To put an information board on your TV, make a free board, open its address in the TV's web browser (or pair the TV once with a short code), and add what the room needs: the wifi and a code to join it, the time, the weather, a countdown. It takes about five minutes, and nothing gets installed on the TV.
A TV that can open a web page, or a streaming stick, spare laptop or mini PC with a browser plugged into one: the guide to which TVs work goes through them maker by maker. And a phone to set it up from. There is no app to install, no dongle to buy from us, and nothing to sign into on the TV itself.
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Make a board
Sign up with an email address and confirm it. A board is waiting as soon as you do, with the time already on it — there is nothing to create.
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Open it on the TV
On the TV, open a browser and go to your board's address, or go to /tv and type the short code it shows into your phone. A paired TV comes back to the same board every time it wakes up.
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Put the wifi on it
Add the network name and password. The board shows them large, with a QR code a phone camera reads to join — so nobody has to type a password across the room.
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Add what the room needs
There are 23 widgets to pick from, in four groups: The essentials (Clock, Weather, Countdown and more), From your guests (Messages, Photos, Poll and more), Good to know (House notes, Schedule, Menu and more) and Feeds (Calendar, Headlines and Slides). Each one is a tile you drag where you want it and size to fit.
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Fit it to the screen
Some TVs trim the edges. Calibrate on TV puts bright bars at the edges and lets you nudge them in from your phone until they just touch the glass.
Which way of getting it on the TV should I use?
Both end up at the same board, and you can switch between them whenever you like.
Quickest if the TV has a browser you can type in, or if you are casting from a laptop. The board is at a long, unguessable address — anyone with it can see the board, so treat it like the wifi password it is showing.
Better for a TV you will leave on it. The TV shows a short code, you type it into your phone once, and from then on that TV comes straight back to the board when it wakes — no address to retype, and no link sitting in a browser history.
If the edges look cut off
Plenty of TVs still overscan — they trim a percent or two off every edge, left over from the days of analog broadcast. Open the board's settings on your phone, tap Calibrate on TV, and bright bars appear at the four edges of the screen. Nudge each one in until it just touches the glass. The margins are stored as a percentage rather than pixels, so the same board stays correct whether the TV is 720p, 1080p or 4K.
Leaving it on
A board is meant to sit there, so two things are on by default. The whole layout drifts a fraction of a percent every few minutes, so no pixel holds one color all evening and nothing gets burned into the panel. And you can set the hours it shows — outside them the screen goes black rather than bright, which on an OLED is the same as off.
You can also give it a set of rules: a different look in December, the wifi hidden after the party ends, a video loop only in the evening. Those live under Schedules, and they change the board by themselves.
On Pro and the Event Pass, one TV can show up to four pages that take turns: the evening's plan on one, the photos on the next. A schedule can bring a whole page on and off too, like a lunch menu that only shows at lunch, and a tile you want on every page, the clock say, can be pinned there once.
And when something can't wait, put up an alert from your phone: a line of up to 140 characters across the bottom of the board, or over the whole of it, for 15 minutes, an hour or until you take it down. It reaches the TV without anyone touching the layout, and comes down by itself when its time is up.
A board worth copying
Not sure what your room needs yet? Pick "A bit of everything" when you make the board and it arrives with a little of most things: the clock and the weather across the top beside the wifi and its code, then your guests' messages, their photos and a countdown underneath. That is six tiles. On a screen turned on its side the clock leads, then the wifi, the weather and the countdown, with the messages and the photos side by side at the bottom. The Photos widget is part of Pro and the Event Pass. On the free plan, the Image widget goes where the Photos widget is.
Keep what you use and take the rest off. The layouts guide has a starting point for a party, a stay and a place of work, each with its own guide.
What it costs to try
The free plan is 1 live board and 1 seat, with no card, and it stays free. It draws 16 of the 23 widgets, the wifi and messages from guests among them, which is enough for one TV in one room. Pro adds more boards, more people and your own logo, and Pro and the Event Pass add Photos, Poll, Find your seat, Celebrations, Calendar, Headlines, Slides and Numbers from a Google Sheet — there is a full breakdown on the pricing section of the home page.