Screensaver

In standby a screen can show something else than its dimmed tiles: the cover of the music that plays, a camera, or a big clock. Each screen has its own choice, on the Screen settings tab under Screensaver, right under Brightness.

Three steps

Turn on Show in standby. Under it stand three steps, each with its own switch. Drag them into the order you want: the screen shows the first one that is available.

• Music playing. Choose a player. While it plays, its cover fills the glass, with the title and the artist small in the corner. Once a player is chosen, Another player adds the next, up to four: a speaker first, the television second. The screen shows the first player in the list that is playing.
• Camera. Choose a camera or an image entity, such as the last snapshot of the doorbell. Its picture fills the glass and refreshes every 15 seconds.
• Clock. The time, the date and the outside temperature, white on black. The temperature comes from Home Assistant's own weather forecast, or from a weather entity you choose, or not at all.

With every step off, or nothing available, standby shows the dimmed tiles as before.

How it looks

The cover or the picture is darkened a little so the words read. On a wide screen the cover takes the full height on the left, and the rest of the glass is the cover's own colour with the words. The last cover stays until the next one has loaded, so the glass never goes blank between songs.

The screensaver shows at the standby brightness, and at the night brightness during the night hours. At 0 the glass is black and nothing shows.

Keys on the cover

Over a cover, three round keys stand in the bottom right corner: play or pause, volume down and volume up. A tap on one does that for the player on the glass, and the screen stays in standby with its screensaver. Hold volume down for a second and a half to mute; the next tap on either volume key unmutes. A player without a volume, as many televisions are, has the play key alone.

A tap anywhere else wakes the screen, and never switches a lamp or opens a card under the screensaver.

A player you paused with its key stays on the glass for two minutes, so the same key can start it again. Ten minutes after a pause the screensaver moves on to the next step; a speaker can stay paused in Home Assistant for days.

Which screens

The clock works on every screen. The cover and the camera need memory for pictures: every screen but the CYD, the Hosyond and the Waveshare 3.5 inch, which offer the clock alone. The Waveshare 4.3-inch and 7-inch screens have no standby, so no screensaver.