Let’s pretend for a minute that you did an amazing Halloween light show this year. Maybe you put out some of your Christmas stuff along with your Halloween stuff, maybe not, but now you're ready to transition your show to your Christmas display.

How does that work? How do you reduce frustration and smoothly change over from one to the other in xLights? 

First Step: Copy your Folder

The first thing to do is go to your xLights directory, wherever you keep that folder, and make a copy of it. Then rename the new one as your Christmas folder. Pretty simple, right?

Now there's a couple ways you can handle transitioning over your different models. But the first thing that's really going to save you a lot of frustration is just copying that folder over because now any items that were in your Halloween show that are now in your Christmas show can stay plugged into the same places. You don't have to do a thing with those. Every year I see people go unplug all their stuff and re-plug it into new ports for Christmas, but that’s a waste of your time – don’t do that!  

Transitioning Models and Props- 1:1 Model Replacement

The next step is transitioning all of your stuff. So let's say for example, I have a spider on my window and want to swap it for a snowflake for Christmas. I would go and download my snowflake model, and bring that into xLights. Then both of the models are sitting here in the program. If I want to replace it one-for-one (unplug the spider, and plug in the snowflake), then it’s really easy. Select your snowflake and right-click on it, then select the option “Replace a model with this model”, and choose the spider.

Now that new model is in the groups the spider was in (you can rename those groups for Christmas if you want), it's on the port that the spider was on, and everything's good to go.

Transitioning Models and Props- What if it’s not a 1:1 Replacement?

If it's not quite as clean and simple as a 1:1 replacement, then I would just delete those Halloween models out and bring in your Christmas stuff. Then go to the visualizer (you can hide models assigned to other controllers), and you’ll see the open ports where you removed those Halloween spiders, tombstones, etc., and the new Christmas models waiting to be assigned.

Since you know where those ports sit in the yard, or you can look at your drawing to remember, then you can decide where to place the new Christmas models. Drag each one over and assign it in the visualizer. Again, the biggest key is that you are leaving in place anything that is staying through both shows.

Remember the Final Step

The important last step to remember, or else your show will not play back right, is once you finalize the layout where everything's going to be plugged in, upload your output to each controller, and then you'll be able to play sequences and they'll look correct.

If you follow this guide it will actually happen really quick and it won't be frustrating to switch over from Halloween to Christmas. And of course, that’s the goal, to enjoy the process and have fun with our light shows!

If you liked this guide, and you want more, we do have full step-by-step guides updated every year with the latest technology of how to build your first Christmas light show, how to build your next light show and add new elements, all kinds of good stuff inside of the Learn Christmas Lighting Academy.

It will probably save you more in frustration than you spend, and we would love to have you as a member. We’ve got those step-by-step guides, and we help people personally in the forums. Whether you’re new to this or just a little rough from last year and need some help, we’re here for you! Check it out at Learn Christmas Lighting.