If you have a media player powered by Windows make sure it’s Windows 7, 8, 10, or 11. All versions (Home, professional, etc.) are supported. Windows digital signage is known as one of the strongest platforms on the market.
Log in at my.playsignage.com, then go to Screens, hit Add screen, and use the code from the TV to link the APP to your account.
Design your content
Go to Playlists, hit Create Playlist, and design your content.
Link your playlist
Go to Groups & Schedules, pick your playlist in the group’s base playlist and move your screen to the group.
Launch APP on startup
Launching the APP on startup is not on when you first install our APP. If you want the APP to launch after a power outage or simply when you power on your player go to my.playsignage.com, Screens, open the settings for the screen and toggle on Launch APP on startup.
Launch player on startup - Toggle this ON to make sure our APP starts when your player starts up, for example after a power outage.
Show top menu bar - Toggle this ON if you want the top bar to appear when moving the mouse or using the remote for your player. Toggle this OFF if you want a kiosk experience where users can't exit the app by clicking the exit button on the top menu bar. You can still access the menu with "Ctrl + o" command.
Optimize for touchscreen - Toggle this ON if you are planning on using our APP on a touchscreen. This setting will make small adjustments to how our APP works in conjunction with a touchscreen.
Analytics - Toggle this ON if you need analytic data from this particular player. Read more about Analytics
Display Orientation - This option should only be used if your player operating system does not support changing the orientation as we recommend the adjustment on an operating system level instead.. You have the option of portrait (Clockwise) and portrait (Counter-clockwise).
Website rendering engine - Our app comes with a pre-packaged Chromium engine and by default the websites are rendered using the prepackaged browser, however you can change this and use the system engine instead, then websites will be rendered using default browser that is configured as the webview engine in your Android device. The prepackaged browser works well for most users so there should not be a need to change it unless there are problems with specific website rendering.
UserAgent - UserAgent is a piece of text that browsers use to identify itself to the web server. Certain websites will render a mobile view if they detect Android userAgent, altough the site is displayed on a big screen. With this option you can work around this issue and spoof a desktop computer's UserAgent. The UserAgent lets you pick Default, Mobile, Desktop, or Custom.
Reload player every day at - It is good practice to clear the cache on the player once every 24 hours. Here you can set a time that is not inconvenient, for example at night when no one is watching your TVs. Rooted devices will be rebooted, unrooted devices will simply restart our app.
Tags - If you are using tags they will be listed here. You also can find and add a tag.
Clear cache - In case you need to clear the cache manually you can do that here. For example, if you are changing your content continually and you experience something not working as expected, clearing the cache should help as it removed any old data stored on the players' storage.
Reload - Reloading your player is similar to clearing the cache. In addition, reloading will close and start the APP.
Status - Status tells you if the APP is connected to the cloud. Green means you are connected and red means you are not connected. If you see a red status you should check the internet and wifi connection to your player.
Device Time - The device time tells you the player's time and date. If the device time is wrong it will also be wrong in our APP and thus all time related scheduling will be off, so make sure to correct the time on the player operating system if you are having problems.
Resolution - The resolution is the resolution according to your player's operating system. If the operating system on the players tells us its running HD, your content on the TVs will be optimised for HD. Please note that many devices that are advertised as 4K can only decode video in 4K but run apps in a lower resolution. This means you may see a lower resolution reported by our app, but any 4K video that you use will be still played as 4K. If you are seeing a lower resolution, you can install a 3rd party "resolution checker" app on the device to confirm the resolution from another app as well.
Version - This is the version of our APP
Screen ID - Also referred to as UID. The UID is the unique ID for your player.
Disc Usage - Disc usage will tell you how much data have been used on the player's storage. We do not recommend more than max. 80% storage use.
Android Settings - This is reserved for developers only
Screen edges - In case you have a LED screen, video wall, or an older model TV you might have to adjust the edges so that they match your TV and the content.
Browser - Here you can easily access the browser used by the APP to check content, connectivity, etc.
Reset - If you need to unlink your player or perhaps link the player to another account you can use reset.
You probably have an outdated version of the .NET framework, download and install the most recent .NET Framework version.
Where are the files saved?
The player downloads files to C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Roaming\PlaySignage\assets Please note that the AppData folder is hidden in Windows by default, if you don’t know how to show hidden files, click here to see a guide.
Can I run several instances of the application?
By default, the application enables a maximum of one window, however in situations where you have a Windows machine with several monitors, you may need to run one player application per monitor. To do this, you need to set a different data directory for each application window using the --data-dir parameter, for example: C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Programs\PlaySignage\PlaySignage.exe --data-dir=C:\playsignage-app2
The mouse cursor is visible after restart?
Some Windows machines have a quirk where the cursor is showing after rebooting the player. This can not be fixed by our software as windows do not update the mouse cursor location after our app starts, so the cursor does not register as hovering over the app. The simple fix is to install additional software to auto-hide the cursor:
Download & unzip the file, you will find a simple program that works with the default configuration
The taskbar is showing?
Though our app tells Windows to launch it in full screen and in Kiosk mode, sometimes the taskbar can creep back up, this can be also triggered by 3rd party programs showing notifications. The simplest solution is to configure Windows to auto-hide the taskbar, however, some users have reported the taskbar not hiding even if it’s set to hide – it seems to be a Windows issue that happens inconsistently on some machines. You can work around the issue with a 3rd party program to hide the taskbar altogether with a configured hotkey, click here to download TaskBar Autohider. Please note that after a restart this program does start up, but it does not hide the taskbar, so it is important to disable the nightly reboot of the player – you can do so in the screen settings in our web portal.
Does the app recover from a crash?
Our app has a built-in heartbeat mechanism where one process pings another process to ensure that it is running, and if not, it will start it up again. While this solution recovers from most types of crashes, there is an exception when it comes to Windows killing our app when it is about to run out of RAM. Since both of these processes are part of the same program, the heartbeat mechanism would get killed as well. While not necessary for most installations, users who run our app on a more demanding environment, such as large public LED screens can further increase the reliability by having the heartbeat done by a 3rd party program instead, then it is not subject to being killed by the operating system.
Option 1 – Windows scheduler batch script
We can schedule a repeating task using the Windows scheduler to start PlaySignage player app every minute. If the app is already running, then the new instance will be exited immediately.
After you run the next command, it will ask for a run-as password, just press enter
SCHTASKS /CHANGE /RI 1 /TN "PlaySignage watchdog"
In case you plan to use the Windows machine for other tasks, you’ll want to delete the task that is starting up PlaySignage app every minute, you can do so with the following command in the “Run as administrator” command prompt: SCHTASKS /DELETE /TN "PlaySignage watchdog" /F
Option 3 – PlaySignage companion program
This is a simple program that runs every minute and checks that PlaySignage.exe is running, if it’s not, it will start it.
Open the Windows Run window (press Windows key + R) and type shell:startup then select OK.
Copy the downloaded PlaySignage_companion.exe file to the startup folder.
Restart the computer, now the PlaySignage_companion.exe should be started by Windows and you can see it in the system tray.
Intranet website with a self-signed SSL certificate is not showing?
By default as a security precaution, the application does not show websites with certificate errors. However, if you need to show a website that does not have a valid SSL certificate, you can launch the app with a --ignore-certificate-errors parameter, for example: C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Programs\PlaySignage\PlaySignage.exe --ignore-certificate-errors
How to disable automatic updates for Windows 10?
Unlike previous versions, there is no official way to turn off automatic updates on Windows 10 machines. That is good from the security perspective, however digital signage operators often prefer that their devices do not start updating in the middle of the day. If the updates are disabled and an exploit is found in Windows, your device will be exposed to the exploit as it won’t get the latest security updates. If you decide to turn off the automatic updates, we recommend making sure that at least the Windows Defender Firewall is turned on.
Select “Disable Service” and press the button “Apply now”
This software is created by Sordum, read more about the update blocker here.
How do I update the app software?
There is a built-in auto-updater, however, in certain circumstances, the software is not automatically updated. You can apply the update manually without having to link the screen again:
When an update is applied, the player will be launched.
The player is not downloading files?
If you are using Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), it may block our software from querying disc usage. You can fix it by executing following command in the command prompt: winmgmt /resetrepository
The animations are not working?
Windows 10 has a special accessibility setting to disable animations. It is likely that the animations are disabled with that setting, you can find it in Settings -> Ease of Access -> Other options -> Play animations
If one or more plugin doesn’t work on your Windows, it’s possible that the PlaySignage app on your player device is out of date. Click here to learn more.
How do I access OPTIONS if I disabled the top menu bar?
In the APP options, you can hide the top menu bar if you for example are running a touch screen. To access the top menu bar, when hidden, you can use CTRL + O for options or CTRL + Q to close the APP.
I installed the app from Windows Store, but I can not use it for Windows kiosk mode.
Windows 10 and 11 have the functionality to set up assigned access for a single user and application (kiosk mode), the caveat being the application must be UWP appx installed from Windows Store. Our app is also listed on Windows Store, however also to our disappointment we discovered that Microsoft does not support the technology stack we use (electron) for their kiosk mode, this is a limitation of the internal Edge browser webview unfortunately.
Is Windows Digital Signage a great choice for large-area screens?
Absolutely, Windows Digital Signage is both stable and has the resources to run 24/7 production screens, large area screens, LED totems, etc. But keep in mind, Windows Digital Signage can be limited by the hardware. If the hardware is old and obsolete it might not have the resources to run the content you’d like.
