Turn an old tablet into a wall calendar
The whole point of Daily Mantel is that you don’t buy a $300 appliance. Here’s how to get the same thing out of a tablet that’s currently in a drawer.
- 1
Find a tablet
Anything with a modern browser works. An iPad from 2018, a Fire tablet, a cheap Android — a screen you already stopped using is the ideal candidate. 10 inches is comfortable; larger is lovely.
- 2
Sign in once, in the tablet's browser
Open Daily Mantel, sign in with your household email and password, and pick a profile. The session lasts a year and renews itself every time the tablet is used, so a wall display should never log itself out.
- 3
Add it to the home screen
On iPad: Share → Add to Home Screen. On Android Chrome: ⋮ → Add to Home screen. Launching from that icon opens fullscreen with no browser chrome — it stops looking like a website and starts looking like an appliance.
- 4
Turn on wall mode
Visit /hub?wall=1 once on that device. Wall mode brings the on-screen keyboard for signing in, the idle return-home behaviour, and the photo screensaver. /hub?wall=0 turns it back off. It's per device, so your phone stays normal.
- 5
Stop the screen sleeping
iPad: Settings → Display & Brightness → Auto-Lock → Never. Android: Settings → Display → Screen timeout → longest, and switch on the screensaver/daydream while charging. Keep it plugged in — a wall tablet lives on the charger.
- 6
Lock it to one app (optional)
iPad Guided Access (Settings → Accessibility → Guided Access) pins the tablet to the hub so a small visitor can't wander into Safari. Triple-click the side button to start and stop it. Android has Screen Pinning in Settings → Security.
- 7
Put it on the wall
A tablet wall mount with a cable channel is the tidy answer — the generic ones run $20–$40 and most take a 10-inch tablet. Command strips work for a light tablet if you'd rather not drill. Mount it at adult eye level near where everyone drops their bags, and run the charger down to the nearest outlet. We don't sell mounts and we get nothing if you buy one.
A few things worth knowing
- The hub refreshes itself every ~30 seconds, so an event added from a phone shows up on the wall without anyone touching it.
- Night mode dims the display to a warm ember palette during the hours you set in Settings, so it isn’t a lightbulb at 2am.
- After a few idle minutes the photo screensaver takes over with the clock and tomorrow’s first thing. Any tap wakes it.
- It needs a connection. A wall tablet on home wifi is the case it’s built for; there is no meaningful offline mode.