Skarmly · Guide

Turn an old tablet into a wall display

A tablet in a drawer is a screen, a computer and a wifi radio that you already paid for. It doesn't need new apps to be useful on a wall — it needs a browser, a page worth showing, and two settings that stop the screen turning itself off.

This guide uses Skarmly as the page: the time, the weather, and a background computed from the sun's real position at your coordinates. One link holds the whole configuration, so there is no account and nothing to install. Any page works the same way; the settings below are what actually make a tablet reliable on a wall.

Will yours work?

Almost certainly, and for a reason that catches people out: on Android, Chrome updates itself through the Play Store, separately from the operating system. A tablet stranded on Android 6 in 2015 never got another Android release — but Chrome kept arriving on it until 2022, and the version it stopped at is far newer than this page needs. Look under Settings → About tablet.

The page needs Chrome 80, which shipped in 2020. Every Android version from Lollipop onward overshot that before Google stopped sending it updates, so the real cutoff is a tablet from 2014, not from 2020. KitKat is the awkward row: Chrome 81 clears the bar by a single version and has had no security patch since, so other sites will start turning it away before this one does.

Android tablets

1. Stop the screen timing out. Settings → Display → Screen timeout, set to the longest available. For a tablet that stays plugged in, enable Developer options (tap Build number seven times), then turn on Stay awake — the screen never sleeps while charging.
2. Open the page in Chrome and pick your town. The link you get is the configuration; bookmark it or send it to the tablet however you like.
3. Hide the browser. Chrome menu → Add to Home screen, then launch from the icon. It opens full screen without the address bar.
4. Optional: pin it. Settings → Security → App pinning keeps one app on screen until you unpin it — useful where children tap things.

Fire tablets

Amazon's Fire tablets are the cheapest screens sold, and the ones from recent years work here too. The table above does not apply to them — Silk is Amazon's own browser, updated on Amazon's schedule rather than Google's — but anything sold from about 2017 runs a Chromium recent enough. Set Display → Display sleep to the longest option, open the link in Silk, and use its full-screen mode. The very cheapest models have dim, reflective panels — fine in a hallway, weak in sunlight.

A spare monitor

A monitor plus anything that runs a browser is the same display with a bigger panel. A Raspberry Pi in kiosk mode, an old laptop with the lid rule disabled, a TV stick — open the link, press F11 for full screen, and disable the machine's display sleep. Skarmly holds a screen wake lock in browsers that support one, but the operating system's own power settings always win, so set those first.

Burn-in, brightness, power

A wall display shows the same layout for months, which is how screens get ghosts. Skarmly stays deliberately dark — a screen that goes bright at noon is a lamp — and drifts its numerals a few millimetres over a slow cycle so nothing sits still. Turn hardware brightness down too; the display is meant to sit in the corner of your eye, not glow across the room. Leave the tablet plugged in: this runs on power, not battery.

Questions

How old a tablet can I use?

Older than you would guess. On Android it is 5.0 Lollipop and later — 2014 onward — because Chrome keeps updating itself through the Play Store long after the tablet has stopped getting Android releases. The table above has every version. iPads work the other way round, since Safari can only move when iPadOS does; there is a separate guide for old iPads.

Does it need an app or an account?

Neither. It is one web page, and the link is the whole configuration. Nothing is stored on a server.

What happens when the wifi drops?

The clock keeps running and the last forecast stays on screen, labelled with when it was read. It catches up when the connection returns.

Is this a weather station?

Not in the sensor sense — nothing of yours is measuring anything. It shows the forecast for your coordinates from a public meteorological service, next to the time and a sky drawn from where the sun actually is. If what you wanted was a screen on the wall telling you what the weather is doing, that is this. If you wanted to log your own garden's temperature, it isn't.

Can I run several screens in different rooms?

Yes. Each screen is its own link, and nothing is shared between them.

Skarmly is a free wall display that runs in the browser: the time, the weather, and the sky as it actually is where you are. Set one up in a minute.