A PDF is not shown as a document. You choose which pages you want, and each becomes a content item you can put in a playlist.
Enabling pages
- Upload the PDF.
- Open it from Content.
- Choose Add Pages.
- Use the + button to enable the pages you want.
- Choose Done, then Save.
Only enabled pages can be added to playlists. A page you have not enabled does not exist as far as the playlist is concerned.
Enabled pages can be renamed, rotated, and previewed, which is worth doing if the source document is landscape and the screen is not.
Why PDFs rather than an export
A PDF preserves layout, fonts, and formatting exactly as designed, which is what you want for anything approved: compliance notices, regulatory text, branded material. What the document looks like in the original application is what appears on the wall.
It is also a single file to update. Re-upload it and every page you enabled follows, rather than replacing a set of exported images one by one.
Where PDFs play
PDFs need either a Screenly Player Max or a Raspberry Pi 4 based player, running player client 3.8.1 or newer. They are not supported on the Raspberry Pi 3.
The player client has its own version number, separate from the ScreenlyOS release. A device on ScreenlyOS 26.x is well past player client 3.8.1.
They also work on Screenly Anywhere, where a smaller file matters more because the page is rendered on our side.
Keep the file small
Large PDFs render slowly. Keep them compressed and modest in size, on the order of a few megabytes rather than tens.
Videos embedded in a PDF do not play.