Features

Everything Displaying Art can show, and everything it can do with it.

Art sources

• DeviantArt — Daily Deviations, curated picks, and any tag, all without signing in. Sign in with DeviantArt (optional) to show your own favourites and the artists you watch. Following a specific artist's full gallery, a gallery folder, or a collection folder is part of Pro.
• Bluesky — image posts from any account, by handle.
• RSS and Atom feeds — ArtStation, Mastodon, Tumblr, blogs, portfolio sites, or any other feed that includes images.
• A folder on your device — one folder is free; more than one is part of Pro. Works in Chromium-based browsers that support folder access — Chrome and Edge on a computer, and Chrome on Android.
• A displayingart.json manifest — a plain list of image URLs you host yourself, anywhere. See the format and a sample.
• Your Displaying Art favourites — anything you've saved with the heart button, from any of the sources above, in one rotation.

Your own gallery: displayingart.json

Put your images on any host that serves files over HTTPS, such as GitHub Pages, Netlify, a NAS or your own server. Add one JSON file that lists them, then paste that file's address into Settings → Source → Self-hosted / manifest URL.

Start from a working example rather than writing one from scratch: a displayingart.json and three sample images, ready to download, edit and re-upload as your own.

• displayingart.json
• sample-1.jpg, sample-2.jpg, sample-3.jpg — placeholder images; replace them with your own art and update the file names in the JSON to match.

You can also try it immediately, before downloading anything: paste https://displayingart.com/examples/displayingart-sample/displayingart.json into Settings → Source → Self-hosted / manifest URL right now to see this exact example play.

What that file looks like:

{
  "artist": "Your Name",
  "items": [
    { "image": "sample-1.jpg", "title": "Sunset over the lake" },
    { "image": "sample-2.jpg", "title": "Harbour at dawn",
      "url": "https://displayingart.com/features.html#manifest" },
    { "image": "sample-3.jpg", "title": "A guest piece", "artist": "A Guest Artist" }
  ]
}

• image (required) — the picture. A relative path like sample-1.jpg is read from the same place as the JSON file, so a folder of images plus one displayingart.json is a complete gallery — nested paths like paintings/harbour-at-dawn.png work too. Full https:// addresses work as well.
• title — shown on the label. Leave it out and the label says “Untitled”.
• artist — the artist for one piece. The top-level "artist" is the default for every piece that doesn't name its own.
• url — where the label's link and QR code point, such as the piece's page on your site. Leave it out and they point at the image itself.
• mature, ai — set to true to flag a piece as mature or AI-generated, so the matching filters can hide it.

The file can also be just the list: a bare array of items, without the "artist" and "items" wrapper.

Your host has to let other sites read the JSON file, by sending an Access-Control-Allow-Origin header (often called CORS). The images themselves don't need it.

• GitHub Pages sends it by default; nothing to do.
• Netlify doesn't. Add a file named _headers to your site's published folder containing:

  /displayingart.json
    Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

  If the JSON file isn't at the top of your site, use its path instead, such as /gallery/displayingart.json.
• nginx: add add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *; to the location that serves the file.

The slideshow

Each piece fills the screen on a dark gallery wall. A museum-style label shows its title, the artist, and — when the source provides it — the medium and resolution, plus a link and a scannable QR code back to where it was published. Set the pace with a speed control, turn on shuffle, and choose whether tapping the artwork pauses and resumes it. Keep-awake stops the screen from sleeping while it plays.

Favourites

Tap the heart on any piece, from any source, to save it to your Displaying Art favourites — your art shelf that then works as a source of its own. Free accounts keep favourites on that one device; with Pro, favourites sync across every device you're signed into.

Filters

Mature-rated content is hidden by default. A separate toggle hides pieces DeviantArt flags as AI-generated, based on the artist's own label. Bluesky posters label their own mature content; RSS feeds carry no ratings at all, so for your added sources the feeds and accounts you choose are the filter.

Displaying Art Pro

Pro is a one-time purchase, not a subscription, that unlocks:

• Playlists — save several sources, for example a tag, a Bluesky account and an RSS feed, and mix them into one rotation.
• Label Studio — pick any Google Font for the label, and tune its highlight color, opacity, size and position.
• A specific artist's full DeviantArt galleries, gallery folders, and collections.
• More than one local folder at a time.
• Ambient display — a slow gallery-style crossfade, an on-screen clock, and a sleep schedule that fades the screen to black overnight. Built especially for a TV left on as a display.
• Sync — your settings, playlists and favourites follow you to every device you sign in on.

More about Pro →

Open Displaying Art