Ten minutes from a blank display to a clock, weather, a calendar and a chore chart on the wall. Everything here happens in the editor on a laptop; nothing needs a terminal.

1. Open the editor

Open the address the wall is showing (http://home-screens.local:3000 on the pre-built image) on a laptop or desktop. The editor needs a wide window, so a phone shows a menu instead and offers to copy the address for you.

A brand-new editor. The screen is empty, and the panel on the right lists the four things worth doing first.

The editor has five areas, and you will use all of them today:

The editor with its five areas numbered: screens, modules, your screen, the settings panel, and the toolbar buttons. — 1 your screens, 2 the modules you can add, 3 the screen you are designing, 4 settings for whatever you clicked, 5 Plugins, Settings and Preview.

Screens along the top. A display cycles through its screens in turn. You start with one.
Modules down the left. Drag any of them onto the screen.
Your screen in the middle, shown at the same shape as the wall.
Settings for what you picked on the right. Click a module and its options appear here. Click empty space and you get the screen's own settings and its background.
Plugins, Settings, Preview in the top right corner, and a Saved tick beside them. There is no Save button. Every change is saved a second after you make it and the wall picks it up a few seconds later.

2. Pick a template

Click Choose a template on the empty screen. A template is a finished screen: modules already placed, sized, and styled for a portrait wall. Pick Family Dashboard for a family (clock, greeting, weather, calendar, countdown), Weather Station for a weather wall, or Minimal Clock for a photo frame. Each one has a landscape twin for a screen on its side.

The template picker, opened from the empty screen. — Templates replace the empty screen. You can change anything afterwards.

The template lands on your screen and the wall shows it a few seconds later. From here on, you are adjusting, not building.

The editor showing the Family Dashboard template: clock, greeting, weather, calendar and countdown. — The Family Dashboard template. The calendar is empty because no calendar is connected yet.

3. Set your location

Weather, sunrise, moon phase and air quality all need to know where you are. Click Settings, open Location & language, type your town or zip code in Your town or zip code, and click Look up.

The Location & language page, where you type your town or zip code. — Location & language. Looking up your town also fills in its time zone.

Go back to the editor with Editor in the top left. The weather module fills in on its own. A new install uses Open-Meteo, which is free and needs no account, so there is nothing else to set up. If you would rather use another weather service, see Weather.

4. Add a calendar

Open Settings > Calendar. Under iCal / ICS feeds, click Add Feed and paste a calendar link. Google Calendar, Apple, Outlook and most others hand out one of these links from their sharing settings; the Calendars page shows where to find it for each, and covers signing in with Google or iCloud instead.

Give the feed a name and a colour. The calendar module on your screen shows the next few days of events as soon as the feed loads.

5. Add a chore chart

Back in the editor, find Chore Chart under Personal in the module list and drag it onto the screen. Drop it anywhere; you can drag it into place and resize it from its bottom-right corner afterwards.

The chart is empty until it knows your family. That part is done from a phone, in the family remote's Chores tab: add each person, then add chores and who does them. The Chores and rewards page walks through it. Once chores exist, the wall shows today's list and kids can check things off there or on their phones.

A weather module selected on the canvas, with its settings open in the panel on the right. — Click a module and its options appear on the right. Every module has a view dropdown; the chore chart has five.

6. Hand it to the family

Open Settings > On your phone. It shows two addresses with QR codes: Kids: check off chores and Parents: family remote. Scan them with the phones in the house, or click Print and stick the codes on the fridge next to the display.

The On your phone page: the kids' chores link, the family remote link, and the password switch. — Two addresses, both open on any phone on your home WiFi. Nothing to install.

The same page has Ask for a password on the family remote. Turn it on once you are happy with the setup, so guests on your WiFi cannot change things. The kids' page stays open on purpose.

What you have now

A clock, the weather, your calendar and a chore chart on the wall, and the family remote on every phone. From here:

Editor to move things around, add screens, change backgrounds and styles
Modules for everything else you can put on a screen
Profiles and schedules to show different screens at different times of day