# Digital signage for salons and barbershops Running salon and barbershop price boards, service lists, stylist availability and promotion screens on a TV played from its own browser and edited from a phone. Source: https://channelos.tv/industries/salons-and-barbershops ## What runs it ChannelOS plays as a web page in the browser the screen already has: Android TV, Google TV, webOS, Fire TV, a Chromebox, or a laptop in kiosk mode on the HDMI port. There is also a native Android TV app, downloaded as an APK from channelos.tv rather than from Google Play. There is no media player box to buy and no per-device licence. ## What goes on the screen - **The price board.** Services down the left, prices across, with a column per length or per stylist grade. Change a figure on your phone and the wall is right again in seconds. - **What each stylist does.** Who is in today, who takes walk-ins, who is fully booked. A board that answers the question before anyone has to ask the desk. - **Products and add-ons.** The retail shelf behind the chair, priced on the screen above it. Easier to change than the labels and easier to read from the chair. - **Quiet-hour offers.** A midweek offer that runs on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons only, placed on those hours and gone again without anybody taking it down. ## When ChannelOS is the wrong answer ChannelOS has no booking system and does not connect to one. It will not show live availability out of Fresha, Treatwell, Booksy or Square Appointments, it cannot take an appointment, and it does not know who is in the chair. If you want the screen to show real-time availability from your booking software, that is a reason to look at a salon-specific display product. ChannelOS is for the board on the wall: prices, services, who is working and what is on offer, changed by you, in under a minute, from your phone. ## Questions ### What is digital signage for a salon or barbershop? It means running your price board, service list and offers on a TV instead of a printed card or a chalkboard. In ChannelOS the board is a real editable show, so every service name and price is its own element, and the TV plays it from the browser already built into it. Putting a price up is an edit on your phone rather than a trip to a print shop. ### Can I really build the whole board on a phone? Yes. The editor has a proper phone build rather than a shrunken desktop one: the tool bar, the selection controls and the slide deck are all laid out for a thumb, and the AI assistant will draft the first version of the board from a sentence describing your services. The first real customer for this ran the whole thing from an Android phone, which is why the phone editor exists in the shape it does. ### Do I need to buy anything besides the TV? Usually not. If the TV is an Android TV, Google TV, webOS or Fire TV set it already has a browser, so you open the player URL on it and scan the code it shows with your phone. There is also a native Android TV app, downloaded as an APK from our own site rather than from Google Play. An older TV takes any cheap HDMI stick, and because it is a browser rather than a signage box there is no per-device licence on it. ### Does it show live availability from my booking system? No. ChannelOS has no integration with Fresha, Treatwell, Booksy, Square Appointments or any other booking platform, and it cannot take a booking. What goes on the board is what you put there, so the stylist availability on a screen is a line somebody typed that morning, not a live feed. ### Can I run an offer only on quiet afternoons? Yes. A show sits on a channel's timeline, so a midweek offer board can be placed on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons and the ordinary price board holds the rest of the week. Nobody has to put it up or take it down, and the weekly plan keeps running whether or not you are in the shop. ### How much does it cost for one screen? One screen is free forever, with no card needed. A free screen shows a ChannelOS banner that opens into a full ChannelOS slide roughly every two minutes, and any paid plan removes both. For a single-chair shop testing whether a screen beats a printed card, the free screen is a genuine answer rather than a trial. ## Related - [Price list maker](https://channelos.tv/tools/price-list-maker): Build the price board in your browser now, free, and download the PNG. No account. - [It should not take a weekend](https://channelos.tv/blog/digital-signage-shouldnt-take-a-weekend): Why most signage setups take days, and what the short version looks like. - [Free digital signage software](https://channelos.tv/free-digital-signage-software): What the free screen actually includes, and what it does not. - [Turn a TV into a sign](https://channelos.tv/blog/how-to-turn-your-tv-into-digital-signage): The whole thing, start to finish, on hardware you already own.