Screen, power & screensaver

A kiosk screen should be bright when someone is there and quiet when nobody is. Kiosky does this with an idle pipeline: dim, then screensaver, then screen off, each after a delay you choose, with any touch (or motion, if you enable it) waking it again.

Most settings are under Settings, Screen & power. Night mode and battery care are also under Settings, Screen & power. Daily maintenance, backup and logs are under Settings, Device.

Screen & power#

Setting	Default	Notes
Appearance	Auto	Auto, Light or Dark for Kiosky's own screens. Auto follows the system.
Keep screen on	Charging	Never, Charging or Always.
Auto brightness	On	Uses the light sensor between the minimum and maximum. Turn off for fixed brightness.
Minimum / dimmed brightness	10	0 to 255. Also the level used when dimmed.
Maximum brightness	255	0 to 255. The minimum can never exceed the maximum.
Dim after	2 min	0 to 60 min. 0 is off.
Screensaver after	5 min	0 to 120 min. 0 is off.
Screen off after	15 min	0 to 240 min. 0 is off.

The stages run in that order: a tablet idle for 2 minutes dims, at 5 minutes starts the screensaver and at 15 minutes turns the screen off. The current stage is reported as screen_stage (active, dimmed, screensaver or off) in the REST and MQTT state.

Note. In single-app mode Kiosky cannot see touches inside the other app, so dimming and the screensaver are switched off there. See Choosing a mode.

You can also set the screen and brightness from outside: the screen and brightness commands (0 to 255), and in Home Assistant the Screen light entity. See the REST API and MQTT reference.

Screensaver#

Settings, Screen & power, Screensaver, Show when idle chooses what appears after the idle delay:

Choice	What it shows
Off	Nothing. The dashboard stays until the screen turns off.
Black	A black screen.
Clock	A large clock. The default.
Photos	A photo frame, below.

The delay is the Screensaver after slider. Picking a type while it is off turns it back on with the default delay. The screensaver command (on or off) and the Home Assistant Screensaver switch start and stop it by hand.

Photo frame#

Photo frame options:

Setting	Default	Notes
Change photo every	30 s	5 to 600 s.
Shuffle	On
Clock and date	On	Over the bottom of the photo.
Slow zoom	Off	A gentle Ken Burns drift.
Scaling	Fill	Fill crops to cover the screen, Fit shows the whole photo.

Sources are additive: every source you configure feeds one playlist.

Folders on this device: tap Add folder and pick a folder such as Pictures. Sub-folders are included. You can add up to 8 folders.
Immich: enter your Server URL (for example http://immich.lan:2283), choose Photos from Random, Favourites or an Album (then enter the album id), and paste an API key created in your Immich account settings. The key is stored hidden and never exported.
Image URLs: one https image URL per line, up to 100. Home Assistant media (for example /media/local/photo.jpg on your HA host) is fetched with your HA token. Other hosts must be in your allowed hosts.

Night mode#

Settings, Screen & power, Night mode applies a daily window. Turn on Night schedule, set From and To (HH:mm, local time, default 22:30 to 06:30, and the window may cross midnight) and choose what happens During the window:

Dim
Screen off
Other page: show another page. Enter the Night page URL; its host must be a dashboard host or an allowed host.

Window starts on picks the weekdays the window begins. Lower-case day labels are off.

The night page overrides the dashboard planner and rotation. See Dashboards & browser.

Daily maintenance#

Settings, Device, Daily maintenance can restart the app and reboot the device at fixed times:

Restart the app at: a local HH:mm, or leave empty.
Reboot the device at: a local HH:mm. This needs full lock (Device Owner) and is disabled without it.

Tap Save maintenance to apply.

Battery care#

A tablet on a charger for years can swell its battery. Settings, Screen & power, Battery care keeps the charge between a minimum and a maximum by telling Home Assistant when to switch the charger.

Turn on Enable battery care.
Set Charge when at or below (5 to 95%, default 40%) and Stop charging at or above (10 to 100%, default 80%). The minimum must be below the maximum.
In Home Assistant, use the Charging wanted binary sensor to switch a smart plug: ON means "charge now", OFF means "stop".

For systems other than Home Assistant, set a Webhook URL. Kiosky calls it on every change with a body like:

json

{"charge_wanted": true, "battery": 38}

The webhook URL is stored hidden, replaced with Save webhook and cleared with Remove. Battery care needs a smart plug or other way to switch power; Kiosky only signals when.

Backup and logs#

Settings, Device, Backup & restore exports your settings to a JSON file and imports them from a file or an http(s) URL. Passwords, tokens, the PIN and the battery webhook are never included. Logs shows the last log lines with tokens and passwords masked, and offers Save to file and Share. The same logs are at GET /api/logs.