Set up a Web Kiosk

A Web Kiosk turns a device you already own into a display — an old iPad, a smart TV’s browser, a spare laptop. Nothing to buy, nothing to install.

What you need

Any device with a reasonably current web browser, a power supply, and Wi-Fi. That’s the whole list. You’ll also need a second device — your phone is ideal — to finish the pairing.

Setting it up

  1. On the device you want to use as the display, open: https://device.omnisigns.app/screen.html It will show a pairing code straight away, something like ABC-234.
  2. On your phone or computer, sign in at portal.omnisigns.app, choose Pair a Kiosk, and type that code. Give the screen a name and pick its timezone.
  3. The display takes over by itself within a few seconds. If it has nothing to show yet, it asks what you’d like — a playlist you’ve built, or one of the theme park views your account has access to.
  4. Tap the dim dot in the bottom-right corner and choose Full screen. Browsers only allow this from a real tap, which is why it’s a button rather than automatic. The same corner menu has Change view if you want to switch to something else later.
  5. Set the device itself never to sleep, in its own settings. See the first note below — this one matters more than it sounds.

Making it feel like a real display

On most phones and tablets you can add the page to your home screen — it then opens without any browser chrome at all, and survives a restart as its own icon. On a laptop, most browsers offer to install it from the address bar.

Leave it on the power supply. A Web Kiosk polls for changes every few minutes, so anything you edit in the portal appears on the screen on its own.

Before you rely on it — four honest limits

A browser can’t keep your display awake

We ask it to, and many devices agree, but plenty ignore the request — TV browsers especially. Set the device itself to never sleep in its own display settings. If your screen keeps going dark, this is almost always why.

Clearing browsing data un-pairs the screen

A Web Kiosk remembers which display it is using the browser’s own storage. Clear site data, and it comes back as a new screen with a new pairing code — the old one stays in your kiosk list until you remove it. A private or incognito window re-pairs every single time, so don’t use one.

Some pages won’t display on a Web Kiosk

Home Assistant and many self-hosted apps refuse to be embedded in another page, and will show a browser error instead of your dashboard.

Those apps often have a setting to allow it — Home Assistant calls it Send X-Frame-Options — and we’ve deliberately not written instructions for it. If you turn it off, any website can embed your dashboard, not just us: the setting can’t be limited to one site. That exposes the app to clickjacking. Only consider it if you’re confident about your network and everything that could embed that page. We don’t recommend it, and we can’t take responsibility for the result.

If you’d rather not touch it, a Raspberry Pi kiosk or an Android TV kiosk shows these pages without the restriction — both open your own pages directly instead of embedding them.

The Android TV app is only guaranteed on certified hardware

On certified Google TV or Android TV devices — a Google TV Streamer, for example — the app is supported and we stand behind it.

It can also be installed on cheaper uncertified boxes, and on several it works well. But those devices vary enormously in memory, screen handling and how much of Android they actually ship, and we can’t test them all. On uncertified hardware the app is proven on some boxes and guaranteed on none, and what we can help with is limited. Choose one on that basis, not on the assumption it will behave like the certified ones.

Which kiosk should I use?

A Web Kiosk suits our own pages — calendars, weather, sports, hurricane tracking, theme park views — on hardware you already have.

A Raspberry Pi kiosk is the one to choose if your display needs to stay locked to its job, come back on its own after a power cut, or show self-hosted apps from your own network. Set up a Raspberry Pi.

An Android TV kiosk suits a television you already have on the wall. It runs as a proper app rather than in a browser, so it keeps the screen awake on its own, comes back after a power cut, and shows self-hosted pages directly — and the remote works: hold OK to interact with a page, Back to return to the playlist. Read the hardware limit above before buying anything for it.

The TV app isn’t in an app store yet, so it’s something we set up with you rather than something you download. Ask us and we’ll sort it out.

An Android app for tablets is also available on request — ask us.

Not sure? Ask us — we’d rather you started on the right one.