Fullscreen vs Kiosk Mode in Dashboards

After getting your dashboards configured as desired, you may want to view them 'full screen' without any of the navigation elements. For example, hiding the top navigation bar or the ... button in the bottom-right corner of the dashboard.

There are two popular ways to view dashboards full screen:

• While viewing a dashboard, tap the ... in the bottom-right corner, then tap Fullscreen
• Add ?kiosk=true to the end of the dashboard URL

Fullscreen vs Kiosk

While these methods seem very similar at first glance, there are some differences between them. When you tap the Fullscreen button in the ... menu it tells SharpTools to enter kiosk mode and tells your browser to go fullscreen.  What's the difference between these two things you might ask?

• Browser Fullscreen: hides the browser navigation buttons / URL input and makes the browser fill the screen.
  This is most noticeable on a desktop or laptop as the browser filling up the whole screen is significant visual change. On mobile devices, this is less noticeable and when you tap the [ ] fullscreen button you're likely noticing SharpTools going into kiosk mode
• SharpTools Kiosk (fullscreen): hides the navigational elements in SharpTools including the top navigation bar and the `...` in the bottom-right corner 

The primary thing that most people are looking for is to hide the SharpTools navigation elements, which can be accomplished by either tapping the Fullscreen button or adding `?kiosk=true` to the end of a dashboard URL. 

One of the key differences is that when you tap the Fullscreen button, it tells the browser and SharpTools to hide the navigational elements, but if you exit out of fullscreen in your browser or the browser page reloads, then SharpTools will also exit out of kiosk mode. 

When you use the ?kiosk=true parameter, anytime your browser opens that page it will automatically put SharpTools into Kiosk Mode which will hide the navigational elements. Even if the browser page reloads -- for example you're using an app like 'Fully Kiosk Browser' which can autoreload or recover from a crash, then the URL parameter will automatically put your dashboard back into kiosk mode and hide the navigational elements. 

How to Add Kiosk URL Parameter

To add the kiosk mode parameter, you'll want to open your dashboard in your browser normally and copy the URL, then append `?kiosk=true` to the end of it.

For example, when you navigate to a dashboard, the URL in your browser should look like like the following (where `XXXXXXXXX` is your dashboard ID):

https://sharptools.io/dashboard/view/XXXXXXXXXX

And when you add `?kiosk=true` to the end, it should look like:

https://sharptools.io/dashboard/view/XXXXXXXXXX?kiosk=true

You can use this special URL in special kiosk apps like 'Fully Kiosk Browser' or when using the Add to Homescreen approach to add your dashboard to your mobile device's homescreen like an app.