Beacon Docs

Kid Display Mode

Kid Display Mode locks a screen or tablet to a single family member, showing only their routine for the current time of day and their assigned chores. It is built for wall-mounted tablets in kids’ rooms, where you want a focused, distraction-free view instead of the full Beacon dashboard.

What the display shows

When a device is in Kid Display Mode, it shows:

  • The family member’s avatar and name with a greeting
  • A live clock and date
  • The routine for the current time of day — morning (before 12:00), afternoon (12:00–17:00), or evening (after 17:00)
  • The member’s assigned chores, including their reward values

Tap targets are large, designed for kids to use directly. Tapping a task or chore checks it off; tapping it again undoes it.

If no routine exists for the current time period, the next upcoming routine is shown read-only as a preview, labeled things like “Tonight” or “Tomorrow morning”.

When every routine task and chore for the day is complete, the display shows a celebration screen: “All done — great job!”

Entering Kid Display Mode

There are two ways to put a device into Kid Display Mode.

URL parameter

Append ?display=<memberId> to Beacon’s URL. This is bookmarkable and is the best option for kiosk browsers (like Fully Kiosk Browser) or Home Assistant wallpanel apps, since it survives reboots and takes precedence over any device-level setting.

Settings > Display

  1. Open Settings > Display
  2. Under Kid Display, choose a family member
  3. Choose how to apply it:
    • Use on This Device — persists the assignment for this browser/device via localStorage
    • Copy URL — copies the bookmarkable ?display=<memberId> URL for kiosk setups

Note: If both are present, the URL parameter takes precedence over the device-level (localStorage) assignment.

Setting up routines

Routines are created per family member, not from the Kid Display screen itself:

  1. Open Settings > Family Members
  2. Click the checklist icon on the member’s card
  3. Create a routine with:
    • A name
    • A time of day — morning, afternoon, or evening
    • An ordered list of tasks (add, remove, and reorder as needed)

A family member can have multiple routines, including more than one for the same time-of-day period. Only the first routine for the current period is shown on the display.

Completing tasks and chores

Routine tasks and chores both use the same big tap-to-complete interaction:

  • Tap an incomplete item to check it off
  • Tap a completed item again to undo it

Routine task completions reset every day automatically. Chore completions feed into the same streaks and leaderboard tracking used everywhere else in Beacon, recorded under that family member’s ID — see Chores for how streaks and the leaderboard work.

Exiting Kid Display Mode

Kid Display Mode is intentionally hard to exit by accident:

  1. Tap the clock 5 times within 3 seconds
  2. Confirm the exit in the dialog that appears

Exiting clears the device’s Kid Display assignment and strips the ?display= parameter from the URL, returning the device to the full Beacon app.

Screen saver and notifications

  • The normal Screen Saver behavior (dim mode and the clock screensaver) still runs on kid displays according to your usual Display settings — this keeps burn-in protection active on always-on screens.
  • Kid displays do not fire event push notifications and do not prompt for notification permission. See Notifications for how that works on the full dashboard.

Using ingress URLs for kiosk setups

If you copy a Kid Display URL while accessing Beacon through Home Assistant ingress, the kiosk device will need an authenticated HA session for that URL to keep working. For dedicated kiosk browsers, it’s simpler to use a direct (non-ingress) Beacon URL instead of the ingress path.

Troubleshooting

The display shows “member not found”

This happens if the assigned family member was deleted, or the memberId in the URL is invalid. The full Beacon app loads with a dismissible banner. Re-assign the device to a valid member from Settings > Display, or update the bookmarked URL.

The wrong routine (or no routine) is showing

Only the first routine matching the current time-of-day period (morning, afternoon, evening) is displayed. If a member has multiple routines in the same period, check their order in Settings > Family Members — the checklist icon on their card.

Chore completions aren’t showing up on the leaderboard

Chore completions from Kid Display Mode are recorded under the same member ID used everywhere else in Beacon, so they should appear on the leaderboard immediately. If they don’t, verify the device is actually assigned to the expected member in Settings > Display.

The “day” seems to roll over at the wrong local time

Completions are date-stamped in UTC, consistent with how chores are recorded elsewhere in Beacon. If your timezone is far from UTC, the day can roll over during your local evening rather than at midnight local time. This is a known limitation — routine and chore state for “today” is always based on the UTC date.

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