Set up the kiosk

The kiosk turns a tablet, a monitor, or a TV with a browser into a family screen on the wall: clock, weather, today's events, tasks, the meal plan, the shopping list, your photos – large enough to read as you walk past.

Setting it up is for your household's admins only. Everyone else can see the screen, but can't change it.

1. Turn on the module

Manage → Modules → the “Kiosk” switch. A new Kiosk tile then appears in Manage. Everything else happens there.

2. The assistant – five steps to your first screen

The fastest way. You choose, one after another:

• Location – kitchen, hallway, living room, or kids' room. Each template is put together with a purpose: the kitchen leads with the meal plan, the shopping list, and the week; the hallway with a large clock and who's where today; the living room with photos and birthdays; the kids' room with the morning routine, tasks, and school.
• Format – landscape (the usual choice for a monitor) or portrait (a tablet mounted upright on the wall).
• Content – the template's tiles, to add or remove. Anything you don't need comes out here.
• Look & clock – three looks (Night blue, dark and glare-free; Kitchen note, light like paper; Tiles, with coloured blocks) and four clocks (analogue, digital, flip, word clock).
• Done – save, and that's it. You can keep changing the layout afterwards, any time.

3. Free layout – the grid

In the Free layout tab, the same layout sits on a grid: landscape 12 columns × 6 rows, portrait 6 × 12. You drag tiles into place, resize them from the bottom-right corner, and pick new tiles from the palette on the left.

• Tiles can't overlap. Drag one onto an occupied spot, and it springs back.
• Every tile has a smallest and a largest size – a week view needs width, a countdown gets by with little.
• Up to 24 tiles per layout and format.
• On the right sits the inspector: there, for each tile, you set who it shows (people as an avatar picker), how many entries, which list – depending on the tile type. For the shopping list: no list chosen means all lists.
• On mobile, the palette sits as a bar at the bottom, and the inspector opens as a sheet.

Landscape and portrait are two separate versions

A layout holds both versions at once. The screen decides for itself which one to use: wider than it is tall, it shows the landscape version; otherwise, the portrait one – and it switches when you rotate it. So it's worth filling in both, if a tablet sometimes hangs one way and sometimes the other.

Switching between the “Landscape” and “Portrait” tabs in the editor keeps both versions – you never lose anything.

Multiple screens, multiple layouts

You can create several layouts – “Kitchen”, “Hallway”, “Kids' room” – and assign one to each device. Two screens can also share the same layout.

Once you save, every screen picks up the new layout within a minute. You don't need to touch anything there.

What can appear on the kiosk

Clock · Weather · Today · Week · Tasks · Meal plan · Shopping list · School · Parenting schedule · Who's where · Countdown · Birthdays · Points · Morning routine · Photo · Note.

Tiles that need a module (School, Points, Parenting schedule, Meals, Weather, Birthdays) stay empty as long as the module is turned off.

For Weather, you enter your city once, in the Privacy tab – when you create a layout, patchio suggests the location of your main home. The screen only gets this city name, never your address. If nothing's entered, the weather tile says so and otherwise stays empty.

Never on the kiosk: Finances, Contracts, Health, Cycle, Documents, Vehicles, Loyalty cards, notes on events, phone numbers, and addresses. That's not a setting – it's built in. More on this under “Privacy on the kiosk”.

The timetable on the wall screen

The School tile has three views, switchable in the inspector under “View”:

• Next lesson (default) – as before: the next lesson coming up, the next test, the holiday countdown.
• Day plan – the whole timetable for one day, plus tests, school events, and open tasks – due that day or already overdue.
• Week plan – Monday to Friday (Saturday only if there are lessons that day) as a grid, one column per day. On Saturday and Sunday the tile already shows the COMING week – the current one would be over by then anyway.

For the day plan, you also choose the day: automatic (today, until its last lesson is over – then the tile switches to the next school day on its own; if no lesson has a time, it stays on “today” until midnight), today, or specifically the next school day.

Tip: It works best with one tile per child. With several children in one tile, the timetables stack – readable up close, tight from across the room.

Tip: The day and week plans want room. Drag the tile bigger in the “Free layout” tab – up to full screen (12 × 6 landscape, 6 × 12 portrait) – and every lesson stays easy to read.