Reference

User guide

Everything under every tab, in the same order you'll find it in the app. Pick a tab below.

Reflects app version 1.56.0 · Piazza HQ updates this page roughly every major (1.x) release — if something here doesn't match what you're seeing, your app may be a version or two behind, or ahead.

Two sub-tabs: your calendar subscriptions, and every event those subscriptions bring in.

📡 Calendar Feeds

Sub-tab · left of Events

Add any calendar that publishes a standard iCal/ICS link — Google Calendar, iCloud, Outlook, most booking or scheduling tools. Each feed gets a name and a color, which shows up on every event it brings in across every widget and profile.

  • Add a feed by pasting its ICS URL — most calendar apps have a "secret address" or "public URL" for this under their sharing settings.
  • Rename or recolor a feed anytime; existing events update automatically.
  • Remove a feed to stop syncing it — this doesn't delete anything on the original calendar, just stops pulling from it here.

🗓️ Events

Sub-tab

Every event from every feed, in one browsable list, automatically scrolled to today when you open it. Useful for a quick "what's coming up" check without needing to look at the wall display.

The photo library any Photo widget or ambient mode draws from.

🖼️ Your Photos

Upload photos here once; use them anywhere — a Photo widget on any profile, or a screen's Ambient Mode (see Devices → Screen Settings) when it's otherwise idle.

  • Tags let you group photos (e.g. "vacation," "kids") so a specific widget or ambient mode can be scoped to just that group instead of your whole library.
  • Bulk-tag mode lets you select many photos at once and tag them together, rather than one at a time.
  • Deleting a photo removes it everywhere it was being used.

Four sub-tabs: the actual drag-and-drop editor, plus the tooling around it — profiles, templates, and your own saved presets. Everything the Editor sub-tab does can also be done directly on the wall display itself — see Live Editing below.

🎛️ Editor

Sub-tab · default

Pick which profile you're editing and which orientation (landscape/portrait) at the top, then drag widgets around a live-scaled canvas. Tap a widget to select it, drag its edges to resize, drag its body to move it.

  • Add a widget from the palette below the canvas — clock, weather, calendar, photos, chores, and more.
  • The layer list shows every widget on this layout by name. Selecting a widget there (or on the canvas) reveals an expand button (grows it 10% per tap, centered in place) and a delete button — handy when a widget's gotten too small on the canvas to grab directly.
  • Fine-tune position and Live Preview both reflect whichever orientation you're currently editing — if a screen is physically rotated 90°, make sure you're editing the matching orientation, not just picking based on the screen's usual landscape/portrait shape.
  • Save as Preset stores the current layout in Saved Layouts for reuse elsewhere.

✏️ Live Editing on the wall display itself

No app, no phone — right on the screen

Everything the Editor above does from your phone, you can also do by walking up to the actual wall display and touching it directly — the display isn't just something you point a phone's browser at from across the room, it's fully editable in person.

  • Tap anywhere on empty screen space — a small ✏️ icon appears briefly in the corner. Tap it to turn on Live Editing.
  • Tap a widget to select it: drag its corner handles to resize, drag its body to move it, or open its settings to change a title, font size, and — for Calendar and Weather widgets — a fuller set of options, right there on the panel.
  • The ➕ button adds a brand-new widget: pick a type from the same full palette the app offers, then tap wherever on the screen you want it placed.
  • Tap Done when you're finished. Every change saves immediately and shows up in the app's own Editor too — it's the same underlying layout, edited from whichever side is more convenient in the moment.
When this doesn't show up: Live Editing is intentionally unavailable on a link opened specifically to preview a display (the app's own "Open in New Tab" buttons for previewing) — that's on purpose, so a quick preview can't accidentally overwrite the real layout. Reach the display through its own address (Settings → Displays → Profiles has a direct link and Copy URL button for exactly this) to edit it for real.

🖼️ Profiles

Sub-tab

A profile is a complete, independent widget layout. Most households only need one, but you might want a second for a different room, or a simplified one for a guest bedroom.

  • Add, rename, duplicate, or delete a profile here. Swipe a profile left to delete, right to duplicate.
  • Force Orientation and Rotate View default to "Use Screen Settings" — meaning this profile defers to whatever the assigned screen itself is configured for (see Devices). Override either one here only if this specific profile needs to differ from its screen's own setting.

🎨 Templates

Sub-tab

Pre-built starting points — a theme plus a sensible widget arrangement, ready to use. Applying one always creates a new profile; it never touches or overwrites an existing one.

💾 Saved Layouts

Sub-tab

Your own presets, saved from the Editor's "Save as Preset" button. Apply one to an existing profile or use it to start a new one.

The physical screens themselves, and per-screen hardware settings — separate from Layout, which is about what shows on a screen rather than the screen itself.

🖥️ Screens

Every screen that's checked in appears here automatically — nothing to manually add. Assign each one a Profile from Layout and it switches instantly, no reboot needed.

You can also edit right at the screen. Walk up to any wall display and tap it — a small ✏️ icon appears to turn on Live Editing, letting you move, resize, and add widgets directly, no phone required. See Layout → Live Editing for the full rundown.

⚙️ Screen Settings

Expand a screen's card to reach three collapsible sub-sections:

  • Display — this screen's own orientation, rotation, and theme, used whenever an assigned profile is set to "Use Screen Settings" rather than overriding these itself.
  • Ambient Mode — a photo slideshow this screen falls back to when otherwise idle, drawing from Your Photos (optionally scoped by tag).
  • TV Control — network power on/off for a compatible TV (e.g. Samsung), plus scheduling.

Kid and chore management for the household — also reachable, in a simplified check-off form, from a kid's own tablet or the Family Hub.

✅ Today's Chores

Everyone's chores for today in one place, with a reassign option for anything not yet done — useful when plans change and a different kid needs to pick something up.

🧒 Kids

Add, edit, or remove a kid profile: name, avatar, color, and how their own chore list displays (pictures, words, or both — useful for pre-readers). Allowance is optional, either a flat weekly amount or per-completed-chore, with an optional savings goal.

🧹 Chores

Define what needs doing: title, icon, who it's assigned to (a specific kid, or "Everyone"), how often (daily, certain days of the week, or once), optional pay, whether a photo is required to mark it done, and whether it's a bonus chore — a shared pool anyone can claim, rather than assigned to one person.

Kids' own tablets use a separate, simplified page (just their name, avatar, and today's chores to tap through) rather than this full management view — set that up once per tablet and it remembers which kid it belongs to.

Built-in to-do lists — a fully local alternative to the Todoist-backed Tasks widget, if you'd rather not use a third-party service.

📝 Lists

Create as many named lists as you want, add items, check them off. Also reachable from the Family Hub if you'd rather manage it from your phone without opening the full app.

One shared shopping list for the household.

🛒 List

Add items, check them off as you shop. Each item gets a Buy link to your preferred store (Walmart, Target, Kroger, or Amazon — set your default in Settings) as a shortcut, not an automatic order.

Grouped into a handful of top-level sections rather than one long list — most groups start collapsed, so open whichever you need.

🏠 General

The basics: household or team name, location, and app PIN.

✨ Features & Family Hub

Turn Chores, built-in To-Do, and Shopping on or off — whichever are on also show up in the Family Hub (see that tab below). A QR code and link here get the Hub installed on a phone in a few taps.

🖥️ Display & Appearance (group)

Display — general on-screen behavior. Photo Widget Defaults — starting brightness/opacity/etc. any Photo widget or Ambient Mode uses unless overridden. Custom Theme — build your own background + drifting decorations, selectable as a theme on any profile.

🔌 Data Sources (group)

Weather, Travel Time, News, Stocks, Todoist, and Home Assistant — everything that pulls in from outside the app. Home Assistant connects to a server you already run yourself (a URL and access token, both used only by this app's own server — never sent to the display or your phone) and powers the Entity Status widget below in Layout.

🔒 Security

PIN and related access controls for the app itself.

⚙︎ Advanced (group)

  • Calendar Sync — how often feeds refresh.
  • Version & License — current app version, your license key, what type of license you're on (trial or active) and when it expires, and a link back here to activate or manage it.
  • Multi-Device — run more than one screen from a single set of calendars/photos: one host (source of truth), other screens mirror it.
  • Daily Briefing — an optional daily email summary.
  • Feedback & Ideas — send a bug report or feature idea directly; replies show up right here.
  • Backup — download a complete backup (every event, layout, chore, photo, and setting), and restore one — from this device or another Piazza HQ install — right from this same section.

Not a tab in the main app — a separate, installable page for whichever of Chores/To-Do/Shopping you've turned on, without opening the full calendar app. Reach it via the QR code in Settings → Features & Family Hub, or at /hub on your device's address.

🏠 What's there

  • Whichever of Chores, To-Do, and Shopping are enabled show up as their own tabs — anything switched off in the full app's Settings is hidden here too.
  • Chores here is a full parent-management view (add/edit kids and chores, reassign today's chores) — the same capability as the main app's Chores tab, not the simplified kid check-off page.
  • A settings gear in the Hub itself lets you turn any of the three on or off directly — the same shared setting either way, so it's reflected back in the full app automatically.
  • Install it to a phone's home screen for a real app icon and full-screen launch, no browser chrome.