The heat sheet app on your phone is a Saturday window. It is not a PB list.

Saturday at the stand

I have stood on too many balconies with two things in my hands: a phone that will not find the meet, and a PDF that already has the lane. The instinct is to rank apps as if Saturday were a shop. It is not. It is a window. The host opens it or they do not. Your job is to know which pane they said they would use, then watch the race.

The psych sheet in the squad chat is a seeded start list. It is not the heat sheet until someone turns entries into heats and lanes. Live results are a third object again, one heat at a time off the pads. Official is a fourth, after backups and DQs. Mixing those four is how a parent crowns a PB off a spinner. Event, heat, lane, and NT belong in how to read a heat sheet. This page is only which window might be open.

Four papers, one morning

Call them papers even when they live on a phone. Psych sheet is the seed order, often out the night before. Heat sheet is who is in which heat and lane after the computer has placed them. Live result is the first time off the pad, usually labelled unofficial. Signed result is what goes to rankings. The balcony app, when it works, is trying to show the middle two. It is a poor filing cabinet for the last.

Some English licensed opens now skip paper programmes and tell spectators to use Meet Mobile. A 2026 club conditions pack I read this summer said exactly that. Fine when the operator is publishing. Useless when they are not. Keep the PDF until you have seen your child's name in a heat on the phone. Then you can put the paper down.

Meet Mobile's window

Meet Mobile is ACTIVE Network's spectator app, fed by Hy-Tek Meet Manager. ACTIVE's own help page is plain. The app shows results in real time as Meet Manager gets data from the timer, one heat at a time. Heat sheets, psych sheets, records, team scores, time standards. The host has to publish. Hy-Tek does not control whether they do, and does not guarantee the file is complete or correct.

Download is free on iPhone and Android. Results sit behind an in-app subscription. On the US App Store and Google Play on 23 August 2026 that was listed at 6.49 US dollars a month or 19.99 a year, billed in local currency. Heat sheets are often free. Meet hosts may charge for them inside the app. That charge is not included in the results subscription. I have seen heat-sheet in-app prices around two to five dollars. Paying does not list a gala the laptop never sent.

Publishing needs Meet Manager 4.0 or later and an operator who turns it on and keeps an internet link. USA Swimming, Swimming Canada, and plenty of Australian and some English licensed meets use this stack when the host bothers. Club mornings in a leisure centre often do not. How to sit with the spinner without losing the race is how to use Meet Mobile. I am not reprinting that panic loop here.

Live times are a first look. Swimming Australia's 2026 Trials information pack told coaches that Meet Mobile results are provisional and unofficial at all times. If a national trials pack says that, your Saturday open meet is not a higher court. Watch the board. Wait for the signed copy.

Names that are not this job

Parents still type OnDeck because that is the TeamUnify app they used for entries and invoices. Club pages were honest about the limit. OnDeck showed account tools and later, final converted times after scoring finished. It did not show live heats. Meet Mobile did that job. OnDeck support ended after 31 January 2025. SportsEngine Motion replaced it. The App Store copy is billing, attendance, events, member notes. Still a team office. Still not a balcony heat sheet.

LiveHeats is a real product. It is the wrong sport. LiveHeats Pty Ltd runs draws, live scoring, and rankings for surf, skate, snow, BMX, and surf lifesaving. AthleteiQ is their companion app. If a pool parent has it installed, someone googled "live heats" and got the ocean. Close it before session one.

Other real windows

SwimPhone is a mobile website, not a shop ranking. Founded in 2009, it sells itself as live psych sheets, heat sheets, results, and split graphs on any phone browser, free for spectators. They say they hold contracts with U.S. Masters Swimming, Masters Swimming Australia, Masters Swimming Canada, NCAA conferences, community colleges, and high-school federations, and that they plug into Hy-Tek Meet Manager or SwimWorks. If grandma is at a Masters meet in California or Victoria, this is often the pane. If you are at a Sunday Level 1 in a 25-metre club pool, it usually is not.

Swimcloud now runs some duals and invitationals in its own meet manager, with a live scoreboard in the browser. Their meet pages say scan a QR, no app, no paywall for fans. Host pricing starts at 150 US dollars a season. That is the club's bill, not yours. You only see it if this meet is actually on Swimcloud. Plenty of Hy-Tek weekends still never are. Swimcloud the ranking site is a different shelf from Swimcloud the live board. Do not hunt last winter's 100 fly PB on a Saturday QR.

Championship weekends sometimes skip both. Omega Timing publishes live start lists and results in the browser for meets they time: World Aquatics, some national championships, Pro Swim Series. There is no club spectator app to install. You open the event page they printed in the meet pack. Some English club opens timed by a contractor put a live board on that company's own site. I have watched UK sessions on a Timy Sports results page. That is a host link, not a global balcony brand. If the pack names a URL, use that URL. Do not assume Meet Mobile.

Saturday windows

Read this as a stand map, not a winner's podium. Cost is what the spectator pays on 23 August 2026, not what the host paid for software.

Before warm-up

Read the meet pack on Friday night. Circle the sentence that names results. If it says Meet Mobile, search the meet name, not only "near me." If it says a QR or a short URL, save it before leisure-centre Wi-Fi dies. If it says nothing, the PDF is the heat sheet. Write event, heat, and lane on a wrist or a tape the way your club already does. Then put the phone away for marshalling.

Do not buy an annual Meet Mobile plan at 7:40 because session one is blank. Confirm the meet is listed first. A month of results will not conjure an unpublished Level 1. Grandparents following from a sofa need the same rule: they only see what the host sent. Text them the PDF if the app is empty.

After the beep

When a time appears, screenshot once. Check DQ on the board. Then type the official time into a list you own, by event and by course. Short course and long course are different PBs. A balcony screenshot in a camera roll is not a season. How to keep that list from rotting in WhatsApp is never lose a PB.

Finzy does not import Meet Mobile. It does not scrape SwimPhone, Swimcloud, or Hy-Tek. You type the time. That sounds stubborn until the host laptop drops off the venue hotspot and the "live" feed is a spinner. The list you typed is still there on Monday. Archive by event and course. That is the product, not a second balcony app.

FAQ