Table of contents
What are Playlists?
Playlists are the core concept behind every piece of content you publish with Fugo.
A playlist bundles together three things:
what to show (your content),
where to show it (your screens), and
when to show it (an optional schedule)
Publish a playlist, and Fugo takes care of getting the right content to the right screens at the right time - no manual pushes required.
👇 Before you get started
You don't need a screen paired to create a playlist, but you do need at least one paired screen to publish one. If you haven't paired a screen yet, check our hardware setup guides, or start a free 14-day trial to explore the CMS first.
How playlists work
Every playlist is built from the same ingredients, which map to the four steps of the playlist editor: Content, Screens, Schedule, and Preview.
A few ground rules are worth knowing up front:
There's no limit to how many playlists you can create, or how many playlists can be published to a single screen at once. You don't need a single "master playlist" per screen - you can run multiple playlists with different content, schedules, and screen assignments simultaneously, and Fugo resolves how they play together automatically.
If more than one unscheduled playlist is published to the same screen, they play in the order they were created (oldest first). A scheduled playlist takes priority over an unscheduled one whenever they overlap, and if two scheduled playlists overlap each other, the one created first takes priority.
A playlist must have at least one content item and at least one screen assigned (or a property condition matching at least one screen) before it can be published. Saving a playlist without publishing keeps it as a draft; publishing pushes it live to your screens immediately.
💡 Tip on multiple playlists: Fugo intentionally keeps the model as one playlist = one schedule, rather than letting you stack multiple recurrence rules on a single playlist.
If you need something like "weekday office hours, plus a monthly all-hands overlay," build that as two separate playlists rather than one complex one.
This keeps every playlist easy to reason about at a glance, and lines up with Fugo's calendar-style Planner view, which represents each playlist as a single event.
The Playlists page
From the left-hand navigation, go to Playlists to open your playlist library - a card grid showing every playlist your team has created.
Each card displays the playlist's name, total duration, number of assigned screens, and a status badge, so you can scan your whole library at a glance.
Filtering, sorting & grouping
Use the toolbar above the grid to find and organize your playlists:
Search - type to filter the grid by playlist name.
Filter - narrow the grid to All playlists, Published, Draft, Expired, No content, or No screens.
Sort - order by Name, Date, or Status, ascending or descending.
Group by - organize the grid into sections by Status, Screens, Content, or None.
Playlist statuses explained
Every playlist card carries a status badge that tells you exactly where it stands:
Published
The playlist is live - either actively playing on its assigned screens right now, or scheduled to play at a future date/time and currently queued up waiting for that window to start. Both cases currently show the same "Published" badge.
Unpublished
The playlist is live, but you've made changes since the last publish that haven't gone out yet. Your screens are still showing the previously published version until you save and publish again.
Draft
The playlist has never been published, or was unpublished manually. It isn't playing on any screens.
Expired
The playlist's end date has passed. It has automatically stopped playing on every screen it was assigned to.
You can also filter the Playlists page down to No content (playlists with no content items added yet) or No screens (playlists with no screens or matching property assigned) to quickly find and fix playlists that can't currently be published.
A live playlist whose end date falls within the next 3 days is also flagged as Expiring soon, so you have time to extend it if needed.
The playlist info panel
Click any playlist card to open its info panel on the right-hand side of the screen, without leaving the Playlists page. The panel gives you a full summary before you commit to opening the editor:
Preview - a thumbnail grid of the playlist's content.
Screens - the screens this playlist reaches, broken out as manually-assigned screens versus screens matched by property.
Properties - shown only when the playlist targets screens by property, listing which property and values are used.
Content - every content item in the playlist, with type badges and durations.
Schedule - a plain-language summary of the playlist's active schedule (for example, "Every 2 weeks on Monday and Wednesday, 9am-5pm").
Details - status badge, total duration, and created/last updated timestamps.
From the info panel, you can also Edit (open the full editor), Publish or Unpublish (toggle the playlist live or offline without opening the editor), Duplicate (create a copy), or Delete (permanently remove the playlist, with a confirmation prompt).
Bulk actions
Select multiple playlists using the checkboxes on their cards to act on them together.
A bulk action bar appears at the bottom of the screen showing how many playlists are selected, along with Publish (if not all selected are already published), Unpublish (if not all selected are already unpublished), Duplicate, and Delete.
Publishing or unpublishing in bulk shows a confirmation dialog stating exactly how many playlists will be affected and warning that screens will start or stop playing immediately:
Viewing playlists in the Planner (Beta)
Want a calendar-style view of everything scheduled across your account instead of scanning the Playlists grid card by card? Navigate to the Planner tab.
The Planner (currently in Beta) plots every playlist onto a Calendar or Timeline view, so you can see what's running where at a glance. It's read-only for now. To make changes to a playlist, open it from the Playlists page as usual.
See our Planner Overview guide for the full walkthrough.
Creating and publishing a playlist
Click Create Playlist from the Playlists page to open the playlist editor - a four-step guided flow.
Give your playlist a name in the title field, then you'll work through Content, Screens, Schedule, and Preview using the Back and Next buttons (or the step indicators) to move between them. We'll cover each step in detail below.
Step 1: Add your content
The Content step is where you choose what will play.
A dropdown at the top of the content browser switches between four sources:
Media (images and videos from your Fugo media library)
Dashboards (any TV Dashboards you've connected)
Apps (Fugo's app integrations, like weather, social feeds, or data boards
Studio (designs you've built in the Design Studio).
Browse using the search bar, the type filter, and sort:
Click an item to stage it, or use the checkboxes to stage several at once - staged items show an "Add N items" bar at the bottom, letting you review your selection before committing it to the playlist:
Your added items then appear in a running list where you can drag to reorder them, remove one with the ✕, or clear the whole list and start over:
Click on any item's setting (cog) icon to open its configuration settings:
Some content types need extra configuration beyond duration - apps, for instance, often require you to connect an account or choose what to display before they're ready to add:
Every item (except video, whose length is fixed) has an editable Duration, controlling how long it displays before the playlist advances to the next item. Duration only matters when your screen is cycling through multiple items - a single continuously-updating item, like a live dashboard or a self-refreshing app, ignores duration and simply refreshes on its own interval instead.
Step 2: Assign your screens
The Screens step is where you choose which screens will play this playlist.
You'll choose between two targeting modes, shown as tabs:
By Screen
Assign individual screens or legacy screen groups. Browse your screens in a searchable, filterable, sortable table, and add them individually or several at a time using the checkboxes and Add selected:
Your added screens then appear in a running list where you can remove one with the ✕ on its card, or clear the whole list and start over:
☝️ Screen groups are a holdover from the legacy CMS - if you didn't have any set up there, you won't see any groups available here, and there's currently no way to create new ones in Fugo CMS 2.0. For similar bulk-targeting power going forward, use By Property instead.
By Property
Target every screen that matches a property value you define (for example, location = London or type = kiosk) instead of assigning screens one at a time.
This is the most powerful targeting option for large or growing networks: any screen that matches the property today receives the playlist, and any screen added to your network later with the same property value starts receiving it automatically, with zero manual work on your part.
Select your property from the dropdown, then choose the values you want to match.
Your matching screens then appear in a running list:
If nothing currently matches your chosen property and values, Fugo lets you publish anyway - the playlist goes live "on standby" and starts playing automatically the moment a matching screen appears on your account.
Learn how to create custom screen properties in our Screens Overview guide.
Step 3: Set a schedule
The Schedule step controls when your playlist plays.
Choose one of three modes:
Always on
The playlist starts on a date you choose and keeps playing indefinitely, with no end date. This is the default if you don't configure anything else.
One-off block
The playlist plays continuously between a start date and an end date you set. Once the end date passes, the playlist's status automatically changes to Expired and it stops playing everywhere it was assigned.
Recurring
Set up a repeating schedule using a frequency and, optionally, one or more specific time windows for the days it runs:
Start date
Use the Starts on date picker to set the day your playlist should start. This date does double duty: it's both when the recurrence begins and the anchor date your repeat interval counts from - more on that below
Time windows
Use the Play at these times inputs to add one or more start/end time windows for the days your recurrence covers, using + Add time window for more than one per day. Overnight windows (for example, 10pm-6am) are supported.
Repeat frequency
Use the Repeat dropdown to choose Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly, plus an interval - for example, choosing Weekly with an interval of 2 gives you a true biweekly schedule.
Your Starts on date is the anchor every interval counts from, so it's worth setting deliberately rather than leaving it on today's date by default. For example, if Starts on is set to July 14 and you choose Monthly with a repeat interval of 1, your playlist runs "on the 14th of each month" - the 14th because that's the day of your start date, not anything else you configured.
Switch that same setup to Yearly, and it becomes "on July 14 each year." If you want the recurrence anchored to a different day - say, a monthly playlist that should always land on the 1st instead of the 14th - change the Starts on date itself rather than looking for that option anywhere else in the Repeat section.
The same logic applies to weekly patterns: if you're after "every other Friday," make sure Starts on actually falls on a Friday, since that's the day Fugo counts the interval from.
Weekly patterns let you pick specific days of the week (Mon–Sun).
Monthly and Yearly patterns don't have their own day selector - they repeat on whatever day (and, for Yearly, month) your Starts on date falls on, shown as a plain-language summary like "On the 1st of each month" or "On July 14 each year." If you need the recurrence to land on a different day, change the Starts on date rather than looking for a separate day-of-month control.
End condition
Choose whether the recurrence runs forever, by ticking the box for No end date, or until a specific date, using the Ends on date picker.
💡 Tip: If you're updating an older playlist that used the previous weekly-schedule format, opening its Schedule step converts it automatically to the format above.
Since the conversion combines every day you'd selected with every time window you'd set, it's worth reviewing the converted schedule before saving if your original schedule mixed different days with different time windows.
Step 4: Preview & publish
The Preview step gives you a read-only summary of your complete playlist - content, screens, and schedule - before you commit.
From here, use Save to store your work as a draft without going live, Save and Publish to save and push live, or Reset to clear everything you've configured in the editor:
Once saved or published, your playlist appears as a card in the Playlists library. You can edit it or remove it any time by clicking on its card to open its info panel:
Fallback playlists
A Fallback playlist is a special playlist type for content you want playing on every screen in your account whenever nothing else is scheduled to take priority - think of it as your network's default, always-there safety net.
Find it in the Fallback tab of the navigation panel under Playlists.
Fallback playlists skip the Screens and Schedule steps entirely, since they always apply to every screen the moment they're active - you'll only see Content and Preview in the editor:
Their status is simply Active or Draft, rather than the Published/Unpublished/Draft/Expired statuses used by regular playlists.
Only one Fallback playlist can be active across your whole account at a time. Activating a new one automatically deactivates whichever Fallback playlist was previously active. The deactivated one will be listed as a draft once you set a new one:
Because of this, bulk actions for Fallback playlists are limited to Duplicate and Delete - there's no bulk publish/unpublish, since only one can ever be live.
Need more help?
If you run into any issues or have questions about playlists, our support team is here to help. Use the chat bubble in the bottom right corner of the CMS, or reach out to us at support@fugo.ai.





































