Turn this phone into a scrolling text sign. Tap the display to come back here.
build v25
🔄 Check for latest version
If you don't see "build v25" above, you're on
an old cached copy — tap "Check for latest version" above, or for a guaranteed-fresh look, open this
link in a Private/Incognito tab (that never has an old cached version installed).
Preview
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Entry
Rotate
Order
ⓘ What do these mean?
Entry — pick the edge your text enters from (arrow
points the way it travels). Defaults to entering from the left, travelling right — the most
common way to use this as a sign.
Rotate — which way the text itself faces: → upright
(0°) · ↓ rotated 90° · ← upside down (180°) · ↑ rotated 270°. Independent of Entry and Order —
this rotates the text itself, not which way it scrolls or which order the characters read in.
Order — reading order for short text (e.g. 2
characters): AB normal order · A/B stacked top-to-bottom · BA reversed order · B/A stacked
bottom-to-top, tap again to cycle back to AB. Independent of Entry — e.g. stacked characters
can still travel left to right as one column.
Line up several phones side by side (any mix of Android/iPhone — this uses
each phone's own clock, not an app-specific protocol). Each phone shows the
SAME message, but starts its scroll at a synced clock time with a per-device
offset — when phones are the same width and placed in order, the moving line
looks continuous across screens. Best-effort sync only (no server): works
well on the same wifi/time zone, can drift a little over long sessions —
tap "Start display" again on all phones to realign anytime. Font size
automatically multiplies by "Total phones" — with 4 phones, the text renders
4× bigger than the "Font size" slider says, so one giant character spans
across all 4 screens together instead of each phone showing its own small copy.
Renders one block of text stretched to fill the whole grid (vertically stretched
per row, so text will look proportionally taller/squished, not naturally
proportioned — a deliberate trade-off to keep every phone's crop pixel-exact
instead of relying on font metrics lining up). Current limits (honest, not
silently unsupported): horizontal scroll direction only, and Rotate is ignored
while this is on. Live Control auto-assign doesn't do grid positions yet —
every phone enters its own Row/Col by hand.
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If this phone still looks slightly ahead/behind the others after starting,
nudge it here (negative = start a bit earlier, positive = start a bit later).
Manual mode: tap "Start display" again on this phone. Live Control mode: this
setting stays on this phone even while joined — just ask whoever is holding the
Controller to tap "Push settings + Start all" again, and your adjustment applies
on that next start.
🎮 Live Control (auto-sync, beta)
ⓘ how does this work?
One phone becomes the Controller and gets a 4-digit room code. Every other phone
joins that code as a Display. The Controller pushes the message/look to all joined
phones and starts them together — the start moment comes from the server's own
clock (not each phone guessing), so this is tighter sync than the manual
position/offset fallback above. Needs internet access (not just the same wifi) —
this talks to sign.maysuns.uk's own small control server. The inline picture
(🖼️) is NOT sent to other phones — only text, size, speed, colors, font, rainbow,
direction, and rotation.
Room code — have every other phone tap "Join as Display" and enter this:
····
🔲 Grid layout (automatic)
Preview — which phone (or "You") covers which part, and roughly how much of the message each one carries (an approximate character split, not a pixel-accurate one). Phones in the same column carry the same slice — rows split that slice vertically, they don't each get separate content.
📲 How to install / add to home screen
Android (Chrome/Edge): tap "📲 Install this app" above
if it's showing — if not: tap the ⋮ menu (top right) → "Install app" / "Add to Home screen".
iPhone/iPad (Safari): Apple doesn't let websites trigger this
automatically, so it's a few manual taps: 1) tap the Share icon (square with an arrow, in the
bottom/top toolbar) 2) scroll down and tap "Add to Home Screen" 3) tap "Add" — an app icon appears
on your home screen that opens straight to the display, no browser bar.
This is also the only way to get a real fullscreen look on iPhone — opening this page in a
normal Safari tab and tapping "Start display" will NOT hide Safari's browser bar (Apple doesn't
allow websites to request that); only the installed home-screen app version does.
📱 iPhone tip: for a real fullscreen sign (no Safari address bar), add this to your Home Screen first
— see "How to install" above — then open it from the home screen icon instead of this browser tab.