🖼️ Using Image Feeds in Playlister

Image Feed is the lightweight sibling to our Live Web Snapshot feature—designed for maximum flexibility when you want to display a dashboard, graphic, or dynamic content as an image on your Apple TV screens, especially from a private or internal network.

✅ What Is an Image Feed?

The Image Feed feature allows you to display a static image from any URL during playback in your Playlister Playlist.

When a screen hits an Image Feed in the playlist, the Playlister Screen App fetches the image and displays it for the duration of that playlist item. The image is cached for 30 seconds, and reloaded automatically if needed.

This is a perfect solution when:

• Your dashboard is not accessible on the public internet

• You can generate a static image from another tool (e.g., dashboard screenshot)

• You want full control and simplicity without worrying about browser rendering or authentication issues

🧠 Use Cases

• 📊 Display internal dashboards (attendance, metrics, ops) from behind a firewall

• 🌦️ Show room schedules, weather snapshots, or event slides

• 🔒 Keep data secure by using hosted image links from your own intranet

🔧 How to Set It Up

1. Generate the Image

To use this feature, your image must be hosted at a publicly or locally accessible URL (HTTP or HTTPS). Some ways to generate and host an image:

• Run a screenshot script on your dashboard server every minute and save it to a web-accessible location

• Use Dropbox Public Links, S3 Buckets, or any internal web server that serves up a .png or .jpg

💡 Example from our team:

We use an AppleScript to capture screenshots of a browser window and save the result to Dropbox:

Download the Sample Script

📥 Dropbox URL Tips

If you’re using Dropbox, make sure to modify the share link to return a direct image file (not a Dropbox preview page). To do this, change the end of the Dropbox share URL from ?dl=0 to ?raw=1.

Example:

Original:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/abc12345/screenshot.png?dl=0

Updated for Image Feed:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/abc12345/screenshot.png?raw=1

More guidance here:

🔗 Dropbox Force Direct Download

2. Insert the Image Feed

In the Playlist Manager:

1. Add a new item

2. Select “Image Feed”

3. Paste the image URL

4. Set how long you want it to display (e.g., 30 seconds, 60 seconds)

5. Save your playlist

That’s it—your screen will now pull in and show the image at playback time!

🛑 Important Notes & Disclaimers

• The image must be a direct link to an image file (.jpg, .png, .gif).

• The screen must be able to access the image URL—if it’s on a private network, make sure the Apple TV is also on that network.

• Image Feed does not support authentication. If your dashboard requires login, use a script that handles auth and captures a screenshot on the backend.

• It’s not interactive. Think of it as a billboard, not a browser.

🆚 Web Snapshot vs Image Feed

💬 Questions?

Need help creating your image or setting up the hosting URL? Reach out to our support team—we’re happy to help you explore options like Dropbox, internal servers, or other secure hosting setups.

Playlister Tip:

If your team uses dashboard tools like Grafana, DAKboard, or Dashmaster2k, they often include export-to-image or snapshot display modes—making them perfect candidates for Image Feed use!