Getting started with VenueOS

Welcome! This guide will get your first screen running in about 10 minutes. You'll create an account, add a screen, and schedule a playlist.

1. Create your workspace

Go to venue-os.app/signup and sign up with your work email. Pick your industry — school, restaurant, gym, sports venue, retail, office, and more — and VenueOS tailors the templates, categories, and defaults to your world (see the Industries guide). Your account becomes a workspace that holds every screen, template, and user for your location; groups with multiple locations (a district, a chain, a franchise) can add child locations under a parent later.

You'll be the admin of your workspace when you sign up yourself. Teammates you invite later start as CONTRIBUTOR and can be upgraded.

2. Add your first screen

From the dashboard, click Screens → Add screen. You'll get a 6-character pairing code.

On the actual display — a Chromebook, Fire TV, smart TV browser, or Raspberry Pi — open venue-os.app/player and enter that pairing code. The screen is now bound to your tenant. Once paired, it will show your default template until you schedule something else.

If you have more than a few screens, create Screen Groups (e.g. "Main Hallway", "Cafeteria") so you can target them with a single schedule instead of one-by-one.

3. Pick a template (or build one)

VenueOS ships with 17 system templates covering every common layout:

• Welcome boards, info boards, tri-zone hallways
• Cafeteria menus, bell schedules, bus boards
• Ticker displays, countdowns, daily digests
• Emergency alert templates (pre-configured for speed)

Open Templates in the sidebar, hover any template, and click Use as starting point. This creates a custom copy you can rename, recolor, and rearrange — the system template stays untouched.

4. Schedule it

Go to Schedules → New schedule, pick your template (or a playlist), and choose:

• Where: a single screen or a screen group
• When: date range, days of week, time range
• Priority: higher priority overrides lower on the same screen

Hit Save. Your screens will pick up the schedule within seconds via our real-time WebSocket channel — no need to reboot displays.

5. Next steps

• Invite colleagues under Settings → Users
• Enable SSO with Google or Microsoft — see the SSO guide
• Read the emergency system overview before giving anyone panic-trigger access

Stuck? Email support@venue-os.app and a human will get back to you within one school day.