How to Use the Guardian News App – OptiSigns

In this article, we'll explain how to use the Guardian News app on OptiSigns.

The OptiSigns The Guardian app allows you to display news from The Guardian on your digital signs. It covers the most up-to-date Top Stories, World news, Football, Sport, Culture, Lifestyle news and more.

QR Codes are displayed, which a viewer can scan with their phone to read the relevant article. The Guardian News can also be displayed as Scrolling Strip.

Below is an example screenshot of how it looks on your screens:

The Guardian app on a screen: Top Stories headline, timestamp, story summary and a QR code on a dark blue card

What You'll Need

* If using a Free plan, make sure you're using a Free-plan capable device

Creating a The Guardian News Asset

First, you will need to have your screens set up and paired. For more information on how to do that, click here.

Then log on to our portal: http://app.optisigns.com/

Go to Files/Assets, click on Apps:

OptiSigns portal with the Files/Assets tab and the Apps button in the left sidebar highlighted

Click The Guardian:

Add App dialog with Guardian typed in the search box and The Guardian app tile highlighted

Enter your The Guardian Wall App information:

The Guardian Wall setup dialog: Name, Category, Theme, Speed and Font Size, with a live preview pane

Name: Name of your The Guardian Wall app, this is the name of the app in your asset list. It will not be displayed on your screens.
Category: Select the category or categories that you want to focus on. You can check as many as you want.
Theme: Select Light or Dark Theme.
Speed: Select how fast you want the app to scroll or switch between posts. You can also customize your speed if you select Custom.

Speed set to Custom, showing a slider from 1 to 20 marked Slow, Medium and Fast

Font Size: Set the font size for The Guardian Wall app.

Clicking Advanced opens up additional options:

Advanced section expanded, showing the Date & Time and Scrolling Strip Font Size dropdowns

Date & Time: Choose from a set of pre-formatted dates, or select a custom date format:

Scrolling Strip Font Size: If you put the The Guardian News Wall app to a SplitScreen zone that is a scrolling strip, you can set how big you want the scrolling text to be.

After you've configured the Guardian News app to your liking, hit Save.

Your Guardian app will appear as an Asset in OptiSigns, and it can now be directly assigned to a screen or used in a Playlist. This asset can then be edited at any time from the Files/Assets tab.

That's all!

OptiSigns is the leader in digital signage software. If you have any additional questions, concerns or any feedback about OptiSigns, feel free to reach out to our support team at support@optisigns.com