An iPad on a counter, in a fitting room or at a reception desk is a premium little signage screen, and a Mac mini behind a TV is a rock-solid player for a big display. TVpilot runs its web player fullscreen on both: no app install, locked down with Apple's own tools, and managed from the same dashboard as every other screen you run.
Free plan, no credit card required. Paid plans from €5/month.
Everything runs through the web player, so there is nothing to install from the App Store and nothing that breaks on the next iPadOS update. You need:
Sign up free and click "Add screen". Choose Apple (iPad / Mac) as the device type and you get a short player URL for that screen.
On the iPad, open the URL and tap Share → "Add to Home Screen". Launching it from that icon runs the player fullscreen, without any browser chrome.
Set Auto-Lock to Never (Settings → Display & Brightness) and enable Guided Access (Settings → Accessibility) so the iPad stays locked to the player, customers can look, not swipe.
Open the player URL in Safari or Chrome, go fullscreen, and add the browser to Login Items with sleep disabled, after a restart the screen comes back on its own.
The iPad shows the player; the dashboard does the work. Everything below is identical across your fleet, whether a screen is an iPad, a Raspberry Pi or a TV stick.
An iPad on a stand is a natural portrait screen. Each TVpilot screen has its own orientation setting, and playlists, designs and widgets adapt automatically.
Images, videos, web pages and PDFs in one playlist; every slide can be scheduled per daypart and weekday, and dated promos take themselves down.
AI Studio generates a finished screen from a short brief, or start from a Designer template and swap in your own text, photos and logo, crisp on a Retina display.
Online/offline status and heartbeats for every screen, with email alerts when one goes dark. Free for 1 screen, from €5/month for five.
No. The TVpilot player is a web app: you open your screen's player URL in Safari and add it to the home screen for a fullscreen launch. That keeps setup to a minute and means nothing lags behind on updates.
Use Guided Access, Apple's built-in kiosk mode: triple-click the side button to lock the iPad to the player, protected with a passcode. Combined with Auto-Lock set to Never, the iPad behaves like a dedicated signage display.
Any iPad with a reasonably current Safari runs the player well. For video-heavy playlists a newer model is smoother; for menus, schedules and designed screens, an iPad that has been in a drawer for years is usually fine.
A Mac mini behind a large TV gives you serious performance for video walls and busy dashboards, wired Ethernet, and hardware many offices already own. Add the browser to Login Items and disable sleep, and it behaves like an appliance.
TVpilot is free for 1 screen with 250 MB storage, no credit card needed. Starter is €5/month for up to 5 screens, Pro €19/month for up to 25, the iPad you already own is the whole hardware budget.
Use the hardware you already own; the software starts at €0.
Start on the free plan and stay there as long as you like. No credit card, no trial clock. Upgrade only when you need more screens or storage.
Create a free account, add a screen, open one URL in Safari and tap Add to Home Screen, your iPad is a managed display in under ten minutes.
Start free with TVpilot