Open Source Digital Signage
A signage screen usually spends years bolted to a wall in a lobby or break room, expected to just work, which makes a recurring per-screen fee feel steep for what is often a scheduled slideshow, and it quietly ties every display you own to a vendor staying in business. Open source signage keeps the content, the schedule, and the player under your control, so adding another screen costs hardware rather than another subscription line. It also means the software runs on the boards and operating systems you choose, and a screen keeps showing its last schedule from local cache when the network at the site drops.
Anthias
Self-hosted digital signage that runs on your own Raspberry Pi, PCs, or 64-bit ARM boards
Xibo
Self-hosted digital signage with a web CMS and a Windows display player
Concerto
Self-hosted digital signage with content feeds, screen templates, and moderated approval
Our picks
Three projects, three shapes: a CMS for a managed estate, a moderated feed workflow, and a lightweight player you own end to end.
Managed multi-screen estate: Xibo Xibo centers on a self-hosted web CMS where you build, schedule, and publish content out to every display, so a whole network of screens is run from one place. The display player is Windows software, with commercial players for Android, LG webOS, and Samsung Tizen, and the CMS installs via Docker for setups that stay consistent from development to production.
Moderated, feed-driven screens: Concerto Concerto suits places where many people contribute but everything needs review: contributors submit to content feeds, moderators approve what goes live, and each screen subscribes to the feeds it should show. Templates carry fields, a background, and CSS, you can schedule images, iframes, video, and RSS by date range, and screens can be public or locked behind a token.
Raspberry Pi player you own: Anthias Anthias, formerly Screenly OSE, turns a Raspberry Pi, PC, or 64-bit ARM board into a signage player managed from a web dashboard, with an asset library for images, web pages, and video. Video decodes in software, so lighter content runs smoothly on modest boards while heavy video is best kept to a Pi 4, Pi 5, or x86 machine.
What to weigh before you mount the first screen
The failure that hurts most in signage happens at the edge, on the player rendering to the screen, not in the CMS where you build content. Match the player to what your screens must actually show and to the hardware you can support on site. A WebView player like the one in Anthias renders images, web pages, and light video comfortably on a Raspberry Pi, while heavy 4K loops, video walls, or portrait rotation push you toward a stronger board or a native player such as Xibo's Windows software. Confirm the player caches assets locally, restarts cleanly after power loss, and can be set up without a keyboard in a public space.
The scheduling model is the next thing to test, because it decides who can change what a screen shows. Look at how the system represents screens, templates, playlists, and schedules, and whether local staff edit only approved fields or push full-screen media freely. Concerto's feed-and-moderator model, where contributors submit content and a moderator approves it before it goes live, fits a campus or office where many people contribute but everything must be reviewed. If your content is menus, calendars, or dashboards, prefer a system that pulls from stable feeds, iframes, or RSS rather than one that assumes someone uploads a file by hand.
This is a small category, but the three options here cover the common shapes: a Windows-player CMS aimed at larger estates, a moderated feed workflow, and a lightweight Pi-based player you own end to end. Whichever you choose, plan for the operating reality that screens live behind networks you do not control: store Wi-Fi, captive portals, consumer routers. Favor pull-based sync so players fetch on their own schedule, and confirm you can reach a failed screen remotely rather than driving out to it.
Related categories
Frequently asked questions
Will the screens keep playing if the site loses internet?+
A well-designed player continues its last valid schedule from local cache when the connection drops, which is the point of the pull-based model these tools use. Anthias and Xibo players hold their assets locally and keep rendering, then catch up when the network returns. Confirm two things for your case: how long cached media stays valid, and whether a brand-new player can be provisioned without connectivity, since first-time registration often needs the server.
What hardware do these signage players run on?+
It varies by project, so match it to your screens. Anthias runs on Raspberry Pi boards, PCs, and 64-bit ARM devices with software video decode, so images and web pages are smooth everywhere while heavy video is happiest on a Pi 4, Pi 5, or x86. Xibo's own display player is Windows software, with commercial players for Android, LG webOS, and Samsung Tizen. Concerto ships arm64 images that run on a Raspberry Pi too.
Can non-technical staff schedule content without breaking a screen?+
Yes, if you use the permission model rather than sharing one admin login. Concerto is built around this: contributors submit content to feeds and a moderator approves what goes live, and submissions from users with moderator rights auto-approve. That keeps a customer-facing or campus screen from showing unreviewed content. With any of these, separate the people who design templates and manage screens from those who only schedule approved media.
Can a screen show live dashboards, menus, or web pages, not just images?+
Yes. All three render web content, so a hosted dashboard, menu board, or internal page can appear on screen. Concerto supports iframes and RSS feeds alongside images and video, scheduled by date range, and Anthias treats web pages as a first-class asset next to images and video. Watch failure behavior: a live feed that shows a login page after its token expires is worse than a static image, so test how the page degrades when its source is unreachable.
How do I keep a public screen from becoming an open web browser?+
Because most players render web content, an unhandled error or a stray touch can expose the underlying browser or the device desktop. Lock the player device down, restrict navigation so a broken feed cannot open arbitrary pages, and keep the display's token separate from editor and admin accounts. Concerto lets you lock a screen behind a token rather than leaving it public, which limits who can point a display at new content.
Can I manage screens in several locations from one place?+
That is what the CMS model is for. Xibo runs a central web CMS where you build, schedule, and publish to every display in the estate, so a network of screens and a single sign are managed the same way. Anthias manages its displays from a web dashboard, and Concerto subscribes each screen to the feeds it should show. For sites on networks you do not control, favor players that pull on their own schedule rather than needing inbound access.
Which content formats are safest to standardize on for signage?+
Standardize on what your player decodes reliably. JPEG and PNG are safe for static content, and MP4 with common H.264 settings is usually the lowest-friction video. HTML and web pages are powerful but need tighter testing, especially on software-decoding players like Anthias where heavy video is better kept to a Pi 4, Pi 5, or x86 device. Avoid exotic codecs and oversized bitrates that sync slowly and stutter on modest boards.