Anthias 2026.07.0 | Screenly

Anthias 2026.07.0: Bulk actions for assets, and uploads of several files at once

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Changing the schedule of 40 assets used to mean opening "Edit asset" 40 times, and people have asked on the forum for a way around that for years. From Anthias 2026.07.0, every row on the home page has a checkbox, and the header of each list, "Enabled" and "Inactive", has one that selects the whole list. Once something is selected, a bar shows how many assets you picked, with these actions:

"Enable" and "Disable" move the selected assets between the 2 lists.
"Edit" changes the schedule of all of them at once.
"Delete" removes them all. Deleting can't be undone.

Editing a selection

The "Edit" dialog has 4 groups of settings, each with its own switch: "Start & end dates", "Duration", "Play from / until times" and "Days of week". Only the groups you switch on are changed. Everything else stays as it is on each asset, so changing the duration of 12 assets leaves their dates alone. "No cache" and "Skip asset check" joined the dialog in Anthias 2026.07.2.

Duration doesn't apply to videos, which keep their own length. Switching on "Play from / until times" and leaving both times empty removes the time window, so the assets play all day.

Uploading several files at once

In Add asset > Upload file you can pick several files again, as you could before the web interface was redesigned in Anthias 2026.05.0, or drop them on the upload area. They upload one after another, and the dialog shows which file it's on, such as "File 2 of 5", along with the progress of the current one.

Anthias 2026.07.0: A Prefer dark mode setting shows web pages in dark colors

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Anthias 2026.07.0 adds a "Prefer dark mode" switch to Settings. Turn it on and the viewer shows the web pages in your playlist in dark colors, with no change to the pages themselves.

The darkening is automatic, so it also applies to pages that were never designed with a dark theme. Check how your own pages look with it on before you leave it that way.

The setting is off by default. Saving it restarts the viewer's web view, so the change shows on screen without a reboot. Images and videos aren't affected.

For developers

The setting is the prefer_dark_mode field of /api/v2/device_settings, which you can read with GET and change with PATCH. The viewer passes it to the web view as ANTHIAS_PREFER_DARK_MODE=1, which turns on Chromium's automatic dark mode (--blink-settings=forceDarkModeEnabled=true).

Anthias 2026.07.0: New blank and unblank commands turn a screen dark and wake it

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

From Anthias 2026.07.0 you can turn a screen dark outside opening hours or during a meeting, then wake it again, and it works with any display. There's no button for it in the web interface, so it's for people who can send a command to the player's API, for example from a script.

It's 2 new commands for the viewer, blank and unblank. Until now the only way to do that from Anthias was the experimental HDMI-CEC controls, which work only with a TV that accepts CEC commands.

blank pauses the playlist and turns the screen dark.
unblank turns the screen on and resumes the playlist. Sending play while the screen is blank does the same.

What dark means depends on the board. On x86, Raspberry Pi 5 and generic arm64 boards such as the Rock Pi 4, blank switches off the video signal on every connected output, so a monitor goes into standby. On the Raspberry Pi 2, 3 and 4, Anthias can't switch the output off, so it shows a black image instead and the display stays on.

There's no button for these commands in the web interface. Send them through the API's playback control endpoint, the one that takes next and previous, with the same authentication as any other API call:

curl http://<device-ip>/api/v2/assets/control/blank
curl http://<device-ip>/api/v2/assets/control/unblank

The API reference lists only next, previous and asset for this endpoint, but it passes any command on to the viewer.

Anthias 2026.07.0: Screen rotation turns the display on Raspberry Pi 5 and generic arm64 boards

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On a Raspberry Pi 5, picking a value in Settings > "Screen rotation" saved without complaint and left the picture as it was, as the 2026.05.1 entry that introduced the setting described. From Anthias 2026.07.0, "Portrait (90°)", "Landscape, inverted (180°)" and "Portrait, inverted (270°)" turn the whole display on a Raspberry Pi 5, and the change applies as soon as you save, with no reboot. In this release 90° and 270° turn the picture the opposite way to a 32-bit Raspberry Pi 2 or 3; Anthias 2026.07.3 makes every board turn the same way.

The same fix covers generic arm64 boards such as the Rock Pi 4, which run the viewer the same way as the Pi 5.

Anthias 2026.07.0: RTSP, HLS and DASH links play as live streams

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A live stream added in Add asset > From URL was saved as a web page, even though the dialog says streaming URLs are supported. The web view can't play a stream, so it never showed on screen.

From Anthias 2026.07.0, these links are saved as streams and play in the video player:

rtsp:// addresses, such as an IP camera's
HLS playlists (.m3u8) and DASH manifests (.mpd) served over HTTP or HTTPS

A stream has no length of its own, so it stays on screen for the "Default streaming duration (seconds)" value in Settings.

In the project's testing, RTSP played on x86, the Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 and the Rock Pi 4, and HLS and DASH played on x86.

RTMP isn't accepted

In the project's testing, rtmp:// streams showed only a black screen on every board tried. The web interface and the API now refuse them, and Add asset says "RTMP streams are not supported. Use an RTSP, HLS, or DASH URL instead."

Anthias 2026.07.0: Raspberry Pi 5 accepts H.264 video, including YouTube downloads

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A Raspberry Pi 5 now takes H.264 video as well as HEVC. Anthias 2026.05.1 started checking each video against what the board can decode, and on a Pi 5 that meant HEVC only, since it has no H.264 decoder Anthias can use. H.264 uploads were refused, and so were YouTube videos, which Anthias downloaded as H.264 and then marked "Failed".

From Anthias 2026.07.0, the Pi 5 decodes H.264 on its processor instead. In the project's testing, a 1080p H.264 clip at 30 fps played as smoothly as the same clip in HEVC, using about 14% of the Pi 5's processor.

YouTube downloads on a Pi 5 take HEVC when YouTube offers it, and H.264 otherwise. Other boards still prefer H.264.

Anthias 2026.07.0: Disk images flash directly in balenaEtcher, and Raspberry Pi Imager lists Anthias for the Pi 5

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Flashing Anthias is easier in 2026.07.0, in 2 ways.

One format both flashing tools read

Release disk images are now compressed with xz and named like 2026-07-02-anthias-pi4-64.img.xz. They were .img.zst before, which balenaEtcher can't flash, so you had to decompress the image first. Raspberry Pi Imager and balenaEtcher both flash .img.xz directly.

The downloads are smaller too. The Raspberry Pi 4 image is 633 MB, against 907 MB in Anthias 2026.06.3, and the x86 image is 1.80 GB, against 1.88 GB.

Anthias in Raspberry Pi Imager on the Pi 5

Raspberry Pi Imager asks which Pi you have, then lists the operating systems made for it. Anthias images didn't say which Pi they were for, and once you picked a Raspberry Pi 5, Imager left Anthias out. Each image now names its board, so Anthias shows up for the Pi 2, Pi 3, Pi 4 and Pi 5, with names like "Anthias (Raspberry Pi 5)" in place of "Anthias (pi5)".

On the Pi 3, Imager offers the 64-bit image, pi3-64. The 32-bit pi3 image is still on the release page.

Anthias 2026.07.0: A script that collects a redacted debug bundle for bug reports

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If your player misbehaves and you ask for help in a GitHub issue or on the forum, the first thing you'll be asked for is logs and system details. From Anthias 2026.07.0, one command gathers them into a single file you can attach, with passwords and IP addresses replaced first. You only need it when you're reporting a problem.

The command is bin/collect_debug.sh, in the repository.

On a player installed with the installer, run:

~/anthias/bin/collect_debug.sh

It writes anthias-debug-<date>-<time>.tar.gz to your home directory. The archive holds:

host and system details, and on a Raspberry Pi its throttling status and temperature
Docker and Compose state, the last 2,000 log lines of each Anthias container, and the kernel log
the Anthias configuration and an overview of the database
an ffprobe report for each video asset
network and Redis checks

Before it packs the archive, the script replaces IP and MAC addresses, email addresses, usernames and passwords inside URLs, and the device's hostname with placeholders, and blanks the passwords, keys and other secrets in anthias.conf. Asset names and addresses can still be in it, so read through the bundle before you post it.

The script only reads from the system, so you can run it while the player is showing content. --output DIR writes the archive somewhere else, --lines N changes how many log lines it keeps per container, and --no-archive leaves the folder unpacked.

Anthias 2026.07.0: New and changed assets reach the screen without a restart, and other fixes

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Fixes

In Anthias 2026.06.3 the viewer could miss content you added or changed. On a fresh device the first item you added never appeared, and the screen stayed on the standby image until the viewer restarted. New and changed content now reaches the screen on its own.
Settings > Backup & restore > "Get backup" starts downloading as soon as you click it. On a device with a large content library, the download sat at 0 B until the whole archive was built, and could time out.
Content on your local network, such as an intranet page, a file on a NAS or a page served by another container on the same player, is no longer marked unreachable and skipped. Before, it showed when you added it, then dropped out of the playlist after a reboot or the next reachability check. Anthias checks those addresses like any other now, so the ANTHIAS_ALLOW_PRIVATE_FETCH variable, which used to let them through, isn't needed anymore.
On a Raspberry Pi 3 running 32-bit Raspberry Pi OS, which starts a 64-bit kernel by default, the installer and upgrade_containers.sh picked the 64-bit image, and the download failed with no matching manifest for linux/arm/v8. They now pick the 32-bit pi3 image.
Installing on a Raspberry Pi 3 with a 64-bit OS no longer stops with Required environment variables missing or invalid.
Installing on 32-bit Raspberry Pi OS no longer stops with fatal error: Python.h: No such file or directory.
Installing on a minimal Debian Trixie image, such as Armbian on a Rock Pi 4, no longer stops partway when you let Anthias manage the network. The installer adds polkitd, which NetworkManager needs there.
A display power check or a usage telemetry report that hung for more than 30 seconds was killed along with the background worker process running it. It now gives up after 30 seconds and tries again on the next run. On a Raspberry Pi the display power check could still hang past that limit until Anthias 2026.08.1.
The viewer's stop and play commands pause and resume the playlist. Before, stop only skipped to the next item and play did nothing. Restoring a backup in Settings sends both, so the screen now holds still while a restore runs.
Mistakes on the Settings page, such as passwords that don't match or a wrong current password, are no longer reported to Sentry as errors. Through the API, PATCH /api/v2/device_settings answers such a mistake with its reason, where it used to return An error occurred while saving settings.
Tall dialogs, such as "Edit asset" with its error message and advanced options open, scroll inside the window, so their buttons stay on screen.

Improvements

Web pages shown by Anthias send a User-Agent that ends in Anthias/ and the release, such as Anthias/2026.07.0, so a site's server can tell a request came from an Anthias screen.
The installer refreshes the package lists once instead of twice.
The x86 installation guide explains what to do when you set a root password while installing Debian, which leaves sudo uninstalled.

For contributors

The Raspberry Pi 2 and Pi 3 viewer image builds its web view with Debian's crossbuild-essential-armhf cross compiler. The Linaro toolchain download it used before is gone, which had stopped those image builds and kept the latest-<board> tags from moving.
The hourly balena job that unpins devices knows the pi3-64 and Rock Pi 4 fleets, which had made every run end in an error.
New tests cover bulk asset actions, multi-file upload, display blanking, dark mode, streaming links, the backup download, the Pi 5 codec rules and the reachability check.

Dependency updates also went in, among them yt-dlp, which downloads YouTube videos, from 2026.3.17 to 2026.6.9, plus the Redis client, the Sentry SDK, ansible-core and GitHub Actions.