ScreenlyOS release notes | Screenly

ScreenlyOS 26.10.0: Players no longer trust certificates from emSign ECC Root CA - G3

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

From ScreenlyOS 26.10.0, players no longer accept certificates issued under emSign ECC Root CA - G3. On October 20, 2026, keys belonging to certificate authorities under that root were found to be compromised (Mozilla bug 2083449). Players stop trusting it, for the web pages they show and for their own connections.

If this affects you: a web page on your screens whose certificate comes from emSign ECC Root CA - G3 stops loading on players running 26.10.0. Ask whoever runs the site to move to a certificate from another authority.

ScreenlyOS 26.10.0: The Device Information page shows a player's details on the display

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Support asks for a player’s serial number and MAC address, and you’re standing in front of it with a keyboard. Press F8 and the Device Information page now lists the details on the display:

model and serial number
Ethernet and Wi-Fi IP and MAC addresses
whether secure boot and disk encryption are on

Before, the page showed only a QR code, so reading anything off it meant getting a phone out. The QR code is still there, next to the list, for when you’d rather send the details to your phone than copy them down.

ScreenlyOS 26.10.0: Apps on x86 players with a TPM always get their saved keys and passwords

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On x86 players with a TPM, an app that played after any web page had loaded lost the API keys and passwords saved in its settings, so it couldn’t fetch its data.

From ScreenlyOS 26.10.0, apps on these players get them every time, whatever played before them.

ScreenlyOS 26.10.0: A screen keeps showing its content while a single new item loads

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Switching a screen to a single item that couldn’t load yet, such as an app still downloading its files or a web page that failed to load, turned the screen black while the player tried again.

The screen now keeps showing what was there, the previous content or the same item if it was already playing, until the new item loads. Screens with more than 1 item to show already worked this way.

ScreenlyOS 26.10.0: Audio plays through the right port on Raspberry Pi, and other fixes

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Fixes

On a Raspberry Pi, audio set to HDMI could play through the HDMI port with no display on it, and audio set to the headphone jack came out of the second HDMI port instead. HDMI audio now plays through the port the display is connected to, and headphone jack audio plays from the jack. On a Raspberry Pi 5, which has no headphone jack, it plays through HDMI.
Pressing F3 for network diagnostics showed the results of the checks from when the player started. F3 now runs the checks each time.
The time server check, on the diagnostics screen and in support reports, always tested ntp.ubuntu.com. It now tests the time server the player is set to use.
Pressing F3 or F8 while help or a setup screen was open stopped R from working until the player restarted. R now works after either key.

Improvements

Optimizations for video playback on LED screens.
A screen whose connection to Screenly drops after it’s been up for a while reconnects right away, so commands like a reboot or a screenshot reach it sooner.
The setup file on a USB drive is now called screenlyos-config.yaml. Drives that still have network.yaml keep working.
Dependencies and system libraries updated.

ScreenlyOS 26.9.0: Players support a new screenshot command

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Remote device management is about doing from the dashboard what used to take someone standing at the screen. A player takes commands from Screenly, like reboot and power off, and ScreenlyOS 26.9.0 adds a new one: take a screenshot.

A player that gets the command captures what it’s showing at that moment and sends it straight back. Until now, the only screenshot to look at was the one sent with the player’s regular report, about every 15 minutes, so checking whether a change reached the lobby screen could mean a quarter-hour wait.

The dashboard sends the command from the “Take screenshot” button on a screen’s Overview, which arrived in Screenly 26.10.6. It works on players running ScreenlyOS 26.9.0 or newer.

ScreenlyOS 26.9.0: An Edge App with nothing to show can skip its turn

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

An earthquake map on a quiet day, a flight tracker with no planes overhead, a meeting room app between bookings: some apps have nothing worth showing some of the time. Until now, they still took their slot in the playlist, and the screen showed an empty app for its whole duration.

An Edge App can now tell the player it has nothing to show. The player skips it and moves on to the next item in the playlist, so the screen keeps showing something useful. The app gets its turn again the next time the playlist comes round, and can decide again then.

An app can only skip before it appears. Once it’s on screen, it plays for its full duration.

For developers

Call screenly.signalAbort() from your Edge App while it’s loading. If the app hasn’t been shown yet, the player cancels it and starts the next item. A call after the app is on screen is ignored. A skip isn’t counted as a failed play.

ScreenlyOS 26.9.0: Screen metrics are served over HTTPS

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Some customers have Prometheus metrics turned on for their players, so their own monitoring can track CPU, memory, disk, and network use across a fleet. From ScreenlyOS 26.9.0, a player serves those metrics over HTTPS on port 9100, and identifies itself with its own device certificate. Your monitoring system can check it’s talking to the player it expects.

Metrics collection is off unless it was turned on for your players, so most customers have nothing to change.

If this affects you: a monitoring system that collects metrics from players over plain HTTP stops getting data once a player updates to 26.9.0. Change the scrape target to https on the same port, verify the certificate against the Screenly certificate authority, and set the expected server name to the player’s hostname (the srly- name). Our support team can send you the Screenly CA certificate.

For developers

For a Prometheus scrape job, that means scheme: https with a tls_config whose ca_file points at the Screenly CA certificate and whose server_name is the player’s hostname. The port stays 9100, and the metrics themselves are unchanged.

ScreenlyOS 26.9.0: Players keep Bluetooth off and report its state

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Nothing on a Screenly player uses Bluetooth, so from ScreenlyOS 26.9.0, players switch it off when they start. That covers a Raspberry Pi’s built-in Bluetooth and a USB Bluetooth adapter plugged in later. Wi-Fi isn’t affected.

Each player also reports whether its Bluetooth is on or off. The dashboard doesn’t show it yet.

ScreenlyOS 26.9.0: Removed screens get a new PIN to pair again, and other fixes

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Fixes

A screen that had been removed from its workspace could sit on the pairing screen with no PIN. It now gets a new PIN, so you can pair it again.
An x86 player with a TPM now recovers on its own from a TPM fault that used to disrupt its connection to Screenly until it was restarted.

Improvements

A Scala player running ScreenlyOS reports itself as a Scala Player, with the serial number from its hardware.
Dependencies and system libraries updated.

ScreenlyOS 26.8.0: Each display runs at its own resolution, whenever it was connected

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A player worked out its display setup once and then kept it. Whatever was plugged in the first time set the resolution: a 4K display installed this month could run at 1600x900 because a 1600x900 display had been on the end of that cable 6 months ago. A second display added after that first look was never set up, so it didn’t mirror the first one.

Players now read the displays that are actually connected. Each one gets its own preferred resolution, and a second display mirrors the first, whichever order they were plugged in. 2 displays with different resolutions now both show the whole picture, instead of 1 of them showing it cropped.

If a display at one of your sites has looked soft, or a second display hasn’t shown the same picture as the first, this release fixes it.

ScreenlyOS 26.8.0: ScreenlyOS runs on Scala players

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

ScreenlyOS is now built as a disk image for Scala players, alongside the Raspberry Pi and x86 images. A Scala player already mounted behind a screen can be reimaged and connected to a Screenly workspace instead of replaced.

That matters most where the hardware is already in place. In a store or a cinema lobby running Scala players, the expensive part of a deployment was done years ago: the players are mounted, cabled, and powered, often somewhere awkward. Reimaging changes what runs on them, and everything after that is the usual Screenly setup. The screen shows a PIN, and you connect it from Screens > Connect screen.

A Scala player gets each ScreenlyOS release at the same time as the rest of your fleet.

The image isn’t on the downloads page yet. Ask support or sales, and they’ll send it to you.

ScreenlyOS 26.8.0: Changing a screen's timezone applies to scheduled content right away

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Correcting a screen’s timezone had no effect on what it played. Scheduled content kept following the old timezone until the player happened to restart, so a screen set up in the wrong timezone could run a breakfast menu at lunchtime with nothing on the screen to explain why.

A timezone change now applies within about half a second. Set the timezone on a screen that has been running for weeks, and the next scheduled item is the right one.

ScreenlyOS 26.8.0: Content changes reach screens sooner

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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.

ScreenlyOS 26.8.0: Proof of play comes to ScreenlyOS

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A schedule only says what a screen was meant to show. What actually played is a different question, and a lot rides on the answer:

An advertiser or a landlord paying for a slot on your screens wants evidence it ran.
In a regulated environment, a record of what was shown on each screen, and when, can be what an audit asks for.
Anyone running a large fleet wants to know their content plays without failures, and that the schedules they set up put the right thing on the right screen at the right time.

From ScreenlyOS 26.8.0, players can record what they actually play. Each item that goes on screen produces a record of what it was and how long it was up, kept on the player and uploaded to Screenly every few minutes. A screen that was offline for an hour, or an item that failed to load, shows up as a gap instead of hiding behind the schedule. If the network is down, the records wait on the player for up to 31 days and go up when it’s back.

Proof of play is off by default, and we turn it on by request: talk to us if you want it on your screens. The dashboard doesn’t show the records yet.

ScreenlyOS 26.8.0: Videos keep playing after one fails to load, and other fixes

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Fixes

A player no longer crashes when its screen’s location comes without coordinates.
USB capture devices that send uncompressed video now play.
A scheduling rule that fails while it’s being checked no longer restarts the player in a loop.
After 1 video fails to load, the rest of the videos still play.
A player no longer hangs while closing a video, or restarts onto a video it has already dropped.
A web page that’s still on screen is no longer dropped from the player’s memory.
Scheduled content no longer builds up in the player’s memory with each content update.
1 diagnostics check timing out now reports 1 failure instead of up to 3.
Repeated Wi-Fi scans in the Wi-Fi settings no longer pile up and time out early.
A stalled connection to Screenly no longer holds up every request behind it.
1 unreadable USB device no longer stops the player listing the others.

Improvements

A new power-off command, which the dashboard sends from “Power off” on a screen’s Actions tab since Screenly 26.10.4.
The disk image and the Raspberry Pi Imager entry are called ScreenlyOS, so what you flash has the same name as what runs. The fixed download address follows the new name: screenlyos-latest-pi64-stable.img.zip for Raspberry Pi and screenlyos-latest-x86-stable.img.zip for x86. The old screenly-latest address no longer updates, so a bookmark or script that uses it needs the new one.
Dependencies and system libraries updated.

ScreenlyOS 26.7.0: Players showing web pages keep running instead of going black

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A screen showing web pages, such as several Google Slides decks rotating through the day, used a little more memory every time it moved from one web page to the next. Left alone, the player ran out. A screen that had been fine all morning went black or restarted by itself in the afternoon, then ran normally once it came back.

Memory now stays flat however long the loop runs, so a screen on web content keeps going through the day and the night after it.

ScreenlyOS 26.7.0: New playlist content reaches the screen without a restart

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When you added or replaced content in a playlist, a player could download the new items and then go on showing the old ones until it was restarted.

The screen now switches to the new content once it has downloaded, on every player showing that playlist.

ScreenlyOS 26.7.0: The Diagnostics screen on the player is easier to read

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Diagnostics screen is what you read when you’re standing in front of a screen that isn’t doing what it should. Its System, Disk, and Network cards have a new design: larger card titles, load and temperature on 1 line each, and clearer progress bars.

Press F4 on a player to open it.

ScreenlyOS 26.7.0: Players report more about their hardware health, and other improvements

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Players report more about the health of their hardware, including SD card errors on Raspberry Pi and power and heat throttling on Raspberry Pi 5. From Screenly 26.10.3, SD card health is in a screen’s reports on API v4.1, as sd_card_health. The dashboard doesn’t show these readings yet.
Improvements to how players connect to Screenly when the service is busy.
Dependencies and system libraries updated.

ScreenlyOS 26.6.0: Players can keep a resolution and rotation for each display