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Devices & troubleshooting

Raspberry Pi setup guide

A dedicated Raspberry Pi makes a reliable, always-on signage player. Here's how to set one up end to end.

Walkthrough coming soon
Set up a Raspberry Pi as a signage player — install, pair, and go live.

What you need

  • A Raspberry Pi (a Pi 4 or newer is recommended) running 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS.
  • A display and a network connection.
  • A Pico Sign account.

Install the player

  1. 1
    On the Pi, open the Download page and choose Linux arm64 (Raspberry Pi).It's badged “Most popular for signage”. Pick this card rather than the auto-detected button, which may offer the x64 build.
  2. 2
    Install the .deb.sudo apt install ./pico-player_…_arm64.deb
  3. 3
    Launch Pico Player.It runs fullscreen and shows a pairing code.

Pair and go live

In the dashboard, open Screens, click New screen (or Pair device), and enter the code shown on the Pi. Assign a sequence and it starts playing. For the full flow, see Pair your first screen.

Kiosk tips

  • The player launches at boot and runs fullscreen automatically.
  • Double-click the window to toggle fullscreen.
  • Ctrl + Shift + S sets the cloud URL the player connects to.
  • Ctrl + Shift + U twice unpairs the device.

One Pi per screen is the most reliable setup — and because the native player caches content, the screen keeps playing if the network drops. See What happens when a screen goes offline.

Only a Pi can really switch the TV off

Display power (CEC) is the one capability a Pi has that a Mac or a Windows box does not. On Linux the player sends the TV an HDMI-CEC standby, so the panel genuinely powers down overnight; everywhere else the same switch only blacks out the picture while the backlight stays on. If you want screens that are off out of hours rather than showing black, this is the reason to choose a Pi. See Turning the display off out of hours.

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