Digital signage guides

How to put Nex-Gen OOH on the screens you already have, how to run your own server, and how to build what plays on them. Pick your device below; each guide goes from unboxing to a screen showing your content.

Getting started

• What is digital signage?. How it works, what you can show, the hardware you need and what it costs.
• Open source digital signage. Own your data and pay no per-screen fees, on our cloud or your own server.
• Self-hosting Nex-Gen OOH. Run the server yourself: Docker or a plain Linux install, backups and upgrades.

Use Nex-Gen OOH

Start here

• Getting started. Create your account, open the player on a TV or in a browser tab, type its 6-digit code and put your first picture on the screen.
• Troubleshooting. A screen is offline, a pairing code is refused, new content does not appear, or the screen is black: what it means and what to do.

Screens

• Groups and video walls. Group screens so one playlist reaches them all, play them in step, and join panels into one big picture with a video wall.

Publish

• Head office. Play head office's playlist in every store, locked, with a slot each store fills with its own content.
• Layouts and zones. Split a screen into zones, decide which layout each screen uses, and put every item in the zone where it belongs.
• Content and playlists. Upload content, build a playlist, set how long each item shows, publish it, and put it on a screen or a group.
• Scheduling. Play a different playlist at set times, decide which schedule wins, and check what a screen will show before it does.
• Content requests. Share a link so people without an account can send you posters and videos, then approve or decline each one before it reaches a screen.

Create

• Templates. Turn a ready-made design (menu board, guest Wi-Fi, opening hours) into a widget for your playlists, and install more from the library.
• Widgets. Make a menu board, clock, weather or news ticker on the Widgets page, preview it, copy it for another screen and roll it back from History.
• QR codes. Make a QR code that counts scans, put it on a slide or a printed sign, and change where it goes without changing the code.
• Slides. Make your own slides with headlines, photos, prices, clocks and QR codes, then publish the deck as a playlist.
• Social feeds. Collect posts from Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X, Bluesky and Mastodon, approve them, and show them on a Social wall.
• Kiosk pages. Build a touchscreen page with big buttons, link pages together, and run it on a screen.

Automate

• Data Sources. Connect a Google Sheet, a typed table, the weather or a calendar once, and put the live values on your slides.
• Emergency feeds. Take over your screens automatically when the weather service or civil protection issues a warning for your area.
• Alerts. Tell your team in Slack, Teams, email, Telegram or PagerDuty when a screen goes offline, comes back, or shows a blank or frozen picture.
• Automation. Give a fire panel, a till or Zapier a secret web address that raises an alert, switches screens to a playlist or updates a table.
• Triggers. Let a fire alarm, a control panel or a button behind the counter put a playlist over your screens, even when the internet is down.

Insights

• Reports. See what your screens really played: totals, plays per day and per hour, top content and plays per screen.

Workspace

• Users and roles. Invite your team, choose who can change what, keep separate sites in separate workspaces, and require approval before anything goes live.
• White-label branding. Put your own name, logo and colours on the dashboard, the sign-in page and web player screens, and know what stays Nex-Gen OOH.

Set up a screen

• Raspberry Pi. A browser kiosk or the native player on a Pi 3, 4 or 5.
• Android TV and Fire TV. The free player app on any Android TV box, Fire TV Stick or tablet, with kiosk mode.
• Fire TV Stick 4K Select and HD (Vega OS). The newer sticks that run Vega OS, not Android, and the player for them.
• Samsung TVs and signage displays. Tizen panels through the built-in URL Launcher or the player app.
• LG webOS Signage. The player app on LG webOS Signage panels, installed from your own server.
• Roku. What the Roku player plays, and what a Roku cannot do as a sign.
• BrightSign. One autorun.zip from your server, dual output, wall sync and panel power.
• Windows. Any Windows 10 or 11 PC as a player that stays up unattended.
• Mac, iPad and iPhone. The native macOS player, and the app for iPad and iPhone.
• ChromeOS. Chromeboxes and Chromebooks, managed through Google Admin or on their own.
• LED video walls. Driving a large LED wall at its native resolution.
• E-paper and ESP32 signs. Low-power signs with no browser on the device at all.
• Apple TV. Why Apple TV cannot run a sign, and what to use instead.

Not sure which device to buy? See Certified Hardware. Already have a server? Its download page lists every player it can hand out.

Build what plays

• Widgets, layouts and transitions. Split a screen into zones, add a clock, weather or a ticker, and choose how items change.
• Manage screens from an AI assistant. Point Claude or any MCP client at your server and manage screens in plain English.
• Integrations. Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Power BI, Canva, Zapier and more.
• Solutions. Menu boards, meeting rooms, emergency alerts and other uses, start to finish.