Common questions about Anthias.
Anthias is free, open-source digital signage software built by Screenly, Inc. Screenly is a paid, cloud-managed digital signage platform designed for professional multi-screen deployments. You can learn more about the differences on screenly.io.
Choose Screenly if you need multi-screen management from a single account, enterprise user management, or professional support. Choose Anthias if you’re comfortable managing individual devices and want a free, self-hosted solution.
Yes. Anthias is dual-licensed under GPLv2 and a commercial license. You can deploy it commercially under GPLv2 — including in customer-facing storefronts and lobbies — as long as you comply with the GPL’s copyleft terms when redistributing modified versions.
If you need a non-copyleft license, professional support, or fleet-scale management, see Screenly.
$HOME/anthias/bin/run_upgrade.sh) or pull the latest Docker images. Disk image installations are pinned to the version you downloaded.Anthias uses NetworkManager for networking when the installer’s “manage the network” prompt is enabled. SSH into the device and run sudo nmtui for an interactive UI, or use nmcli device wifi connect <SSID> password <pwd> from the command line.
The legacy WiFi-Connect captive portal has been removed; nmtui / nmcli are the supported path going forward.
sudo nmtui → Edit a connection → choose your interface → set IPv4 Configuration to Manual and fill in the address, gateway, and DNS. Apply and reboot to confirm. You can also do this with nmcli non-interactively if you’re scripting deployments.Whether SSH is enabled depends on the OS image, not on Anthias itself — the installer doesn’t touch sshd.
ssh into the /boot partition before first boot.Then connect with ssh <user>@<device-ip>.
Rotation happens at the kernel / firmware level. The Anthias viewer renders straight to the Linux framebuffer (Qt linuxfb) and to KMS (mpv --vo=drm) — there’s no Wayland compositor in the stack — so the standard Raspberry Pi config knobs apply directly.
Edit /boot/firmware/config.txt and add one of:
display_rotate=1 # 90°
display_rotate=2 # 180°
display_rotate=3 # 270°
Then reboot. If display_rotate doesn’t take effect on a particular Pi 5 / KMS setup, set the rotation on the kernel cmdline instead — edit /boot/firmware/cmdline.txt and append video=HDMI-A-1:1920x1080@60,rotate=90 (or 180/270) on the same line. Many displays also expose a rotation setting in their own OSD as a fallback.
Anthias displays at whatever resolution the OS reports — there’s no resolution setting in the dashboard. Set the output mode at the OS level: on Raspberry Pi OS, use sudo raspi-config → Display Options → Resolution, or set hdmi_group / hdmi_mode in /boot/firmware/config.txt.
4K is supported on hardware that supports it natively: Pi 5 handles 4K@60Hz on either HDMI port; Pi 4 supports 4K@30Hz on HDMI-0 (or 4K@60Hz with hdmi_enable_4kp60=1 and adequate cooling).
This usually means the viewer container can’t reach the server, or there are no active assets. Try these in order:
docker compose ps from ~/anthias/ — all four containers (anthias-server, anthias-celery, anthias-viewer, redis) should be Up.docker logs -f anthias-anthias-viewer-1 (or …-server-1).linuxfb) and uses no X server, so xset won’t help.If a recent update broke the display, running ~/anthias/bin/upgrade_containers.sh re-creates the containers cleanly.
Yes — paste a YouTube URL into the Add Asset dialog. Anthias uses yt-dlp behind the scenes to fetch and cache the video locally so it plays without buffering at runtime.
If a particular video fails to load, it’s almost always because YouTube has changed something on their end and yt-dlp needs an update — pulling the latest Anthias release usually fixes it. Embedding a live YouTube page directly (as a webpage asset) is generally not recommended; the bundled WebView isn’t tuned for streaming video playback.
Open the web dashboard, go to Settings, and pick HDMI or 3.5mm jack under Audio output. The change applies to video assets immediately — no reboot required.
Note: Raspberry Pi 5 only exposes the HDMI option in the dropdown — the 3.5mm jack was removed from the Pi 5 hardware, so the dashboard hides that choice on Pi 5 devices.
SSH into the device and use either of these:
# Tail a single container directly
docker logs -f anthias-anthias-server-1
# Or via Compose (run from ~/anthias/)
cd ~/anthias
docker compose logs -f anthias-server
The container names are anthias-anthias-server-1, anthias-anthias-celery-1, anthias-anthias-viewer-1, and anthias-redis-1. If TLS is enabled, there’s also anthias-anthias-caddy-1.
The easy way: open the dashboard, go to Settings, and click Get Backup to download a single-file archive. To restore, click Upload and Recover on the same page.
If you’d rather copy the files manually, asset binaries live in ~/anthias_assets/ and configuration plus the SQLite database (anthias.db) live in ~/.anthias/. Backing up both directories captures everything.
~/anthias/, run ./bin/enable_ssl.sh. The default mode uses Caddy’s built-in local CA, which is fine for IP-based LAN access. For Let’s Encrypt or bring-your-own certificate, see the TLS / SSL section in the docs.http://<device-ip>/api/docs/.Ask on the forum or open a GitHub discussion.