The Best Automated Browsing Tools for Digital Signage and Monitoring

Showing dashboards, status pages or news on an office TV is mostly a question of cycling pages and keeping them up to date. Here are the main options. Disclosure: the first is made by Patrick Bushe, who runs this site.

#1. AutoBrowser by Patrick Bushe

A free Chrome extension that plays a bookmark folder like a slideshow, in one tab.

• What it does: opens each bookmark for the time you set, from 1 second to 5 minutes, in order or at random, and loops. Pages that error or take more than 30 seconds to load are skipped and listed so you can retry them later.
• The trade-offs: each page loads fresh on its turn, so slow dashboards spend part of their time loading, and it doesn't scroll pages. Sign in to each site first, and press F11 for full screen.

See AutoBrowser.

#2. Tab rotation extensions

These cycle through tabs you already have open, switching every few seconds.

• The trade-off: every tab stays open and loaded, which uses more memory but means each page is ready instantly when its turn comes.

#3. Chrome's kiosk mode

Starting Chrome with the --kiosk option and an address opens that page full screen with no browser controls.

• The trade-off: it shows one page, so pair it with a dashboard that rotates its own views.

#4. Your dashboard tool's own playlists

Grafana has playlists that cycle dashboards and a kiosk view, and many monitoring tools have a TV or wallboard mode.

• The trade-off: it only covers that tool's own dashboards.

#5. Managed ChromeOS kiosks

For a fleet of screens, ChromeOS devices managed through Google Admin can run a locked-down kiosk.

• The trade-off: it needs managed devices and an admin license, which is more than one office TV needs.

The verdict: For a few pages from different sites on one screen, AutoBrowser is the simplest setup. If every page comes from one dashboard tool, use that tool's playlist instead.

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