Status and sync
How often a screen checks in, what online and pending sync actually mean, and why a command sometimes takes a few minutes to land.
Connection and content are tracked separately, because they fail separately. They are the Status and Content status columns on the screens list.
How often a screen checks in
A ScreenlyOS screen pings us roughly every 30 seconds, with a random delay of up to six minutes added on top. The spread is deliberate: it stops a whole fleet calling home in lockstep.
It also sends a full report every 15 minutes, which is where the Details tab gets its figures.
A Screenly Anywhere screen pings every 30 seconds, checks its playlist every 5 minutes, and sends its configuration and report every 15 minutes.
Why a command is sometimes not instant
When a screen is online it usually holds an open connection to us, and commands like a reboot or a settings change arrive immediately.
When that connection is closed, commands wait for the next ping instead. Nothing is lost, but it can take a few minutes. The WebSocket row on the Details tab reads Disconnected when this is happening.
This is why the advice on settings is to allow around 15 minutes before deciding a change did not work.
Two actions do not wait. Power off and Take screenshot only go out over a live connection, and are unavailable while there is none. A power off held until the next check-in could switch a screen off hours later with nobody expecting it, which is worse than a screen that stays on.
Online and in sync are different
Online means we heard from it. In sync means it has everything it is supposed to be showing. They fail separately, so a screen can be in any of four states.
| Online | In sync | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| Yes | Yes | Healthy and current |
| Yes | No | Downloading, and still showing the previous content meanwhile |
| No | Yes | Offline, but playing exactly the right thing |
| No | No | Offline, and will catch up when it reconnects |
The third row is the one people find surprising, and it is the point of the design. A screen that went offline after syncing everything is fine until someone changes its playlist. From then on it has Updates pending, and it collects them when it reconnects.
A screen with nothing scheduled counts as in sync. If it is reachable and up to date, it reads Online whether or not it has anything to play.
A screen that is online but not in sync is downloading. It keeps playing what it already had throughout, so the audience sees no interruption, and video takes considerably longer than images.
A screen that is offline and out of sync will catch up on its own when it reconnects. There is nothing to press.
When a screen goes offline
Content already on the device keeps playing. Files you uploaded are stored locally and schedules are held on the device, so a screen carries on showing the right thing at the right time through an outage.
What stops is anything that needs the network: web pages and apps pulling live data are skipped while they cannot reach their source, and rejoin the rotation when the connection returns.
That property is the reason an offline screen is often not urgent. It is also the reason nobody notices for a week, which is what alerts are for.