What a label is
A tag on both sides of a connection. Why screens and playlists never reference each other directly, and what that buys you.
Labels exist because of a problem that shows up around the fifth screen.
Without them, a playlist would have to name the screens it plays on. Add a screen and you edit every playlist that should reach it. Retire one and you edit them again. With twenty screens and ten playlists that is two hundred relationships somebody has to maintain by hand.
A label breaks that. A playlist says "I play on warehouse". A screen says "I am warehouse". Neither knows the other exists.
- playlist
- label
- screen
What it gets you
- Adding a screen is one action: give it the label, and every playlist targeting that label reaches it with nothing else edited.
- Retiring a screen is one action: take the label off, or delete the screen.
- Changing what a group shows is one action: point a different playlist at the label.
- The relationship is visible from every end. A screen's Labels tab shows its labels, a playlist's Screens tab shows what it targets, and the label's own page on Labels lists both its screens and its playlists.
A screen can carry several
That is the part people underuse. A screen in reception at the Frankfurt site can be frankfurt and reception at once.
You then get the combinations without inventing them: a playlist for frankfurt reaches it, a playlist for reception reaches it, and both can be true at the same time. Two labels on a hundred screens describes far more groupings than a hundred bespoke ones.
The three kinds
| Kind | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Custom | You create it. This is what "label" usually means |
| Screen | Created automatically for every screen, named after that screen |
| System | Built in. All Screens is the only one |
Only custom labels are yours to create, rename, and delete. Screenly never applies or removes one by itself. The other two exist so that "this one screen" and "every screen" are expressible in the same way as any group, rather than being special cases. See Kinds of label.
Where labels are not used
Labels connect screens and playlists. They are not folders for your content library, which has folders of its own, and they do not group people, workspaces, or apps.