Windows

Options can be accessed directly by the player or in settings for your player.

• Launch player on startup - Toggle this ON to make sure our APP starts when your player starts up, for example after a power outage.
• Always on top - Tells the operating system to keep our APP window above other windows. This prevents popups or notifications from showing above.
• 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 the "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).
• 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, although 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 removes any old data stored on the players' storage.
• Transfer Screen - Move screens between teams without deleting or re-linking—Transfer Screen makes screen management simple and efficient. Learn more
• 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 it's running HD, your content on the TVs will be optimized 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 has 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.

I got my screen linked, what next?

We recommend checking out our Getting Started video.

Design your content

The application starts, but the screen is black.

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 does 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 for Windows 7/8/10

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 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 the Play Digital Signage player app every minute. If the app is already running, then the new instance will be exited immediately.

• Download the scheduler script from here.
• Right-click on it and select “Run as administrator“
• The script will prompt you to “run as password”, just press enter.

Option 2 – Windows scheduler manually via command

• Click Start and type “cmd”, then right-click on the “Command prompt” result and select “Run as administrator”
• Copy and paste the following two commands into the command prompt one by one:
  • SCHTASKS /CREATE /SC ONLOGON /DELAY 0001:00 /TN "PlaySignage watchdog" /TR "C:\Users\%%USERNAME%%\AppData\Local\Programs\PlaySignage\PlaySignage.exe"
  • 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 the Play Digital Signage 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 – Play Digital Signage 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.

• Ensure you have the Windows app installed.
• Download PlaySignage_companion.exe program.
• 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 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:

• Close the player application if it’s running.
• Download the latest version.
• Double-click on the downloaded .exe file.
• 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 the following command in the command prompt: winmgmt /resetrepository

Windows 7 starts the app but does not connect.

Since Microsoft is no longer supporting Windows 7, it has issues with the root certificate. That means certain SSL (HTTPS) certificates that are issued aren't considered valid by the operating system. You can try installing an update from here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=45633

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

Enable & disable animations

The plugins don’t work

If one or more plugins don’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 the Windows Store. Our app is also listed on Windows Store, however 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?

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, that 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.