Screenly itself runs one way, in our cloud. The choice is what runs on the hardware driving each screen, whether that is a device you connect to a display or a business display with a computer built in. There are two options, and any given device uses one or the other.
- ScreenlyOS takes over the device completely. It becomes a screen player and does nothing else, and we look after it, including its updates.
- Screenly Anywhere is an app you add to a device that already has its own system, such as a commercial display, a smart TV, an Android box, or a spare computer.
Same dashboard, same content, same playlists either way. You can use both in the same workspace, and mixed estates are normal. What a screen is covers what the dashboard can control on each.
If you already have the hardware, this is decided for you and you do not need this page to get a screen running. A Screenly Player, a Sharp display that shipped with it, a Raspberry Pi, or a Scala player runs ScreenlyOS, and other hardware runs Screenly Anywhere. Connect a screen asks what you have and gives you the steps for it.
Which one to use
Neither is something you buy. ScreenlyOS is a free operating system: our players and Sharp displays arrive with it installed, and you can put it on a Raspberry Pi, a Scala player, or other hardware once we have tested the model. Anywhere is a free app for hardware you already have. What you pay for either way is a license per screen, and the device itself if you need one.
If you are buying a device for this, buy a Screenly Player. It arrives running ScreenlyOS, which is the setup we can look after end to end, and it is the right answer for screens somewhere with strict IT rules: the section for IT and security teams at the bottom of this page is the one to send on. A Raspberry Pi runs the same ScreenlyOS if you would rather put a player together yourself.
If you already own a commercial display, a smart TV, an Android box, or a spare computer, Screenly Anywhere runs on it and there is no hardware to buy at all.
You do not have to decide before you try it either. Anywhere runs in a browser tab with nothing to buy and nothing to install, and you can move a screen onto ScreenlyOS when hardware arrives. Everything you build carries over, because it lives in the cloud rather than on the device.
What is actually different
Five things you will notice.
Interruptions
On ScreenlyOS nothing else runs on the device, so nothing appears on top of your content. On Anywhere, the device’s own system is still doing its own job. It can install its own updates, restart itself, or put its own messages in front of what you are showing.
Updates
On ScreenlyOS we update the whole device, and a failed update undoes itself automatically. On Anywhere, the device manufacturer updates the system on their schedule, not ours.
Apps
On ScreenlyOS, apps run on the device itself. On some Anywhere platforms, apps are drawn on our servers and sent to the screen as pictures instead.
What we can fix without visiting
On ScreenlyOS we can restart the device, take a diagnostic screenshot, and see how it is doing. On Anywhere, we can only reach inside our own app, so how much we can help depends on the device.
How long it keeps working
Anywhere depends on the device’s own system staying supported. A commercial display or a smart TV gets updates on its manufacturer’s schedule, and when that schedule ends, the browser or app on it stops moving forward too. The panel can be in perfect condition and the screen still ages out, because the software on it did.
ScreenlyOS separates those two things. Put a device running ScreenlyOS in front of that same display and the panel becomes only a display, which is the part that lasts. The software side is ours to keep current, so the life of a screen is no longer set by when its manufacturer loses interest.
This is a common reason an estate ends up mixing the two. Anywhere gets a display working today, and a ScreenlyOS device keeps it working after the display’s own software has stopped being updated.
What offline actually means
Both keep playing without an internet connection. Neither goes dark.
Files you uploaded, such as images, video, and PDFs, play from the device’s own storage. Schedules are saved on the device too, so your content still changes on time through an outage rather than freezing on whatever was last showing.
What cannot survive is anything that has to fetch something. A web page, or an app pulling in live figures, is skipped while it cannot reach its source, and comes back into the rotation once the connection returns.
Losing internet is not the same as losing your whole network. A screen showing something from your own building, such as an internal dashboard, keeps working through an internet outage, because that content never had to leave the building.
Screenly Anywhere also plays saved content offline. What it can do varies by platform, because Anywhere is a different build on each one rather than a single piece of software running everywhere.
Comparing the two
| ScreenlyOS | Screenly Anywhere | |
|---|---|---|
| Dashboard, content, playlists, labels | Identical | Identical |
| Who looks after the device’s system | We do | The device manufacturer |
| Something appearing over your content | Cannot happen | Possible |
| Where apps are drawn | On the device | On our servers, on some devices |
| Display settings | Rotation, resolution, overscan, audio and video output | Rotation and object fit |
| Remote reboot | Yes | No |
| Diagnostic screenshots | Yes | No |
| Health reporting | Power, temperature, storage, network checks | Basic |
| Private network access | Yes, over Tailscale | No |
| Offline playback | Yes, content and schedules saved on the device | Yes, with limits that vary by platform |
| How long it stays current | As long as we support it | Follows the device manufacturer’s support window |
What each Anywhere platform asks of you
Anywhere is a different build on each platform rather than one piece of software running everywhere, so the work of getting a screen running unattended varies more than the playback does.
| Platform | How Screenly gets on the device | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Samsung Tizen | Installed from the display’s own settings menu, using a custom app URL | Commercial displays only, because consumer sets do not allow custom app installation. The display also runs its own power schedule, independent of Screenly |
| LG webOS | Opened in the television’s built-in browser, nothing installed | Consumer sets only; webOS Signage on business displays is not supported yet. The sleep timer and auto-off both have to be changed |
| Android and Android TV | Installed from the Google Play Store | Two device settings decide whether a screen comes back after a power cut, and both are off by default on many devices. Some consumer televisions block an app from starting on boot at all |
| Amazon Fire TV | Installed from the Amazon Appstore | It is a television accessory, so it ships configured to sleep and to show a screensaver. Both have to be turned off |
| Amazon Signage Stick | No app at all: you add the stick in Amazon’s Signage console and choose Screenly as the CMS provider | Dedicated hardware you buy, so it is not a way to reuse something you own. In exchange there is nothing to un-configure, because it ships without sleep timers or screensavers |
| ChromeOS Flex | Added by URL as an auto-launching kiosk app in the Google Admin Console | Needs Google Workspace with Chrome device management, and a policy and an enrollment before the first screen runs. Not the route for getting one screen up quickly |
| Browser | Open a web address, nothing installed | A general-purpose computer sleeps, shows a screensaver, and puts notifications over your content until you tell it not to. This is also how Windows runs Screenly, since there is no separate Windows app |
Two of those are worth reading twice. Samsung and LG are inverses of each other, so check which line a model belongs to rather than assuming the pattern holds across brands. And a Fire TV Stick is not an Amazon Signage Stick: they are different products with different setup paths and very different amounts of configuration.
What ScreenlyOS runs on
| Hardware | Resolution | How it gets ScreenlyOS |
|---|---|---|
| Screenly Player | Up to 1080p | Preinstalled, arrives ready |
| Screenly Player Max | Up to 4K | Preinstalled, arrives ready |
| Sharp large-format displays | Depends on the panel | Preloaded by Sharp |
| Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 | Up to 1080p | You write the image to an SD card |
| Scala players | Depends on the model | Image from support, and it replaces what is on the device |
| Other amd64 hardware | Depends on the device | Once we have tested the model, so get in touch with what you have |
For IT and security teams
Why the operating system is the real decision
Digital signage is three layers, and most vendors own only one of them.
| Layer | What it covers | Who usually owns it |
|---|---|---|
| Content | Authoring, scheduling, publishing | The signage software vendor |
| Device management | Monitoring, control, provisioning, diagnostics | A separate vendor, or nobody |
| Operating system and device | Boot, drivers, patching, hardening, lifecycle | Microsoft, Google, or the display manufacturer |
The bottom two rows are where signage deployments get expensive. An operating system nobody is answerable for still needs patching, imaging, and a site visit when it misbehaves, and none of that appears in a signage budget.
ScreenlyOS security and network capabilities
ScreenlyOS is built on Ubuntu Core in partnership with Canonical, and hardened down to a single job.
- The operating system and the playback software update together, over the air, cryptographically signed and transactional. A failed update rolls back on its own.
- No remote login and no open ports. Encrypted storage where the hardware supports it.
- 802.1X on wired and wireless, including static IP from the on-screen setup wizard.
- Mutual TLS client certificates, so a screen can authenticate to internal services.
- On hardware with a TPM, such as the Screenly Player Max, credentials for protected dashboards and internal services are stored in the chip rather than in ordinary storage.
- Remote reboot, remote diagnostic screenshots, and CPU, memory, and network health from the dashboard.
Signage players you already own can often run it too, which is the last row of the hardware table above.
What Screenly Anywhere means for security
We manage what happens inside our application, but not the system around it, so updates and security depend partly on the host. On some platforms apps render on our servers and are sent to the screen as images rather than running on the device.
The platforms themselves, and what each one asks of you, are in the table above.
What we do not do
Two limits worth knowing before you plan around them.
Screenly is not device-agnostic. Anywhere exists for hardware we cannot own, and the platforms it covers differ from each other in what they can do.
We also do not sell the layers separately. You cannot run ScreenlyOS underneath a different content management system, and there is no self-hosted version of the cloud.
Next
Connect a screen asks what the screen runs on and gives you the steps for that device.