On your phone

Home Screens has two phone pages. Nothing needs installing; both open in the phone's browser on your home WiFi. Settings > On your phone in the editor shows the addresses and QR codes for both.

Opening the plain address (http://home-screens.local:3000 on the pre-built image) on a phone shows a menu with both, plus the display itself.

Put it on the home screen

The pages behave like apps once they have an icon:

• iPhone or iPad: open the address in Safari, tap the share button, then Add to Home Screen.
• Android: open the address in Chrome, tap the three-dot menu, then Add to Home screen.

Do this once per phone. A kid's tablet gets the chores page; a parent's phone gets the family remote.

Ask for a password

Until you set one, anyone on your WiFi can open the family remote and the editor. Settings > On your phone has Ask for a password on the family remote; it sets the same password the editor uses. After that the family remote and the editor ask for it, the wall keeps working, and the kids' page stays open. Sessions last 30 days, or 90 with Remember me, so nobody is typing it every day.

The family remote

Five tabs along the bottom: Control, Timers, Chores, Meals and Photos. Chores, Meals and Photos come alive once the matching module is on a screen; until then they explain what to add.

Control the wall

• The card at the top says which screen the wall is showing and whether the display is Active, Dimmed or Asleep. It refreshes every few seconds, faster right after you tap something.
• Arrows move to the previous or next screen.
• Sleep Display blacks the wall out; the same button wakes it again.
• Send Alert puts a message on the wall: an info, warning or urgent banner, with a title and how long it stays. Persistent keeps it up until someone dismisses it.
• Brightness dims the wall from full down to off.
• With more than one display, a Send to row at the top picks which display these controls talk to, or All of them at once. Screen navigation works one display at a time.

Timers

The Timers tab starts a big countdown that takes over the whole wall, made for kids. Tap a preset (30 seconds to 15 minutes) or type a length up to 4 hours, pick a look (Glow ring, Timer face, Color fall or Star path), and start. A soft chime can play at the end.

A routine is a saved list of timed steps, each with its own emoji and length: get dressed, brush teeth, shoes on. Steps run one after another; a step can instead be set to Wait for a Done tap on the wall before the next one starts. While a timer runs, the tab shows pause, skip, add a minute, and stop. One timer runs at a time for the whole house; starting another asks first. With more than one display, Show on picks which walls the timer takes over.

Chores, Meals, Photos

• Chores is where grown-ups add people, chores and rewards, and fix a missed day. See Chores and rewards.
• Meals holds the meal library, the weekly plan and the grocery list. See Meals.
• Photos appears when a Full-Screen Photo Viewer is on a screen. Upload photos from the phone, make folders, browse them, and delete pictures. It is the same library the photo modules and rotating backgrounds read from.

The gear

The gear in the top corner opens a sheet with the Pi's name, uptime, memory and storage; Backup All Data and Restore Backup; a light, dark or system theme for the remote (separate from the editor's); and Restart Home Screens and Reboot Device, each of which asks for a second tap within three seconds. Everything on this sheet needs you signed in once a password is set.

Two banners can appear above the Control tab: a reminder when you have not backed up in a while (the interval is under Settings > Backups & data in the editor), and a note when a new version is out (switched on under Settings > System & updates).

The kids' page

The kids' page shows the same Today list, with the family's names across the top, and a trimmed Rewards view with just Redeem and History. It remembers which name was picked last time on that device, otherwise it opens on the first person with chores today. A Yesterday toggle lets a child look back a day, but yesterday cannot be changed from here. Un-checking takes a press-and-hold, so a stray tap cannot undo a sibling's work.

It stays open even when a password is set, so a bookmark on a tablet just works. That also means anyone on your WiFi could open it, which is worth knowing before you hand out the WiFi password.

Details

What needs the password

Sending you to the login page and back is automatic. Sessions last 30 days, or 90 with Remember me.

Bookmarks that work without signing in

For a bookmark or a home-automation button that wakes the wall, add the display key from Settings > Security to the address:

http://home-screens.local:3000/api/display/wake?token=TOKEN

The token works on /api/display/ addresses only. The full list of one-word commands is under Display Control in the API reference, and the Voice Control guide drives all of them from Home Assistant.

Profiles from the phone

If you have profiles, they appear as pills under the brightness slider. Tap one to switch the wall to that profile's screens; tap it again to go back to showing everything. With more than one display, the pills follow the display picked under Send to.

Next steps

• Chores and rewards
• Meals
• Your first screen if the wall is still empty