
pnpm typecheck     # TypeScript (node + web configs)
pnpm test          # Vitest
pnpm lint          # ESLint with autofix
pnpm format        # Prettier

Tech stack: Electron · React 19 + TypeScript · Tailwind CSS v4 + Radix UI · TipTap rich-text · dnd-kit drag-and-drop · TanStack Query · i18next · Lucide icons · yazl / adm-zip for .tcq packaging.

Architecture notes live in CLAUDE.md; the quiz content model is documented in CONTEXT.md.

License

TriviaCON's code is released under the MIT License — © 2026 Marcin "Aluś" Jędrecki. Use it, fork it, build on it.

The idea of a trivia-night host isn't anyone's to own — others surely exist; this is just my take on it. If TriviaCON inspired your own build, a nod back is appreciated, never required.

Third-party assets. The bundled ranking fanfares — "Victory" (Final Fantasy V) © Square Enix, Pokémon Gen 1 © Nintendo / Game Freak, and the NFL on Fox theme © Fox — remain the property of their respective owners and are not covered by the MIT license.