15 Jun 2026

Make an Android tablet play one video forever

android kioskgrid

I am building a new project called KioskGrid.

The idea is simple. Take an Android tablet. Put it in one place. Make it show one thing. Manage it from a browser.

One small use case is an endless video looper.

This is useful for a small shop display, a waiting room, a booth, a product demo, a simple menu screen, or any place where a normal tablet is too easy to mess with.

You do not want someone to press Home. You do not want YouTube suggestions. You do not want the video paused on frame 17 for the rest of the day.

You want the tablet to show the video. Fullscreen. Again and again.

That is what this post is about.

First, add the Android device

You need a KioskGrid account and an Android device that is either new or factory reset.

Open the KioskGrid console, then open Activate device.

The short version:

  1. Turn on the new or factory-reset Android device.
  2. On the first Android welcome screen, tap the screen 6 times in the same spot.
  3. Scan the QR code from the activation page.
  4. Finish the Android setup.
  5. When the device appears in KioskGrid, click Trust.

There is a more detailed activation guide here:

How to activate Android device

I will not repeat the whole thing here because the activation page already explains it better, with screenshots.

After this, the device should appear in the console sidebar.

Open the Kiosk tab

Select the device in the sidebar.

Then open the Kiosk tab.

This is where you decide what the tablet should show.

kioskgrid - kiosk tab

Turn on Enable Kiosk Mode.

For video, you have three useful options:

  1. Video URL
  2. YouTube
  3. Upload video

There is also Web page, which is useful for dashboards, forms, menus, and other web kiosks. But for this post we only care about video.

Option 1: Direct video URL

Use Video URL when the video is already hosted somewhere and you have a direct link to the file.

Something like this:

https://example.com/my-video.mp4

MP4 is usually the safest choice.

The URL should point directly to the video file. Not to a web page with a video player. Not to a file download page with many buttons around it.

Paste the URL, choose orientation if needed, then click Apply Settings.

The selected Android device should switch into kiosk mode and play the video fullscreen.

This is the simplest setup when you already have hosting for the video.

Option 2: YouTube

Use YouTube when the video is already on YouTube.

Paste a normal YouTube URL:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...

KioskGrid understands common YouTube links, including short links and embed links.

There are two useful checkboxes here:

Block touch controls

This prevents people at the device from pausing the video or opening YouTube controls.

Mute YouTube audio

This is enabled by default. It is not there because silence is fun. It is there because autoplay is usually more reliable when the video is muted.

kioskgrid - kiosk video youtube

Click Apply Settings.

The device should start showing the YouTube video in kiosk mode.

Option 3: Upload the video file

Use Upload video when you want KioskGrid to send the video file to the device.

This is nice when you do not want to host the video somewhere else.

Click Upload Video..., choose the file, then click Upload and Apply.

KioskGrid uploads the file and sends the kiosk command to the selected device.

For formats, MP4 is again the best bet.

The file picker also accepts common video formats such as M4V, WebM, 3GP, MKV, and MOV. Whether they play well depends on the Android device and its codecs.

kioskgrid - kiosk video upload

One practical detail: uploading a video file works for one selected device at a time. For many devices, use a direct video URL or configure them one by one.

Set the orientation

Below the content source there is an Orientation option.

You can leave it on Automatic, or force one of these:

  1. Portrait
  2. Landscape
  3. Reverse portrait
  4. Reverse landscape

This matters if the tablet is mounted on a wall, put into a stand, or installed behind a frame.

For a normal horizontal display, choose Landscape.

For a vertical poster-style screen, choose Portrait.

Optional: use kiosk as the home screen

There is also an Advanced section.

Inside it you can enable Use as device home screen.

This makes the kiosk experience behave more like the device home screen, when the target app version supports it. In practice, pressing Home should bring the user back to the kiosk instead of the normal Android launcher.

For a public device, this is usually what you want.

What the user can and cannot do

When kiosk mode is enabled, the device is locked to the selected content.

For a video looper, that means the tablet becomes more like a small dedicated screen than a normal Android tablet.

People standing near it should not be able to casually exit the video and start browsing around.

For YouTube, you can also block touch controls, which helps avoid the classic "someone tapped the screen and now it shows recommendations" problem.

A very boring checklist

This is usually the setup I would use:

  1. Activate the Android device.
  2. Select it in the KioskGrid console.
  3. Open Kiosk.
  4. Enable kiosk mode.
  5. Choose Upload video or Video URL.
  6. Use MP4 if possible.
  7. Set orientation.
  8. Enable Use as device home screen if this is a public device.
  9. Apply settings.
  10. Take a quick look at the tablet.

That is it.

The tablet should now play the video in a loop and stay on that screen.

Not glamorous. But useful.

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