Your screen is connected. Here is what normal looks like, and what to check if it does not look like that.
Confirm it is working
Open Screens. The new screen should show as online, and as in sync once it has downloaded what you assigned it.
Pending sync is not an error. It means the screen is still downloading, and video takes longer than images. It keeps playing whatever it had before until it has everything.
To see what is on the display without walking over to it, request a screenshot from the screen’s page. On ScreenlyOS the screenshot is captured from the device’s own display output, so it shows exactly what is on the screen. On Screenly Anywhere it shows what our app is drawing rather than the whole device.
Remote screenshots can be turned off per device with Privacy Mode, for screens showing sensitive information. If screenshots are unavailable on a device, check whether Privacy Mode is on.
What happens when the connection drops
The screen keeps playing. Files you uploaded and the schedule are held on the device, so content keeps playing and scheduled changes still happen on time.
What stops is anything that has to fetch something. A web page, or an app pulling live figures, is skipped while it cannot reach its source, and returns once the connection is back.
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.
On Anywhere, how much survives an outage varies by platform, because Anywhere is a different build on each one. Check the behavior on the platform you are deploying before you rely on it.
If something looks wrong
Common setup issues covers a display showing nothing, a screen that never comes online, content that never arrives, and content that looks wrong on the display, with what to check for each.
On ScreenlyOS
There is nothing to patch on the device, nothing to log into, no antivirus to install, no reboot schedule to maintain, and no imaging process to keep current. Every night between 3am and 5am local time the device checks for a new version and installs it, and a failed update undoes itself.
If a device stops behaving, remote reboot and diagnostics come first, and a site visit is the last resort rather than the first.
On Screenly Anywhere
The device is still running its own system, so two things are worth doing before you mount it somewhere awkward to reach.
Turn off its sleep timer, screensaver, auto-off schedule, and power-saving mode. The device’s own power settings are the single most common cause of a blank Anywhere screen, and a television in particular will often power itself down after a few hours with no remote input. Each platform guide has a page on it.
Expect the host to interrupt occasionally. It can install its own updates and restart, or show its own messages over your content. For most screens that is fine. For a screen where an unexpected restart would be a real problem, ScreenlyOS removes the possibility, because there the device does nothing else.
Next
The screen has nothing to play until a playlist reaches it. Upload your first content is the next step of the walkthrough, or go straight to Playlists if you have content already.