Content changes reach screens sooner

A player can handle a change to what a screen shows in 2 ways. It can keep the old content on screen until the whole update has downloaded and then switch over in one go, or it can switch as soon as it has something new to show and fill in the rest behind it. Screenly does the second, because what you usually want most is to see the change.

That matters most on the day something is wrong on a screen. Pull the item and publish the replacement, and it reaches the screen in the time it takes to fetch 1 item, not everything you touched.

In ScreenlyOS 26.8.0, the player downloads in an order that makes the most of that. It fetches 1 item it can play right now before it switches over, so there’s something to show the moment it does. Then it works through the rest smallest first, leaving anything not scheduled to play until later for last.

The order used to be arbitrary. A single large video could sit at the front of the queue with a dozen small images behind it, so a change stayed off the screen far longer than its size called for. You’ll notice the difference most on a screen setting itself up for the first time, which has everything to download, and at sites with a slow connection, where a screen now fills in as it goes.