An image is the quickest thing to put on a screen and works on every device and plan without setup. Upload it, add it to a playlist, set how long it stays up.
When the content changes, re-upload and every assigned screen follows. That makes images practical for anything on a regular cycle: weekly notices, rotating safety messages, updated figures.
Formats
JPG and JPEG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, WebP, HEIC, and GIF.
Animated GIFs do not animate. Only the first frame shows. To play one, put it on a web page and add that page as content.
What size to export
Match the screen’s aspect ratio first. That matters more than the pixel count.
An image at the screen’s aspect ratio fills the display edge to edge whatever its resolution. An image at the wrong aspect ratio leaves black bars down the sides or across the top and bottom, however many pixels it has.
| Orientation | Target |
|---|---|
| Landscape | 1920x1080, 16:9 |
| Portrait | 1080x1920, 9:16 |
Higher resolution looks sharper up to what the display can actually show, and no further. There is nothing to gain from a 6000-pixel-wide image on a 1080p screen, and it costs download time on every device.
When an image appears rotated
A photo from a phone or camera can arrive sideways or upside down.
Phones store the rotation as metadata rather than rotating the pixels, and Screenly reads the pixels. The camera knows the photo is rotated; the file does not.
Fix it at the source: open the image in any editor, rotate it so it looks right, and save. That writes the rotation into the pixels. Re-upload and it displays correctly.
Exporting from a design tool rather than using the camera file directly avoids this entirely.