Content is one item in your library. A photograph, a video file, a page of a PDF, a URL, a camera feed. Each one has a name, a type, and settings of its own, and each goes into a playlist to reach a screen.
Apps also go in a playlist, but they are not stored in Content. They live under Apps.
What you can show
| Type | What it is |
|---|---|
| Images | JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, TIFF, BMP, and static GIF |
| Videos | MP4, MKV, MOV and the rest, plus YouTube and Vimeo URLs |
| Audio | MP3 and FLAC, played alongside something visual |
| PDFs | Each page becomes its own item |
| Presentations and documents | Exported from Slides, PowerPoint, Keynote, Docs, Word, Pages |
| Spreadsheets | Exported, or connected live from Google Sheets |
| Web pages | Any URL, including pages on your own network |
| Live streams | RTSP from a camera or encoder |
| Local capture | A device plugged into the player |
| Apps | Live, self-updating content, managed under Apps |
The one distinction that matters
Some content is downloaded and stored on the device: images, video, audio, PDF pages. It plays from local storage, which is why a screen keeps working through an internet outage.
Some content is loaded live every time it plays: web pages, streams, and many apps. It is always current. A web page or stream disappears from the rotation while its source is unreachable; an app’s behavior in that case depends on the app.
Almost every surprise about Screenly’s behavior comes back to which side of that line a piece of content sits on. See Where content lives.
What is not content
A playlist is not content; it is the rotation content sits in. A schedule is not content; it belongs to the playlist.