Kiosk mode

Kiosk settings turn HDashboards from an app you open into a display that is simply always on. They live in the Kiosk section of the Settings screen.

Screen always on

Keeps the screen awake while a dashboard is showing, instead of letting the device sleep.

Essential for a wall panel — a dashboard nobody can see is not much of a dashboard.

Two things to be aware of:

• Keep the device plugged in. This will drain a battery.
• Screen burn-in. On an OLED panel, a static dashboard left on for months can leave a permanent ghost. Using a darker theme, avoiding large blocks of solid bright colour, and letting the display sleep overnight all help.

Hide top bar

Removes the top bar for a clean, full-screen display.

The app warns you before turning it on, and the warning is worth reading:

You can get it back by tapping 7 times on the screen. Make sure you remember this! A restart of the app is required.

So:

1. Seven quick taps anywhere on the screen brings the bar back.
2. Hiding the bar needs an app restart to take effect.

Write the seven-tap gesture down somewhere. It is the only way back, and it is easy to forget months later when you finally want to change something.

Building a wall panel

A complete setup:

1. Mount the tablet and keep it on power.
2. Install the native app and sign in.
3. Set a Startup dashboard so it always opens on the right screen.
4. Set an Inactivity timeout so it returns there by itself.
5. Turn on Screen always on.
6. Turn on Hide top bar once you are happy with the layout.
7. On Android, allow HDashboards to ignore battery optimisation — otherwise the system will eventually suspend it.

Do step 6 last. While you are still designing, the top bar is how you reach edit mode.

Design notes for panels

• Bigger cards. Everything is read from further away and tapped less precisely than on a phone.
• Consider who can reach it. A panel at child height is a panel children will press. Set on-tap behaviour to None on display-only cards, and use PIN protection on anything that matters.
• Fewer heavy cards. Video and Webview cards run continuously and are the usual cause of a panel getting hot or sluggish.