Digital signage on Windows

Any Windows 10 or 11 machine can be a sign. There is no application to install — the player is a web page, and the job is to get a browser opening it fullscreen at boot and staying there.

What you need

Windows 10 or 11, and a browser — Chrome or Edge. Almost any machine will do: the player decodes video in the browser, so a low-power mini PC handles a 1080p playlist comfortably. Nothing needs to be installed from us, because on Windows the player is the web player.

That also sets the ceiling. A browser on Windows cannot reboot itself, cannot switch the panel off, and cannot be locked down the way the Android player can. If you need a screen that recovers from anything on its own, an Android TV box or a BrightSign is the better box. If you already own the PC, read on.

The quick way: the setup script

Your ScreenTinker instance serves a batch file that does the whole thing. Get it from the downloads page — windows-setup.bat — and run it as Administrator.

It creates a launcher in your profile and a shortcut in the Startup folder, so the player opens fullscreen every time that user logs in, and then offers to start it immediately. Open the file in Notepad first if you want to see exactly what it does; it is about thirty lines.

One edit is needed: set SERVER_URL at the top of the file to your own instance before running it. The downloads page prints the address to use.

The manual way

Two things have to be true: the browser opens the player fullscreen, and Windows starts it at login.

Create a shortcut with this as its target, substituting your own server address:

"C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --kiosk --autoplay-policy=no-user-gesture-required "https://your-server/player"

Then press Win+R, run shell:startup, and drop the shortcut in the folder that opens.

--autoplay-policy=no-user-gesture-required is the flag that matters. By default a browser refuses to start video with sound until somebody clicks the page, and nobody ever clicks a sign. Without the flag the playlist looks like it is stuck on the first image. Edge takes the same two flags; swap the path for msedge.exe.

--kiosk removes the address bar and tabs. It does not stop someone pressing Alt+F4 — for a screen the public can reach, use Windows Assigned Access to pin the machine to one app.

Pairing

The player opens on a six-digit code. In the dashboard, choose Add Display, type the code, give the screen a name, and it is yours. From then on the screen is driven from the dashboard like any other.

The settings that decide whether it survives a month

A Windows sign fails in predictable ways. All four are settings, not software:

• Sleep and display timeout. Set the power plan to never sleep and never turn off the display. A sleeping PC is a black screen that pings.
• Automatic sign-in. After a reboot, a machine sitting at the lock screen runs nothing. Enable automatic sign-in for the player account, and set a BIOS option to power on after power loss if the machine has one.
• Windows Update. It will reboot the machine. Set active hours, or an update ring, so it happens overnight rather than at 11am. With automatic sign-in the sign comes back by itself.
• The “restore pages?” bar. After a hard power cut Chrome offers to restore the session, which covers part of the sign until someone dismisses it. Launching with a fresh profile directory each boot avoids it.

What the dashboard can and cannot do to a Windows screen

Playlists, schedules, layouts, zones, widgets, proof-of-play, live screen view and the “refresh” command all work — they are server-side or in the page. The two that do not are physical: screen off draws a black overlay rather than putting the panel to sleep, and reboot is ignored, because a web page cannot restart the computer hosting it. The dashboard shows the buttons a given screen can actually honour.

Several screens from one PC

Each display is a separate browser window pointed at the player, and each pairs as its own screen. On a machine with two outputs that is two windows, two pairing codes, two independent playlists. For a genuine video wall — one image spanning several panels with bezel compensation — use the video wall feature and give each panel its own player.