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Learn how to set up, publish, and optimize your HipDeck workspace.
May 5, 2026
A single HipDeck slide can contain multiple embed elements at the same time. Each embed is independently positioned and sized, which means you can arrange them freely across the slide canvas to build exactly the layout you need.
Think of embed elements as the atomic units of a slide’s visual composition. On their own, each embed displays one source — a webpage, a dashboard, a live feed, a Lottie animation. Together, they form a rich, multi-panel layout that can surface several data sources or content streams simultaneously, all within a single slide.
This approach gives you full control over what your audience sees and how information is organized on screen.
HipDeck supports any arrangement you can imagine, but a few patterns come up repeatedly because they work well across a wide range of use cases.
Place one embed element at 100% width and 100% height to fill the entire slide. This is the simplest layout and the most impactful when you want your audience focused on a single source — for example, a live sales dashboard, a company intranet page, or a looping video feed.
Use this pattern when the content itself is dense enough to fill the screen and doesn’t benefit from being paired with other sources.
Divide the slide into two panels side by side. Set each embed to approximately 50% width and 100% height. A common example: a live sales dashboard on the left and a Google Slides presentation on the right. This works well in team areas where you want to show both real-time metrics and static context at the same time.
You can also use a split-screen vertically — one embed on top, one on the bottom — if your content stacks better than it sits side by side.
Arrange four embeds in a 2×2 grid, each taking approximately 50% width and 50% height. This is ideal for operations dashboards or team displays where you need to monitor multiple data sources at once. For example:
Each panel is self-contained, so you can swap out any one source without affecting the others.
Reserve a strip at the top of the slide — roughly 15–20% of the total height — for a branded header containing your logo, a text message, or a static image. Fill the remaining 80–85% of the slide height with a large embed.
This pattern is useful for lobby displays or public-facing screens where you want to maintain brand presence while still showing live content below.
When sizing and positioning your embeds, keep these principles in mind:
If you’re building a layout that will run on multiple screen sizes, test at the smallest target resolution first — it’s easier to scale up than to fix a layout that’s already too tight.
You’re not limited to using the same type of embed across a layout. Mixing embed types is one of the most effective ways to add visual richness without adding complexity.
Here’s a concrete example: place a Lottie animation in the lower-right corner of the slide. Lottie animations are lightweight and looping, so they add motion and visual interest without demanding much from the viewer. Center a data dashboard as the focal point — this is the primary content your audience needs to read and act on. Add a Google Calendar embed on the left side for schedule context, so viewers can see upcoming events alongside the live data.
This three-element layout gives you motion, data, and context in a single slide. Each embed type serves a distinct purpose, and together they create a display that’s informative and visually engaging without feeling cluttered.
When combining embed types, assign each element a clear role: focal point, supporting context, or ambient visual. If two embeds are competing for the same role, reconsider whether both are necessary.
HipDeck’s playlist scheduling lets you control which slides appear at which times of day. You can use this to rotate between different layout slides depending on what’s most relevant to your audience at a given moment.
For example, you might set up three layout slides in a single playlist:
Each slide is a self-contained layout. When the schedule transitions from one slide to the next, the entire layout changes — not just one element. This means you can design each slide independently and optimize it for its specific time slot and audience.
To set this up, configure the schedule rules for each slide in your playlist settings. You can overlap time windows if you want certain slides to take priority during specific periods.
Every embed on a slide makes a network request and renders an external source. The more embeds you add, the more work HipDeck has to do to load and maintain the slide. Too many embeds on a single slide can slow rendering, cause load failures, or produce a blank panel where content should appear.
As a general rule, keep your embed count to 3–4 per slide. Not all embeds are equal in terms of load weight:
If you need more than four data sources on screen, consider whether some of them can be combined into a single embed (for example, a dashboard that already aggregates multiple metrics).
Also stagger your refresh intervals. If all your embeds refresh at the same time, you’ll get a spike in network activity and a momentary visual disruption as multiple panels reload simultaneously. Offset refresh times by 30–60 seconds between embeds to smooth out the load.
Before you deploy a layout slide to a live display, take the time to test it properly.
Preview at the target screen size. HipDeck’s preview mode lets you check your layout before it goes live. Make sure you’re previewing at the same resolution as your actual display — a layout that looks clean at 1080p may have alignment issues at 4K or on a non-standard aspect ratio.
Check that all embeds load correctly. Open the preview and wait for all panels to fully load. If any embed shows a blank panel or an error, investigate the source URL and permissions before deploying.
Watch for refresh cycle glitches. Let the preview run for a few minutes and observe what happens when embeds refresh. If you see flickering, blank frames, or layout shifts during a refresh, adjust the refresh interval or stagger the timing.
Test on the actual display hardware when possible. Network conditions, browser rendering, and hardware performance can all differ between your editing machine and the target display. Running a test on the real screen catches issues that preview mode won’t surface.
Verify scheduled transitions are smooth. If your layout slide is part of a scheduled playlist, confirm that the transition between slides happens cleanly at the configured time. Check both the outgoing and incoming slides to make sure neither gets stuck or partially loaded during the switch.
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