Background When Blanking Guest Monitor

Mike B

7 months ago
updated 3 weeks ago
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We use ScreenConnect to remotely access and resolve issues with our remote Point of Sale kiosks. Previously, we had a custom JPG image displayed when blanking a guest monitor that informed customers: “A Technician is Remotely Working on This Kiosk. Please Don't Touch or Power Off” This was critical for preventing customers from interacting with the kiosk, which could cancel our work or, worse, trigger an unexpected reboot.

We also relied on the “Block Guest Input” feature; however, this didn’t fully prevent interaction, since the kiosk still allowed products to be scanned while in that mode—which effectively acted as pressing the Enter key. So, having the custom background informed them that someone was remotely working on it; which helped stop them from repeatedly scanning the product.

Since the option to customize this screen was removed and replaced with a generic ScreenConnect background, we’ve experienced a significant increase in customers powering off or rebooting kiosks while we are working. This behavior can result in corruption of Windows, databases, or other critical software. Customers often don’t understand what the current ScreenConnect background means, so their instinct is to reboot.

With our custom background, it was very clear why the Point of Sale kiosk was not displaying its normal screen and customers knew a technician was working on resolving an issue with it.

For these reasons, we strongly request that you reinstate the ability to set a custom background image when blanking the guest monitor.

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Sean White Team Member

6 months ago

Mike,
Thanks for providing your use case. Would a solution that allows the ScreenConnect Administrator to choose from a list of messages to display be an acceptable solution?
For example, we could potentially provide a resource with a few options like

Device Under Maintenance – Please Do Not Touch or Power Off
Technical Work in Progress – Kindly Leave This Device On
Technician at Work – Please Avoid Powering Off or Handling
System Maintenance Ongoing – Do Not Interact With This Device

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Quote from Sean White

Sean,

Yes. Each of the suggestions you listed would be very helpful and appreciated.

Thank you.

4 months ago

I have not yet seen any options made available for this. Is this being worked on?

Thank you.

Hi Mike,
Yes, this is under development now. I am aiming for it to be in a release in early Q1 2026.

3 weeks ago

Hello Sean,

I am still not seeing any options available for this. It has been over 6 months.

I hate to pile on this; however, now when I use the blank screen function to blank the host POS, my session also switches to the "ScreenConnect" background image (which is what I wanted to be able to replace in the first place) such that I am unable to remotely view to control the host POS when it is in Blank Guest Monitor mode. When blanking the guest monitor, why is it also "blanking" my session by putting the "ScreenConnect" background on my session?

Also, the banner is no longer movable. It sits there in the top-middle of my screen blocking my view of what is behind it. Locking it in place is, to put it bluntly, stupid. Although the box is "see-though", the letters that say, "Your computer is being controlled by.." make it difficult to read behind it or to click on or close tabs in Edge, Chrome, or any other browser that is open behind it.

We use ScreenConnect to manage Point Of Sale kiosks that run on a Windows platform. We need to be able to block customers from being able to see what we are doing and to prevent them from touching the screen that cancels operations that we are running. Additionally, we need to be able to open and use many different apps on the screen.

So, screen blanking and input blocking are extremely important. Having a background screen that they see on the screen at the POS that says something other than "ScreenConnect" is also extremely important. Being able to have a screen that says something like "A technician is remotely working on this terminal. Please do not touch screen" helped prevent people from touching the screen and cancelling operations that could corrupt databases and other files.

Ever since your company made the security update changes last year, we have had several POS that have been corrupted and required many hours of repair due to customers touching the screens while we or our vendor was performing routine remote maintenance on the systems.

Please help make this app more usable for us.

Thank you,

Mike