Introducing the Screenly App Store

One common feature request that we have received since we started Screenly is the ability to have an app store with applications like a clock, weather, and an RSS reader.

We have been listening. Last month we announced our WordPress plugin and today we are happy to announce the availability of the beta of our Screenly App Store. Available now are our Clock and Weather apps. All the apps we release will:

Look great out-of-the-box

Our apps will look great out-of-the box. You shouldn’t have to spend time tweaking various configurations in order to make the app look great.

Location-aware

If there is a location element, such as in a weather app, the app will try to auto-locate your location. We do however allow you to override the location, which can be useful if the location detection fails, or if you want to simply display the result from another location.

Load quickly on the Raspberry Pi

Let’s face it. The Raspberry Pi is a remarkable device but isn’t as powerful as your desktop computer. As such, web content must be designed with this in mind. All our app are designed for the Raspberry Pi and will load swiftly.

Have good readability

One of the things we run across frequently with content for Screenly is that people try to squeeze in too much content in a given view. We call this information overload, and it has been scientifically proven. It’s far better to have a simple message per slide. This is something we have taken into account with our apps. They will all be simple and easy to read from afar.

Serve as a good sample app

Last, but not least, our apps are designed to serve as sample applications. That is, there will be numerous use cases for applications that we have not thought of. Perhaps these are internal metrics or perhaps it is an app that you want to sell to other users. In either case, the goal with all our apps is to serve as best-practice examples of how to not only design the look but also how to design the technical side of web assets.

Looking forward

For the beta, we have decided to make these apps free to all of our users. In the future, these apps will be available for free for our paying customers and the app store will be more tightly integrated into our regular web interface.

We’re also curious about what you think. We have created a poll that allows you to vote on what kind of apps you want to see in the app store.

Getting started

To get started today, all you need to do is to:

• Visit app-store.srly.io
• Select an app and configure it to your needs
• Copy the URL and add it as an asset to Screenly

If you don’t have a Screenly Pro yet you can sign up for a free account here.