Bingo Genie
Magical Bingo Card Maker

Available for Macintosh
Intel or Apple Silicon, MacOS 10.12 or newer


Overview Pricing & Download Features What's New Screen Shots Help/FAQ/More... Future Press Kit Contact More Software
 

Overview: What is "Bingo Genie"?

Do you want to easily create your own beautiful customized BINGO cards for your classroom, party, or company event? Your wish has been granted. Now you can quickly design your own custom cards, adding your list of text for the boxes in your choice of fonts and colors, and then print your cards, like magic. Everything should be this easy.

Bingo Genie is a Macintosh software application that helps you create and print your own customized "Bingo Game Cards", using your own lists of words or phrases. You can then use these cards to teach vocabulary, science or math in schools, or for party games, or special company events, and distribute/sell them as card packs. It also has a built-in "Caller Mode" screen which scrambles and presents the Bingo items, one at a time, allowing interactive game-play.

There is even a free "Lite" version of this software that you can download for free and see how it works before you buy it.

 

Pricing & Download

Full Software

Lite Software

User Guide

$14.99 USD

Click the image below to purchase from the App Store:



All future updates are free.

Free

Click the image below to download the free version from the App Store:



or, click the image below to download directly from my web site:


Do you wish to try it first before you buy it? You can download and use this "Lite" version of the application for free.

Free

Click the image below to download the User Guide:


If you want to look over the complete user guide that comes with the software, it is separately and freely available here too, as a PDF document.


Full/Lite Differences

Here are the differences between the Full and Lite software applications:

 

Features

We have conjured up a delightful list of features for you. Compare these features against any bingo-card-making software you are using now...

  • Choose card sizes from 3x3, 4x4, 5x5, 6x6, or 7x7.
  • Create a deck of any number of cards, from 4 up to 100 unique cards, with an accompanying call sheet that lists each cell item used on the cards.
  • Use your own list of words or phrases for the cell items, including different languages or emoji, your own title and subtitle above the cards, and choose your own fonts and colors to customize the cards.
  • Turn on or off the “FREE” cell in the middle, and choose your own word/font/size/color for the "FREE" cell.
  • Turn on or off the display of the "BINGO" letters above the columns, and choose your own letters, font and color for the text.
  • Choose a different color and size for the grid lines around the card cells, or turn the grid lines off completely.
  • Optionally add your own background image or solid color behind the cards.
  • Save your designed card deck as a file for opening and printing later, or for sending to other Bingo Genie users.
  • Generate and print a "Call Sheet" reference page, listing all cells used in this deck of cards. You can use this to do your random selection/calling of the cells. The call sheet comes in two formats, "list" and "cells."
  • Print your deck of cards to a printer, or save the entire deck as a PDF file for later printing, or sharing/publishing/selling to others who do not have Bingo Genie.
  • "Caller Mode" screen interactively displays each of your items in a random order for "calling" out to the card-holders.
  • Use the uniquely generated "Deck ID" from an older printed deck to exactly "re-create" the deck with Bingo Genie, in case you need to re-print card #13 that somebody accidentally took home and lost.
  • The "Deck ID" printed under each card consists of alphabetic letters, however, it is always "sanitized" to insure no embarrassing "naughty words" are accidentally embedded in it, so it will always be "classroom-safe."
  • Buy this software once, use it forever. No hidden upgrade costs or extra fees. Ever.
  • Run this software without a net. Bingo Genie does not need an internet connection to do its magic.

Show Me More...

 

What's New

1.2.3 March 2024

  • Bumped the Minimum OS version to Mac OS 10.14.
  • Documents are now auto-saved for you, and versioned for easy Reverting.
  • Call Sheet LISTs will now display a multi-line cell item (i.e., one that you inserted a "\" into) on a single line. (Thanks Michael!)
  • New Menu Item: "Reset Settings to Defaults" - Reset all your settings to the original (factory default) values. After you choose this, all new documents you create will open with these settings as defaults.
  • New Menu Item: "Change Current Colors to B&W" - Quickly change all colors to black and white (and gray), best used for printing in a book or worksheet. This changes the colors in the currently opened document, and does not change them for other documents.
  • Full/Lite Feature comparison menu item added to the Full version of app too (on the Help Menu.)
  • BugFix: If you open a document that references fonts that are NOT on your computer, you now get a warning dialog that fonts were not found, and your fonts will be changed to default fonts instead. (Thanks Michael!)
  • BugFix: Fixed a slight "color drift", where saving and re-opening a document would re-load any saved white colors as slightly darker not-quite-whites.
Version 1.2.2 RC1 (240221)

1.2.2 - February 21, 2024

  • BugFix: Bingo Genie again saves your background image with your saved Bingo Genie document, so when you re-open an old saved document the image will be there too. (Thanks Michael!)
  • It also now will remember that image as the default for all your new bingo decks if you first load an image and choose "Save as Default Settings" from the Bingo Genie Menu.

1.2.1 - January 14, 2024

  • Added a "Report a problem" menu item (Mac) to easily send me an email.
  • Removed distracting top-tab numbers at the top of the Intro Screen.
  • BugFix: Parentheses and square/curly brackets are now allowed in the cell text (Thanks Mark H!)

1.2.0 - September 14, 2022

  • Supports macOS 10.12 and newer, including Apple Silicon (M1 chip) Macs and macOS 11 Big Sur.
  • Cards can go up to 7x7 now! (Thanks Katya)
  • New built-in "Caller Mode" feature, Bingo Genie will sequentially display each item for you to call.
  • Add an optional "Description" to your item text entries... just add double-colons and a description after any item, and the description will show up (only) on the call sheets with that item, e.g., "🔱::Trident" (Thanks Katya)
  • Updated card footers to now display total cards too... "Card: 3 of 20"
  • Major update of user interface with better grouping and naming of items.
  • Now has a fill-with-numbers button for cell items, for quickly creating (Arabic) numbered bingo card cells.
  • Added option to paint a solid background color on card cells, which will show up UNDER the gridlines.
  • Added a (i) info button to the top of the window, which will open the user guide, easier to find than the item under the HELP menu (Thanks Katya!)
  • Added FIND ability in the Cell Content text box... you can now type -F and do searches for text in your list of text, for example, to find pesky duplicates.
  • Added option to allow BINGO subtitle letters to align over columns
  • New button on PRINTING tab allows printing a SINGLE "replacement" card (Thanks Katya!)
  • Increased font size of User Guide for better readability. (Thanks Katya!)
  • Increased Cell Item text entry font size a bit so it is easier to read (Thanks Katya)
  • Added lots more help text under EVERY tab to explain how things work... hopefully reducing the need for a user guide :-)
  • Added a separate set of controls to allow turning on/off footers for Call Sheets, separate from turning on/off footers for Cards. (Thanks Katya!)
  • You can now independently change the font size for the Call sheet LIST and Call sheet BOX pages (under the Call Sheet tab).
  • Preview FOOTERS are now displayed even if no cards are made yet, so you can preview the footer on/off settings (Thanks Katya)
  • When you choose "Enter Deck ID", the deck ID check for # of cell items is now a WARNING, so you can still enter the deck ID, and can update the cell items later.
  • Added a new "Ultra-Thick" 8 point cell line to the Cell Grid Line Size menu.
  • New checkboxes for cell items and free cell item "font size" to allow auto-sizing each cell item to exactly fit in its box. (Thanks Katya!)
  • Added a "Prior" button to the Intro Screen (Thanks Katya!)
  • Title and subtitle text are now displayed the same size, making very long subtitle text more readable (in case you want to have 2 lines of instruction text as the subtitle.)
  • When you change any text in the Cell Items box, it immediately invalidates the cards and clears the preview, showing that you must re-build the deck to incorporate your new changes.
  • Action menu items have changed keyboard shortcuts ("Build" is now command-B)
  • Added percentage values on every font-size and image scale slider control, so you can see a numeric representation of the slider value too (thanks Katya!)
  • Previewed cards and call sheets now grow and shrink nicely inside as you grow and shrink the overall window.
  • Added tooltips and accessibility text to most major user interface elements.
  • BugFix: When you choose "Enter Deck ID" menu item, when the window first opens, it no longer displays an error message until you start entering text in the Deck ID area.
  • BugFix: Call Sheet List Preview now maintains relative size as window grows and shrinks.
  • Bugfix: Added ability to revert to prior saved versions of your saved documents.
  • Bugfix: Card Size margin inset now correctly shrinks footer up toward card.
  • BugFix: opening an existing file that has a background image no longer sets the image control sliders locked/disabled.
  • BugFix: Setting card layout and building and printing cards, then adding a background image and printing again... second print job now picks up added background image.
  • Bugfix: It is no longer possible to open a Bingo document that was saved with duplicate cell items and have it create a deck with those duplicates in it. It will instead open and show the duplicate error, and not allow building a deck until you fix the duplicates. (Thanks Katya!)

1.1.0 - May 17, 2020

  • Consolidated the tabbed user interface for quicker access to everything.
  • The maximum number of box items you can enter has been increased to 100 items, no matter what card size you choose.
  • "Free" text now has its own independent font size control.
  • Added a numeric "percentage" display for the card border margins slider, so you can set it more repeatably.
  • BugFix: The page layout now automatically collapses/tightens spacing between the card grid and title/subtitle when you add or remove the title, subtitle, or BINGO letters.
  • BugFix: The PRINT button will now always be disabled after any layout changes that will require re-building the card deck.
  • BugFix: Properly handle lists of words that were copy/pasted from Microsoft/Windows-formatted documents (CR-LF line endings.)

1.0.0 - March 22, 2020 - First release

 

Screen Shots

 

Help & FAQ & More Info


Q: How to Change the letter font size of the cell text on my cards?
A: If you find that your cell text is a little too small or a little too large for the cell boxes, you can fine-tune the overall size of the letters.

For your cell text: Under the "Design Cards" tab, select the “Cell Layout" tab, and look underneath "Cell Text Appearance" for the slider called "Font size adjustment". After building a deck of cards, you can move this slider up (larger text) or down (smaller text), while watching the "Cards" Preview text on the right to see what size works best. You may need to step through some of the previewed cards to see each of your cell text items.

Alternatively, you can simply turn on the checkbox "Auto-scale text in each cell", and the text in each cell will grow or shrink to insure it exactly fits. Note that turning on this auto-scale checkbox affects both the Card cell text and the Call Sheet cell text, and disables their manual font-size sliders.

For the call sheet text: Under the "Design Cards" tab, select the “Call Sheets" tab, and look for the slider called "Call Sheet - List: Font size adjustment”, or "Call Sheet - Cells: Font size adjustment". You can move these sliders up (larger text) or down (smaller text), while watching one of the "Call Sheet" Previews on the right to see what size works best.

For the Title and Subtitle: The title and subtitle will automatically shrink for longer text, and will wrap to two lines if needed.


Q: How to split long box text into 2 lines?
A: A cell text item will automatically wrap to multiple lines if it is too long using the font size you chose. However, it wraps at word boundaries, and not necessarily the word or hyphen boundaries you might want. There is a way to tell Bingo Genie exactly where you want to break the cell text. You can enter a '\' (back-slash) character on a text item line to force a line-break, forcing it to split into multiple lines exactly where you want.

Note that this technique will work for your custom "Free cell” text as well.


Q: How to quickly make several decks that have similar settings?
A: You may want to design a card layout and use it as a basic "template" for all future decks. Perhaps you always make 5x5 decks with a free space, and always want a subtitle of "Mr. Brown's Biology Class".

Simply set up the settings the way you want, and choose "Save Default Settings" from the "Bingo Genie" menu. From now on, any new documents you create will start out with those default settings. This does not affect any existing documents you have already saved, since they now keep their own settings.


Q: How to remove the Free cell from the cards?
A: To create Bingo cards where every box is filled, and there is no "Free" cell, simply click the "Design Cards" tab, then the “Cell Layout" tab under that. Then turn off the checkbox entitled "Place a Free cell on cards", and re-build your cards. Remember that without this cell placed on your cards, you may need to add another cell text item to have enough to build the cards.

Read the Software Privacy Policy Here

 

What is next?

Well, what would YOU like? If you let me know what things you would like to see next, and I will add them to my to-do list for the next update!

 

Press Kit

If you would like to publish a review of this software and would like more information and assets for your article, download the free Press Kit below:

Download Press Kit (".zip" file)

 

Contact Me

If you have more questions or wish to send me feedback:

Contact Me

 
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