Billbo and BillboTV: how the phone app and the TV app fit together

Two apps, one room. Create a saloon on your phone, then connect it to any screen - a TV box or a spare phone you mirror. Ten minutes, start to finish.

Two apps, two jobs

The most common point of confusion is the simplest one to clear up. Billbo and BillboTV are two separate apps in two separate stores, and you need both.

• Billbo is the phone app. Everyone uses it - you and every guest. It is where a saloon gets created, where the chat lives, where polls are answered and where the games are actually controlled.
• BillboTV is the screen app. Only the venue installs it. It runs on the TV in the room and shows the live chat, the running game, the poll results and the photo gallery. Nobody types on it. It has no keyboard to speak of and does not want one.

The phone is the controller. The screen is the table. A saloon with no screen is a group chat; a screen with no phones is a slideshow. Paired, they are a room.

What you need before you start

• An Android phone running Android 9 or later, with a Google account.
• A screen, and one of two things to drive it: an Android TV, Google TV or Fire TV Stick, or a spare phone or tablet running Android 11 or later that you mirror to the TV.
• Wi-Fi at the venue. Both devices need to be online.
• Ten minutes.

From nothing to a live saloon

1. 1

   Install Billbo on your phone

   Search Google Play for Billbo: Real-World Social and install it on the phone you carry. This is the app you and every guest use. Sign in with Google.

2. 2

   Create your saloon

   Tap Create a saloon and fill in the name, the @handle people search for, a short story, the venue address and a logo. Tap Next.

3. 3

   Choose how the screen looks

   The next step is the BillboTV setup: pick a layout, a clock, a marquee font, gallery motion and how much of the time the screen saver runs. Tap Create Saloon.

4. 4

   Install BillboTV on the screen

   BillboTV is not searchable in the TV's own Play Store yet. On an Android TV or Google TV, push it from a browser: open play.google.com on your phone or computer, sign in with the same Google account the TV uses, search for BillboTV, tap Install and pick the TV from the device list. No TV box, or a Fire TV Stick? Install BillboTV on a spare phone or tablet instead.

5. 5

   Pair the screen to your saloon

   Open BillboTV and choose Pair with phone. It shows a QR code. In Billbo on your phone, open the Scan tab and scan it. The screen wakes into your saloon.

6. 6

   Mirror the spare phone to the TV

   Only on the spare-phone path: once BillboTV is paired and showing the saloon, tap the cast button on the saloon screen and pick your TV from the system mirroring list.

7. 7

   Let the room scan in

   The screen now shows a QR code. Anyone who scans it with Billbo becomes a local and can chat, vote and play. People standing in the venue are recognised automatically.

Two ways to put BillboTV on a screen

This is the decision that trips people up, so it is worth being explicit. There are two supported hardware paths and they differ only in the last step.

Path A - a TV box or stick

If the venue has an Android TV or a Google TV, this is the setup to aim for. One honest caveat: BillboTV does not show up in the TV's own Play Store search yet, so you install it by pushing it from a browser instead. On your phone or computer, open play.google.com, sign in with the same Google account the TV uses, search for BillboTV and press Install - then pick the TV from the device list. The app lands on the TV by itself within a minute or two. Pair it once and you are done: the screen is dedicated, it stays on when you leave, and nobody needs to remember to plug anything in. (A Fire TV Stick has no Google Play - use Path B for it for now.)

Path B - a spare phone or tablet

If the venue has a TV but no TV box, you do not need to buy one. BillboTV also installs on a normal phone or tablet from the ordinary Play Store. Install it there, pair it to your saloon, and then use the cast button on the live saloon screen to mirror that device to the TV over the system's own screen-mirroring picker.

The order matters and it is not a preference. Install, then pair, then cast. The cast button lives inside the live saloon page, which does not exist until the app is paired to a saloon - so there is nothing to mirror before pairing. If you cast first, you will faithfully mirror the pairing screen onto the big TV, which is not what anyone wanted.

A mirrored phone should be left on a charger and face down somewhere safe. BillboTV keeps the screen awake on purpose while it is showing a saloon, so a dimming phone will not black out your TV mid-game.

Three ways to sign the screen in

BillboTV's start screen offers three doors, because TVs differ in what they can do:

• Google Sign In - the normal path when the device already has, or can add, a Google account.
• Pair with phone - the TV shows a QR code, you scan it from the Scan tab of the Billbo app, and your phone approves the link. Use this when the TV has no Google account and you would rather not add one.
• Sign in with email - a plain username and password form, for devices with no Google Play Services at all. A Fire TV Stick is the usual case.

All three land in the same place. Pairing is usually the fastest, because typing anything on a TV remote is a punishment.

How guests get in

Once the screen is live it displays a QR code. Anyone with the Billbo app who scans it becomes a local - which is the state that unlocks chatting, posting photos, voting in polls and accepting a game. People who are physically standing in the venue are recognised automatically by location and do not have to scan at all.

Everyone else is remote. They can see the saloon, but they cannot post, vote or play. That is deliberate: the whole point is that the room belongs to the people in it. The QR code is regenerated for each screen session, so it cannot be photographed once and reused forever.

If the screen is not showing your saloon

• The saloon is missing from the map. That is by design - Billbo lists a saloon only while its screen is actually online. Turn the screen on and it comes back.
• The TV sits on the “no saloon” screen. The account signed in on the TV does not own a saloon. Check you used the same account you created the saloon with.
• You want a second venue. Each account owns one saloon today. A second venue needs a second account.
• The cast button is not there. It only appears on a phone or tablet, never on a TV box, and only on the live saloon page. If you are on a TV box you do not need it.

Once it is running

The screen has options worth a minute of your time - a layout, a clock, a marquee font, how the photo gallery moves, and how much of the evening the ambient screen saver takes. They live under the BillboTV setup in your saloon's Info tab and can be changed at any time.

From there, see what to actually put on the screen and how to run a live poll the room can see.