Kiosk Browsing vs Full Screen

I was just looking for full screen without having to press the full screen button in the menu. I think I incorrectly assumed that it was very simple and being done with a command imbedded in the URL.

My use case is very narrow on an old device. It’s definitely not worth spending development time on when there are browsers (Fully Kiosk, etc.) that will accomplish this on a vast majority of the devices currently being used for Sharp Tools. I really appreciate the offer to help though.

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This is how I solved this issue.

Opened sharptools dashboard in chrome on my iphone. Clicked “…” and then “fullscreen”.

I then copied THAT address (even though it only included ?kiosk=true and nothing about fullscreen"), and opened it in safari. It opened right away in true fullscreen, and then I “added to homescreen”.

I tried a few times within safari itself and maybe it was something I did but it didnt truly work when I tried it all within safari. That being said I was jumping all about and I am timed out right now from trying “due to unusual activity” as I was making about 12 dashboard apps at once. Ha

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How did you copy the address if the browser was in full screen and the address bar was not on the screen?

in chrome, the full screen still shows the address bar. But when i move to safari, and then make that page a “web app” the address bar by isnt available as its a “web app”

Chrome has the same feature on modern Android devices. It basically adds the dashboard or whatever page you are on as a ‘web app’ as @xnbsx mentioned. You mentioned that you were using an older Android device and Chromium (instead of Chrome), so I’m not sure if this option is available to you in any of your browsers.

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No, the address bar is gone when selecting full screen in Chromium. I would have thought Chromium and Chrome would act the same since I believe they are both sourced from blink. Oh well.

I am experimenting with smaller tiles so the page doesn’t scroll. It seems to be working ok. This is the tablet that sits by my chair that I use for ST, Harmony and IP camera monitoring.

On my wall mounted tablet, I made a web app from the same link I made for my iOS web app, and both of them worked great. full screen, no address bar. The only issue is on Android, the navigation/account bar is still displayed on the top where iOS it is not.

It doesn’t look like the app is in Kiosk Mode on the Android screenshot. The easiest way to do this from your Android device is:

  1. Open the list of dashboards
  2. Tap the ... next to your desired dashboard and choose View (Kiosk Mode)
    Note: this will make sure you are in Kiosk Mode with the top navigation hidden and the bottom right ... menu hidden, but not ‘fullscreen’ so you still have access to the browser controls
  3. Open the browser’s menu and choose Add to Home screen
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I’ve read this thread but I don’t think my question is answered.

I’m using Fully Kiosk on a Fire 10 and have it configured to start the dashboard URL on power up.

Question: Is it possible to start the dashboard in full screen? As it works now, one must press the “…” menu and select full screen from there.

Thanks.

You’ll want to include ?kiosk=true in your Fully Kiosk Browser Start URL.

So if your start URL is currently:

https://sharptools.io/dashboards/XXXXX

You’ll want to change it to:

https://sharptools.io/dashboards/XXXXX?kiosk=true
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Many thanks. Works fine - as you knew it would.

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I am using fully kiosk with my fire hd 8 (10th gen) and Fire hd 10 (9th gen) but it is super laggy and I can’t get the browser to go away no matter what I do even in full screen.

Hi @Denver, that certainly doesn’t sound right. Those newer Fire tablets should be just fine. Here are some troubleshoot steps/tips:

  • Merge multiple spacer tiles into bigger tile(s) if possible. Having many 1x1 spacer tiles can impact the performance
  • Are you using the the Fully Kiosk Browser APK for Fire OS specifically?
  • Do you have Google Play Store and its services side loaded on those tablets? From my experiences, it slows down the overall tablet performance overtime.
    • You may want to factor reset one of the tablets to see if you can reproduce the same issue on a fresh system.
  • If these still don’t help, send us a video and it may help us to better troubleshoot this for you.

What do you mean? Do you mean you cannot to you cannot close Fully Kiosk Browser or you cannot navigate between dashboards?

By browser I am referring to the URL at the top of the page when I go to kiosk mode. I want it to be a true full screen like action tiles is. I have 18 tiles total with no spacers which really isn’t that many for it to lag sooo bad and I have the Fire OS version which was sent to me from someone else at sharp tools. I am using fully kiosk APK fire OS. I had initially downloaded the none fire one off the play store and had little to issues but very minimal lag. And when i download the fire OS version above you sent it made it lag horribly.

Can you check Fully Kiosk Browser’s Settings → Toolbars adn Appearance → Show Address Bar, and if it is turned off? It sounds like the address bar was shown by Fully.

I have about 25 tiles in my main dashboard running on a Fire 10" (7th gen) and I didn’t experience the terrible performance as you described, so I’d be curious to understand the reason. I’d recommend you to try the factory reset on one of them (to remove the impact by the Google services), and install the Fire OS version of FKB on the fresh system. This would help you greatly in this troubleshoot process.

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I have all of my toolbars off and yet the URL still shows at the top of the screen. I will try factory reset on my Fire 10" (9th gen) and see if that fixes it.

Can you please share a screenshot?

The Settings > Toolbars and Appearance > Show Address Bar is the setting in Fully Kiosk Browser that controls if the URL Bar is displayed as shown in the following screenshots.

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Hi, Im a little confused about the Full Screen thing on Fully. I want to run in full-screen, I also want to use the camera to turn on the screen when it detects motion and then have the screen turn off after a certain period of time when no motion detected. Does anyone know what combination of the myriad of settings in fully would allow this use case? Thanks.

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@simon, see the instructions for common Fully Kiosk Browser settings in the post below. You will need to setup the Screensaver to dim the screen to black using URL: fully://color#000000cc, and config Motion Detection to exit Screensaver mode.

To have full-screen dashboard, you can add ?kiosk=true URL parameter to the end of your dashboard URL. For example:

SharpTools App

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Thanks @James. I searched and couldn’t find this info but knew it was there. I especially like the Hubitat remote control. Awesome.

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