Vertical digital signage is an ordinary screen turned on its side, so that it is taller than it is wide. It earns its place where the space is narrow or the content is a list: beside a door, along a queue, on a pillar, in a corridor, or anywhere a printed poster would hang. It is the wrong choice above a wide counter, for most video, and for slides made for a projector.
Three things decide whether it works. The display has to be one its maker allows to hang in portrait. The mount, the cables and the player have to be planned for it on the day of the install. And the content has to be made for a tall frame, not a landscape design turned sideways. The picture itself is the easy part: the TV does not need a rotate setting, because the player can turn the picture for it.
When a vertical screen is the right choice
Portrait follows the shape of the place and the shape of the message. It suits:
- A narrow wall. The strip beside an entrance, the side of a pillar, the end of a shelf run. A landscape screen there either overhangs or has to be too small to read.
- A list read from top to bottom. A menu, a price list, today's classes, a directory of floors by the lift. A tall screen gives a list more lines at the same type size.
- A poster. An offer, an event, a single dish. Posters are portrait for a reason, and anything designed for print at A-size already has roughly the right shape.
- Video shot on a phone. Footage filmed upright, the way most people hold a phone, fills a portrait screen and sits as a narrow strip on a landscape one.
When to keep it landscape
- Above a counter. The space over a till is wide and shallow, and the whole queue looks up at once. A landscape menu board fits it; a portrait one leaves most of the wall empty.
- Most video. TV adverts, YouTube clips and product films are made in landscape. On a portrait screen they become a band across the middle, roughly a third of the screen's height, with black above and below (more on that below).
- Dashboards and slides. A spreadsheet, a chart or a deck made at 16:9 has its content arranged side by side. Turned to portrait it shrinks to fit the narrow side.
If a screen has to do a bit of everything, landscape is the safer default. Portrait is a decision for a particular wall and particular content.
Choosing a vertical digital signage display
Not every screen is meant to stand on its side, and this is the part to settle before you buy.
Commercial displays usually say so. A spec sheet for a panel sold for signage will list "landscape/portrait" or similar where it is supported, and some makers also say which way round it must be turned, for example which side the connectors or the power button should end up on. Follow that instruction exactly. If the picture then comes out upside down, the player can correct it, as described below, so there is no reason to mount it the other way.
Consumer TVs often say nothing, and some manuals tell you not to mount the set vertically. Before you turn one on its side, check:
- The manual. Look for anything about portrait, vertical mounting or orientation. If it is silent, ask the manufacturer rather than assuming.
- Ventilation. A TV is designed to shed heat with a particular edge at the top. Turned 90 degrees, the vents are in the wrong place, which matters more on a screen that runs all day.
- The warranty. Mounting a set in a way the maker does not support, or using it commercially, can affect what the warranty covers. Read the terms that came with your set. The comparison of signage displays and TVs covers warranties and daily hours in more detail.
Two more things change when a panel turns:
- Viewing angles. A panel's viewing angles are not always the same side to side as up and down, and turning it swaps them. Look at the screen from where people will actually stand, including from the side, before you commit to a wall.
- The remote. The infrared receiver and the logo on the bezel move with the panel. Check you can still point a remote at it once it is mounted, because someone will need to.
Size works the same way as in landscape, measured on the short side. A 55-inch screen in portrait is about 69 cm wide and 1.2 m tall, and the width is what limits the type. The screen size guide has the distances.
Mounting a screen vertically
Most wall mounts attach to the VESA holes on the back of the screen, a standard pattern of four screw holes. Three things to check for portrait:
- The pattern turned 90 degrees. The hole pattern is often a rectangle rather than a square. Make sure the bracket's arms can take it turned on its side, and that the mount says it supports portrait and the screen's weight.
- Where the connectors end up. On their side, the HDMI and power inputs face a new direction, often towards the floor or the wall beside the screen. Plan the cable run from there, and leave slack.
- Where the player goes. An Android box or a small computer behind the screen has to be fixed somewhere it stays cool and can still be reached. Our hardware page puts it simply: leave the player reachable, and leave one HDMI length of slack.
A portrait screen by a door or a queue is read close up, so hang it with the content at about eye height rather than above people's heads.
How to rotate a TV for portrait
Physically turning the screen is half the job. The picture also has to turn, and most consumer TVs have no setting for that. Some commercial displays do, and Windows and macOS can rotate a display in their own settings, but you do not need any of them with SignageStack.
Each screen in the dashboard has an Orientation setting on its Device tab, with four options:
- Landscape, the default.
- Landscape (upside down), for a landscape screen that had to be mounted the other way up.
- Portrait.
- Portrait (upside down), for when Portrait comes out with the picture the wrong way up. Rather than taking the screen down and turning it the other way, choose this one.
The rotation is done by the player itself, in software. The TV or display keeps receiving its normal landscape picture over HDMI, and the player draws your content into it turned through 90 degrees. That is why a consumer TV with no rotate option still works in portrait, and why the setting behaves the same everywhere the player runs: the Android app on a box or an Android TV and the web player in a browser on a Windows PC, a Mac or any other computer.
A few things follow from how it works:
- Rotate in one place only. The player turns the picture it is given. If the computer or display is already rotating it, leave the dashboard on Landscape, or the two rotations add up and the picture ends up on its side again.
- Everything turns together. A ticker band runs along the top or bottom edge of the portrait picture, not up the side of the panel, and an emergency alert appears the right way up. Slide transitions keep their direction as the viewer sees it: a slide set to move left to right still moves left to right on the portrait screen.
- It is remembered. The player stores the setting, so a restart or a power cut does not bring the screen back in landscape. If the screen is offline when you change it, the change applies when it reconnects.
While the screen is online, the preview on its Device tab mirrors what the real screen shows. Its frame stays landscape, because it stands for the panel as it was built, and your content appears turned inside it, exactly as the player sends it to the display. If the text in the preview runs up the side, the setting is doing its job.
What content works in portrait
The rule that matters most: make portrait content for portrait. Design at 1080 × 1920 pixels. A landscape slide turned on its side is not a portrait design, and a landscape photo cropped to a tall strip rarely keeps what made it worth showing.
Type sizes carry over from landscape. Size text against the short side, which in portrait is the 1080-pixel width, so the minimum sizes in the design tips still apply in pixels. What changes is the line length. A portrait screen holds fewer words per line and more lines, so headlines often need to break onto two lines, and a long product name may need shortening.
What the built-in apps do with a tall frame:
- The Menu board. Every one of the eleven designs lays itself out for a portrait screen. It works out the screen's shape and plans its pages for it: a page of four dishes that sits in two columns on a landscape board is one column on a portrait one, and a long menu gets more pages rather than smaller text. The Hero design, one dish per page, puts the photo above the name and price in portrait. You can see portrait renders on the digital menu board page, and menu board design covers the layout itself.
- Zones. The Zones app splits a screen into panels, and its layouts are proportions of the screen, so they stand on end with it. Deck gives two panels one above the other and Tri-deck three, which suit a portrait screen well: a menu above, a QR code or the weather below. Duo and Triptych become tall, narrow columns, which suit very little. The Zones editor in the dashboard draws the layout as a landscape rectangle, so picture it turned.
- Weather, Clock and RSS feed. These apps size their type from both sides of the screen, so they do not shrink to nothing on a narrow one. The Weather app's week view drops its rain column in portrait to make room.
- Text. The Text app sizes its words by default against the narrower side, so on a portrait screen a notice comes out smaller than it would in landscape. For a short notice, pick a larger size in the editor; for a long one, cut words, because a portrait line holds fewer of them.
- PDF Reader and Google Slides. Both show each page or slide whole. A PDF poster or a deck whose page size is set to portrait fills most of a portrait screen; a 16:9 deck sits as a band in the middle.
Landscape pictures and video on a portrait screen
Sometimes the only video you have is landscape. Next to Orientation on the Device tab, the Scale setting decides how pictures and video fill the screen. It applies to the whole screen, not to one item.
Scale | What a landscape video does on a portrait screen |
|---|---|
Fit (keep aspect ratio), the default | Shows all of it, as a band across the middle with black above and below |
Zoom (fill, crop) | Fills the screen and cuts off the sides, which is most of the picture |
Stretch (fill, distort) | Fills the screen and squeezes everything, which is rarely acceptable |
None (actual size) | Shows the file at its own pixel size, centred |
Fit is right almost every time; Zoom only works for footage whose subject stays in the middle. Better still, re-edit the video at 1080 × 1920, or use Zones. On a portrait screen each panel of the Tri-deck layout is close to the shape of a landscape video, so a video in one panel and a menu or an offer in the other two uses the whole screen. For photos, the dashboard's free stock library can be filtered to portrait once you have typed a search.
What SignageStack does not do
To be plain about the limits:
- It does not redesign your own files. A landscape image or video stays landscape. The apps lay themselves out for a portrait screen; your uploads are shown as they were made, fitted by the Scale setting.
- Orientation belongs to the screen. It is set once per screen, not per playlist item, so one screen cannot switch between portrait and landscape content. That matches the hardware: a screen hangs one way.
Where to start
Before you buy a mount, try portrait on a screen you have. Open the web player on a laptop, pair it, set the screen to Portrait in the dashboard and turn the laptop on its side, or tape a cardboard outline of the screen to the wall and hold your content up to it. Put your real content in it: the menu, the poster, the directory. If it reads better tall than wide, check the display's manual, order a mount that supports portrait, and plan the cables before the installer arrives. The 21-day trial runs on one screen with every feature, including every Menu board design and Zones, and needs no card.
