Black Screens, Freezes and Player Crashes

A dark screen, a frozen picture, a player that has quit and a panel that is simply off look alike, but each has its own fix.

Check in Studio first

In My screens, open Details on the screen:

Right now says “Online, checked in …” (the player is running) or “Offline since …”, and shows free Storage.
Take a new picture shows what the player is drawing. An offline screen cannot send one.
What happened lists events such as “Switched off or lost power, then started again” or “Problem reported: …”.

Showing the easyCMS logo? That is not a black screen: see The Screen Only Shows the easyCMS Logo.

Which fault you have

At the screen, open the player’s status window: press i on a keyboard connected to an Android or Windows player, or on LG webOS press the remote’s yellow button, then Status. If it opens, the player is alive.

Symptom	Likely cause	Fix
Dark at the same time every day	The panel’s timer, or a scheduled command	1
Dark after cleaning or a power cut	Wrong input, cable or sleep mode	2
Status window opens, nothing draws	Content fault	3
Desktop or home screen instead of the player	Player did not start	4
Fine for days, then quits	Device short of memory	5
Frozen picture, or a design never appears	Storage full	6

Fixes, quickest first

The panel’s power timer. Commercial screens have their own on/off schedule in the remote menu. A nightly Command event in easyCMS can do the same: if the panel does not explain it, look for one in that display’s schedule and ask us to change the timing.
Input, cable and sleep. Put the panel back on the right input, swap the HDMI lead and port, and turn off eco modes, screensavers and sleep timers (on Windows, for the signage user).
Read the status window. Its Log Messages usually say what is wrong: see Reading the Player Status Window.
Make the player start on its own. Android: turn on autostart and, on an unattended site, make the player the home app (Android Player Setup). Windows: the player launches at logon, so set automatic logon (Windows Player Setup). LG webOS: the panel’s start-up settings (LG webOS Player Setup). Different model? Tell us the make and model.
Lighten the load. Low-cost Android boxes and built-in players run short of memory over days, and no setting cures it. Use fewer webpage widgets, shorter videos, 1920 × 1080 rather than 4K, and fewer items at once (Webpages and Embedded HTML). Leave the Windows watchdog on: it restarts a closed player, though rarely a frozen one. For repeated crashes, we can arrange a nightly restart.
Clear the cached data, so the player fetches everything again. Clear Cached Data is a display setting only we can change: send us a support request with the screen’s name as My screens shows it. See also Display Is Online but Content Never Changes.

Watch out Never stop the player and delete files from its library folder by hand. The player manages that folder itself.

Still stuck? Send a support request

Send a support request with the screen’s name, the platform, a photo of the status window if it opens, and what changed before it went dark.