[opensourcedex]

Anthias is a free, open source media & streaming project written in Python and released under a custom open-source licence. It has 3,673 GitHub stars, 726 forks and 34 open issues, and was last pushed 17 hours ago. On this registry it ranks #10 of 27 tracked projects in Media & Streaming, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available. It gained 6 stars over the last 6 tracked days.

What is Anthias?

What it is

Anthias is an open source digital signage platform for Raspberry Pi devices and PCs, written in Python and distributed under a NOASSERTION license. It was formerly known as Screenly OSE and was rebranded to Anthias to clear up the confusion between Screenly, the paid version, and this open source project. The repository carries the topics digital-signage, iot, python, and raspberry-pi, and the project describes itself as the world's most popular open source digital signage project. It lives in the Raspberry Pi and single-board-computer ecosystem, with a hosted website and documentation at anthias.screenly.io.

The concrete problem it solves is turning commodity hardware into a managed signage display. Instead of buying a dedicated commercial signage player, an operator installs Anthias on a Raspberry Pi or a PC and gets a dashboard, a scheduler, and an asset library that drive the screen. The stack also includes a WebView component for rendering web content. This lets an organization reuse hardware it already owns, or cheaply acquired boards, to run scheduled image, web page, and video content on a television.

Key capabilities

  • Digital signage platform targeting Raspberry Pi devices and PCs, with a dashboard, scheduler, and asset library.
  • Installation on balenaOS, using images from balenaHub or images downloaded from the releases.
  • Installation on Raspberry Pi OS, with a published list of supported hardware on the website.
  • Best-effort support for generic 64-bit ARM SBCs, recognized by the installer as arm64, running the same Anthias stack on Armbian boards such as Rock Pi, Orange Pi, and Banana Pi.
  • WebView component for rendering web pages as signage assets, documented in src/anthias_webview/README.md.
  • Software video decoding on generic ARM boards, which handles casual 720p content.
  • Docker-based deployment, with the installer wiring up the Docker apt repository under download.docker.com/linux/debian.

Who uses it and how

  • Operators running signage on Raspberry Pi hardware, using Raspberry Pi OS and the supported hardware list to pick a board.
  • Fleet deployments on balenaOS, where images come from balenaHub or from the project's releases.
  • Deployments on generic 64-bit ARM boards, where the installer treats any non-Raspberry Pi 64-bit ARM host as arm64 and runs the same stack; tested boards
project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

Anthias · Open Source Digital Signage Solution for Raspberry Pi and PC

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GitHub release (latest by date)


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:sparkles: About Anthias

Anthias is a digital signage platform for Raspberry Pi devices and PCs. Formerly known as Screenly OSE, it was rebranded to clear up the confusion between Screenly (the paid version) and Anthias. More details can be found in this blog post.

Want to help Anthias thrive? Support us using GitHub Sponsor.

:rocket: Getting Started

See this page for options on how to install Anthias.

:white_check_mark: Compatibility

balenaOS

[!NOTE] See this page for instructions on how to install Anthias on balenaOS. You can either use the images from balenaHub or download the images from the releases.

Raspberry Pi OS

See the supported hardware section on the website for the full list of supported devices.

Generic 64-bit ARM SBCs (best-effort)

The installer recognizes any 64-bit ARM host that isn't a Raspberry Pi as arm64 and runs the same Anthias stack on it — Armbian on Rock Pi, Orange Pi, Banana Pi and similar boards. The dashboard, scheduler, and asset library all work as on a Pi.

Anthias only supports Debian-based Armbian images (Bookworm / Trixie). The installer wires up the Docker apt repository under download.docker.com/linux/debian, so Ubuntu-based Armbian downloads (Jammy / Noble) will fail at the apt update step. Pick the Debian build of the image for your board on the Armbian site.

Things to know before you pick a board:

  • Videos decode in software — fine for casual 720p, stutter-prone at 1080p on slower SoCs, not suitable for 4K. If your content is mostly video, prefer a Pi 4 / 5 or x86.
  • Images and web pages run smoothly across the supported boards.
  • Tested boards: Rock Pi 4, Rock 5, Orange Pi 5, Banana Pi M5. Allwinner H616 / H618 boards (e.g. Orange Pi Zero 3) currently have weaker mainline display support and are best limited to non-video content.
  • The Plymouth boot splash is wired up but typically does not display on non-Pi boards (their U-Boot bootloaders don't hand the kernel an early DRM device for Plymouth to draw to). The kernel boot log scrolls on the screen until the viewer takes over and renders your first asset — functionally fine, just less polished than the Pi or x86 boot.

Per-SoC hardware video decode (Rockchip rkmpp, Allwinner cedrus, Amlogic meson-vdec) is the planned follow-up; see issue #2849.

:zap: Quick Links

Frequently asked questions

Is Anthias free to use?

Anthias is open source. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does Anthias do?

Transform any TV into professional digital signage

What is Anthias written in?

Anthias is primarily written in Python. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/screenly/anthias, and it has 3,673 GitHub stars.