Mac digital signage.
A Mac mini or a MacBook with Apple Silicon, connected to a TV, running the CastWize player full screen.
A quiet, powerful player for studios, showrooms and offices
A Mac mini is small, silent and fast, which makes it a good signage player for places where looks and reliability matter: a design studio's reception, a showroom, a boardroom screen. If your team works on Macs, an older Apple Silicon machine can also be given a second life behind a TV.
The CastWize player for macOS comes as a .dmg. Drag it into Applications, open it, and it shows a pairing code. After pairing it runs in a full-screen kiosk window, starts itself at login, and a watchdog relaunches it if it hangs. The content and schedule are managed in CastWize Studio, from any browser.
Because every CastWize player uses the same rendering engine, a layout you build looks the same on the Mac as on an Android TV or a Raspberry Pi, so you can mix hardware across locations.
Who a Mac player suits
Mac-based teams
Agencies, studios and offices that already buy and manage Macs.
Showrooms and receptions
A silent Mac mini handles high-quality video and multi-zone layouts smoothly.
Spare Apple Silicon machines
An M1 MacBook Air with a worn battery still makes a perfectly good player when plugged into a TV.
How to set up a Mac as a signage player
- 1
Download and install
Get the macOS player from the CastWize support page, open the .dmg and drag CastWize Player into Applications.
- 2
Open it the first time
The app isn't notarized by Apple yet, so Gatekeeper says it's from an unidentified developer. Right-click the app, choose Open, then confirm. You only do this once.
- 3
Note the pairing code
The player opens full screen with a 6-character pairing code, valid for 15 minutes.
- 4
Add the screen in Studio
In CastWize Studio, go to Screens → Add screen and enter the code. The Mac comes online and plays whatever you assign.
- 5
Set the Mac up for unattended running
In System Settings, stop the display from sleeping and turn on automatic login. The player starts itself at login, so after a restart the screen returns to your playlist.
What the Mac player does
- Full-screen kiosk window
- No menu bar or Dock on show, just your content.
- Starts at login
- The player adds a login item for itself on its first run.
- Watchdog relaunch
- A separate process restarts the player if it stops responding.
- Keeps playing through internet drops
- Media is cached locally (500 MB, checksum-verified), so a short outage doesn't blank the screen.
- Remote screenshots
- See what the Mac is showing from Studio.
- The full canvas
- Multi-zone layouts, images, video, text, web pages, live streams and widgets.
Requirements and limits
- A Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or later) running macOS 12 or newer. There is no Intel Mac build yet.
- The app is not yet signed or notarized by Apple, so the first launch needs right-click → Open.
- Updates on the Mac are manual for now: download the new version from the support page when one is released.
- One player drives one screen, and video plays muted.
- After a restart with no internet connection, the player needs to reconnect before it plays again.
The player doesn't change the Mac's energy settings, so set the display never to sleep, otherwise the screen goes dark at the timeout.
Pricing
One flat plan: $5 per screen per month, every feature and every player included, no tiers and no contract. Your first screen is free for 30 days with no credit card. See the pricing page for the calculator.
Mac: FAQs
Read next
Ready to put your first screen up?
$5/screen/month, first screen free for 30 days, no credit card required.