# Free digital signage templates you can remix — and a screen that stays free > Free digital signage in two parts: a gallery of free digital signage templates you remix in one click, and a first screen that stays free forever — no media player, no per-device license. Source: https://channelos.tv/blog/free-digital-signage-templates Published: 2026-07-02 Updated: 2026-07-28 Category: Templates Author: The ChannelOS team **Free digital signage in ChannelOS means two things. First, free digital signage templates: an Official gallery made by ChannelOS and a Community gallery made by other users, any of which you remix in one click into a fresh, independent show with its own media. Second, a first screen that is free forever — not a trial — running in the TV's own browser with no media player to buy and no per-device license. You pay per screen per month only from the second screen onward.** --- The problem with a free template gallery is not the templates. It is that a fixed gallery is somebody else's guess at your business, and the moment your prices, your hours or your offer move away from that guess, you are back to editing a design you did not make and do not understand. Free digital signage templates usually mean the same thing everywhere: a fixed gallery of layouts you pick from and lightly recolor. ChannelOS does it differently on both halves of that phrase. Its free templates live in a built-in gallery, they are made by real people as much as by us, and you start from one by **remixing** it in a single click — the whole deck copies into your own workspace as an editable show you own outright. And free digital signage here means the screen too, not just the artwork: your first screen is free forever, playing in the TV's own browser with nothing to buy. ## Where to find free digital signage templates in ChannelOS The templates live in one gallery inside the app, split into two sections. **Official** templates are made by ChannelOS. **Community** templates are made by other users who chose to publish a show they built. Everything in both sections is free to remix. Each template card shows a real preview of the deck, a likes count, and how many times it has been remixed — so you can sort by popular or newest and see what actually lands on screens. Open one to browse it in a preview theater: a filmstrip of every slide with a zoom to inspect a single slide up close. ## What "remix" actually does Remixing copies the entire template into your workspace as a fresh, independent show — and that copy is genuinely yours. This is the part that makes ChannelOS templates different from a locked gallery. When you remix from a template's share link, ChannelOS: - Creates a **new show with new IDs** — nothing points back at the original. - **Re-uploads the media** into your workspace, so images and video travel with your copy. - Leaves the original **untouched** — a remix is a frozen snapshot, not a live link back. Because it is a snapshot, edits to the original never change your copy, and your edits never change theirs. You open it in the same Canva-style editor you use for any show and make it yours: swap the words, drop in your logo, change the palette, reorder slides. *Why it matters:* you are not customizing someone's locked layout through a narrow set of allowed tweaks. You get the whole editable deck and full freedom over every slide. ## From template to a screen — nothing extra to publish A remixed template is just one of your shows, so it plays the way every ChannelOS show plays. ChannelOS is edit-once-airs-everywhere: what a screen shows is derived from your show and the channel schedule, live. Put your remixed show on a screen and it plays; edit a slide and every screen airing it updates. So the path from "I like that template" to "it's on the lobby TV" is: remix, edit, put it on a screen. There is no separate export-and-upload dance in the middle. ## What "free digital signage" actually covers Most free digital signage offers are a trial with a countdown, or a free tier so thin you cannot get a real screen live on it. Ours is a single, checkable promise with its limits stated on the same line: **your first screen is free forever, no card.** Here is what that free screen actually gets, honestly listed. **What is free.** One paired screen, permanently. The Canva-style editor with tables, groups, one-tap background removal and keyboard shortcuts. The whole Pexels photo and video library. Brand kits. Live widgets — clock, weather, QR, menu, ticker. Channels with a real daily timeline, dayparting by hour and weekday, live takeover and go-live-now. The live board. Export and import. Both template galleries, with unlimited remixing. Edits you make yourself in the editor are unlimited — you can change a price forty times a day and it costs nothing. **What is metered.** AI show generation. Drafting a complete multi-slide show from one sentence, or from a PDF or a webpage URL, runs on a monthly credit allowance rather than being unlimited, because each generation costs us real compute. Editing what the AI drafted does not touch that allowance. **What is paid.** Screens two and up, priced per screen per month. That is the only line where the number goes up, and it is the honest trade: we would rather charge for the second screen than cripple the first. Current allowances and per-screen prices live on the [pricing page](/pricing) — we deliberately don't print numbers in blog posts that can go stale. **What is not a catch.** No watermark on your slides. No forced ChannelOS branding on the TV. No expiry on the free screen, and if you drop back down to free from a paid plan, one screen keeps playing. There is also a genuinely free tool outside the app entirely: the [menu-board maker](/tools/menu-board-maker), which builds a board for 14 cuisines — pizzeria, sushi, bbq, cafe, bakery, bar, indian, food truck and more — that you can then take into a real show. ## Free digital signage still costs money if you have to buy a player This is where "free" usually leaks. Plenty of signage tools have a free plan, and then the actual bill arrives as hardware: a media-player box behind every TV, plus a per-device license to let that box talk to the CMS. A free software tier on top of a per-screen appliance is not free digital signage — it is a hardware purchase with a discounted dashboard. ChannelOS removes that line item because **the TV is the player.** A show runs as a web page in the browser already built into the screen: Android TV, Google TV, webOS, Fire TV, a Chromebox, or a laptop parked in kiosk mode. There is no player device to provision, and no per-device license to renew. You open the player URL on the TV, a code appears, you scan it from your phone, and that screen is paired. That changes what the free screen is worth. On a hardware-based platform, "free plan" means you may not owe the software vendor anything this month, but you still bought the box. Here the marginal cost of your first screen is a TV you already own — and at most a cheap HDMI stick if the TV's own browser is too old to be pleasant. The honest caveat: browser-based playback depends on the TV. A five-year-old smart TV with a sluggish browser will render a heavy show worse than a purpose-built player will, and offline resilience on a dedicated appliance is genuinely better if your venue loses connectivity often. For most cafés, clinics, gyms and shops on ordinary broadband, the browser is fine, and it is the difference between a screen live this afternoon and a hardware order. We go into the trade-off properly in [no media player required](/blog/no-media-player-required). ## The part no other signage tool does Every other digital-signage tool hands you a fixed, curated gallery you can only pick from and lightly customize. ChannelOS is the only digital-signage platform where the templates are made by people like you — build one, remix anyone's in a click, and share yours in a link. That is the whole loop, and it runs both ways: - **Remix** anything in the gallery into your workspace. - **Publish** a show you built back into the gallery, where it gets a share link and a likes count and shows how many people have remixed it. It is a share-and-remix community, not a static catalog. The more people build, the better the gallery gets for everyone. ## Sharing privately, without the gallery Not everything belongs in a public gallery. When you want to hand a design to one specific person — a client, another account, a colleague working offline — you can export it as a file instead. A show downloads as a `.show.channelos.tv` file and a whole channel as a `.channel.channelos.tv` file. Each is a self-contained ZIP with a checksummed manifest and every image and video frozen inside, so it works offline and across workspaces. The person imports it and gets a brand-new copy in their workspace — new IDs, media re-uploaded, nothing linked back. We go deep on that format in [exporting and importing shows and channels](/blog/export-and-import-shows-and-channels). ## Start from a free template The fastest way to get something good on a screen is to stand on a design that already works. Open the gallery, remix a template you like, and edit it into yours — then put it on any TV you have paired. - Browse and remix in the [template gallery](/templates). - Prefer building from scratch? See [how to make your own digital signage template](/blog/make-your-own-digital-signage-template) and publish it for others to remix. - Running a café or restaurant? Start with [a digital menu board on any TV](/blog/digital-menu-board-restaurant-tv). When you are ready, [open ChannelOS](/app), pair a screen, and put a remixed template on it in minutes. So judge it on the second week, not the first. Remix a template today, then change something real on it in seven days' time: a price, a name, a photo. If that edit takes a minute and you did it yourself, the template earned its place. If you avoided it, the gallery was decoration and you should tell us which part fought back. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is there genuinely free digital signage software, or is it always a trial? ChannelOS is free digital signage on your first screen permanently — it is not a 30-day trial and it does not need a card. That screen gets the full editor, the free Pexels photo and video library, brand kits, channels with dayparting and the live board. The honest limits: one screen is free and further screens are per screen per month, and AI drafting runs on a monthly credit allowance. Current numbers are on the pricing page. ### What does free digital signage not include? The free tier covers one screen, not a wall of them — a second and third screen are per screen per month. AI show generation is metered by a monthly credit allowance, though edits you make yourself in the editor are unlimited. Nothing else is held back behind a paywall on the free screen, and if you drop back to the free tier your first screen keeps playing. ### Where can I get free digital signage templates? ChannelOS has a built-in template gallery with two sections: Official templates made by ChannelOS and Community templates made by other users. Both are free to remix. Open any template, remix it in one click, and it becomes an editable show in your own workspace — no download and no import step. ### How is remixing a template different from a normal template gallery? Most signage tools give you a fixed, curated gallery you pick from and lightly customize. ChannelOS templates are made by people like you, and remixing copies the entire deck into your workspace as a fresh, independent show. You then edit it freely rather than tweak a locked layout. ### Does a remixed template stay linked to the original? No. A remix is a frozen snapshot, not a live link. When you remix, ChannelOS re-uploads the media and gives the copy new IDs, so your show is fully independent. Edits to the original never touch your copy, and your edits never touch theirs. ### Can I share my own show as a template? Yes. Publish any show you have built into the gallery and it gets a share link anyone can remix. You can also hand a show or a whole channel to someone privately as an export file they import into their workspace — useful across accounts or offline.