Digital signage device management and monitoring

The expensive part of running signage hardware is keeping it current on devices nobody can easily reach. On ScreenlyOS the operating system and the player software update together, over the air, signed and transactional, every night at 3am in the device's local time, and a system update that fails to start rolls back on its own. There is nothing to patch, nothing to log in to and no image to maintain.

Because a ScreenlyOS device runs Screenly and nothing else, nothing appears on top of your content: no system dialogs, no vendor update restarting the screen at lunchtime. That is why a ScreenlyOS screen can be mounted somewhere awkward and left alone for years.

Every screen shows its connection and its content as two separate states, because they fail separately. A screen that is online but not yet in sync is downloading and keeps playing what it had, so the audience sees no gap. A screen that is offline but in sync plays exactly the right content from its own storage. The screen that has been dark longest is easy to find, and so is every screen not showing what it should.

A ScreenlyOS screen reports on its own hardware, and Screenly turns that report into problems ranked by severity, each with its cause and what to do. It watches power, where an under-voltage dip crashes playback and corrupts storage; heat, from 70°C, where boards throttle and video stutters; free storage and the health of the card or drive; memory; four separate network routes and a weak Wi-Fi signal; clock drift, which quietly breaks schedules; and whether the device authenticates with a certificate.

The report also says what still works, so a list of warnings never reads as a dead screen. Content already on the device keeps playing while you work through it.

When a screen misbehaves, the dashboard is the first tool rather than the last. Reboot it remotely. Take a screenshot from the device's own display output to see exactly what is on the wall, or turn screenshots off for a screen showing something sensitive. Each screen also lists what is playing on it right now, the fastest way to confirm a change landed.

Display settings belong to each screen: rotation, resolution, overscan, how content fits, and audio and video output. When you install a batch, one screen's settings, labels and playlists copy onto the next, and a screen moves between workspaces with its configuration.

An offline screen often keeps playing, so nobody notices, which is why alerts matter more in signage than in systems that fail loudly. Screenly tells you when a screen goes offline and stays offline, by email, Slack or PagerDuty. If you already run monitoring, ScreenlyOS screens can expose device metrics to your own tools, and the fleet is available as data through the API and CLI, or as an answer from an AI assistant.

Screens connect outbound only, so any number of them run behind one public IP. ScreenlyOS devices join 802.1X networks on Wi-Fi and Ethernet, take a static IP, carry a client certificate your own services can require, and reach your private network over Tailscale. Security covers each of these in depth.

A smart TV or a commercial display stops getting software updates when its manufacturer moves on, and the screen ages out with the panel still in perfect condition. A ScreenlyOS device in front of that panel makes the display only a display, the part that lasts, and puts the software lifecycle with Screenly. Many estates run both: the Screenly app to get an existing display working today, and ScreenlyOS to keep it working after the display's own software has stopped. ScreenlyOS or the Screenly app compares them.