Running Led Text is a free online LED scroller: type your message, watch the live LED preview, then tap Full Screen to turn your phone, tablet or TV into a scrolling LED sign in seconds.
The editor
The scrolling LED sign editor puts every setting beside one live preview: your message, the motion controls (scroll speed and direction) and the appearance controls (text color, background, text size, blink, font, dot pitch and glow). Change any of them and the sign above redraws at once, so you see the result before you go full screen. Start with the message.
The live LED preview redraws your message on every keystroke, dot for dot as the full-screen sign will show it. Type up to 500 characters; emoji and accented letters work. The editor opens with a sample sign so you can see the effect first, and it remembers your last sign in this browser. Once the words read right, style the scroll.
Five controls set how the sign moves and looks: scroll speed, scroll direction, text and background color, text size and blink.
Blink works best on short words like OPEN or SOS, and a slower blink speed is easier on viewers' eyes than a fast flash.
Marked Pro: the Round dot matrix and Arcade 8-bit fonts, and the Neon tube and Rainbow glow effects. Soft and strong glow stay free.
Slower speeds keep long messages readable.
Scroll direction sets which way the message travels: left, right, up or down. Left is the default and reads best for English and most other languages, because each word enters from the right edge in reading order. Choose right for Arabic and Hebrew, so a right-to-left message arrives in the order it is read. Up and down wrap a long message into lines that roll past like film credits, which suits a short list, a menu or a schedule on a tablet or TV. Whichever way it moves, a slower speed gives a reader across the room time to finish each word.
Mirror flips the whole sign left to right, for a message seen from behind glass or as a reflection, such as a phone on the dashboard reflected in the windshield. Turn on Mirror when you prop the phone against a car window, so drivers and passengers outside read the message the right way round. Not every window needs it: a screen that already faces out through the glass reads correctly, so leave Mirror off and check the sign from outside first. The car window LED message sign starts with Mirror off for that reason.
To add emoji to your LED banner, tap the message box, switch to the emoji keyboard on your phone and pick the ones you want, just as you would in a text message. On a Mac, Control-Command-Space opens the emoji picker; on Windows, press the Windows key and the period key. Emoji scroll along with your letters, so a heart, a plane or a trophy can stand in for a word. Most emoji count as one of the 500 characters, but each one adds more to a share link than a letter does. The sign shows one line at a time: for a long message, set the direction to up or down and it wraps into lines.
Show mode
Full Screen fills the whole display edge to edge with your sign and asks the browser to keep the screen awake while it shows. So far it has been tested in desktop Chrome and Chrome's phone emulation; checks on real iPhones, iPads and smart-TV browsers are still to come. A phone held upright turns the sign sideways automatically, so it reads in landscape. Getting there takes four steps.
Step 1: Type
Type your message in the box under the live preview.
Step 2: Style
Pick the scroll speed, direction, colors and text size until the preview looks right.
Step 3: Go Full Screen
Tap Show Full Screen and the sign fills the display while the browser is asked to keep the screen awake.
Step 4: Hold Up
Hold the screen up sideways, facing out, with the text size set for how far away your reader stands.
Tested in: Chrome on desktop and Chrome's phone emulation. Not yet tested on a real iPhone, iPad or smart-TV browser. Ready? Start your sign in the LED editor.
Past 6 feet, set text size 10 and scroll speed 3–4; past 20 feet, move the sign to a tablet or a TV.
| Viewing distance | Text size | Scroll speed |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 6 ft (a counter, a car window) | 6–8 on a phone | 4–5 |
| 6–20 ft (an arrivals hall, across a room) | 10 on a phone | 3–4 |
| 20–60 ft (a concert crowd, a shop window from the sidewalk) | 10 on a tablet | 2–3 |
| 60 ft and beyond | 10 on a TV | 2–3 |
In a dark venue, bright text on a black background carries farthest, so keep pale colors for the letters, not the background.
Source: the sign-industry rule of thumb of about 1 inch of letter height per 10 feet of viewing distance (United States Sign Council, sign legibility guidance). At size 10, a phone held sideways shows letters about 2 inches tall.
Every device takes the same taps; what changes is how each browser handles the bars around the page.
iPhone
On iPhone, Safari does not allow a web page to go fully full screen, so add Running Led Text to your home screen and open it from there to hide the browser bars. The home-screen steps are below, and the scrolling LED sign on iPhone gets its own guide.
Android
On Android, tap Show Full Screen in Chrome and the sign fills the display edge to edge. Hold the phone sideways for the tallest letters on a scrolling LED sign on Android.
iPad or tablet
On an iPad, add the site to the home screen as on iPhone; on an Android tablet, tap Show Full Screen in Chrome. A tablet’s bigger screen carries the sign past 20 feet.
Smart TV
On a smart TV, open Running Led Text in the TV’s web browser, type with the remote and select Show Full Screen. For scrolling text on a smart TV across a shop or a hall, set the text size to 10.
Laptop or desktop
On a laptop or desktop, click Show Full Screen and the sign fills the monitor; press Esc to leave.
Not yet tested on a real iPhone, iPad or smart-TV browser.
Pricing
Free vs Lifetime Pro comes down to ads and extras: the free plan costs $0 and shows ads below the preview, while Lifetime Pro costs $4.99 once, with no subscription. Neither plan puts ads on the full-screen sign. Neither needs an account or an install, since the editor runs in your browser, whereas LED banner apps need an App Store or Google Play download first. Unlike LED banner apps that charge a weekly subscription, Running Led Text is free in the browser, and Pro is a single $4.99 payment with no renewal. Here is what Pro adds.
Free
$0
Everything you need to show a sign.
Lifetime Pro
$4.99once
One-time, lifetime: one payment, no subscription.
No download needed: LED banner apps ask for an App Store or Google Play install before they show anything.
Keep going
LED sign templates, related LED tools and guides extend the same editor: ready-made signs for events, banners for stores and streams, GIF exports and a plain comparison with app-store LED banner apps. Templates come first because they save the most typing.
LED sign templates load a finished sign into the editor with one tap: a concert sign, an airport pickup board, a birthday banner or an open sign for a store. Each sets the text, colors, speed and font, so you only change the words. Browse all 29 in the LED sign templates gallery.
The LED banner maker builds scrolling banners for store windows, events and stream overlays with this same editor. Show a banner full screen on a TV or tablet in the window, or export it as a GIF or video for a stream scene.
The scrolling text GIF maker exports your animated LED text as a GIF with no watermark, free up to 10 seconds at 720p and made entirely in your browser. Open the scrolling text GIF maker to start from a GIF-ready sign.
A browser LED scroller opens instantly with no download: the page loads, you type, and the sign is on screen. An LED banner app needs an App Store or Google Play install first, plus storage and updates. After one visit, the browser version keeps working offline, like an installed app.
A greeting sign puts a name in big white letters, so the person you are meeting spots you across the arrivals hall. Start from the airport pickup sign on your phone, swap in their name and hold the phone up sideways at text size 9 or 10. It works just as well at a station or a hotel lobby.
A concert fan sign has a few seconds to catch the stage, so it needs short words in a bright color on black. The concert LED sign on your phone starts in hot pink with strong glow and a song request you can rewrite. Change the words and hold it up.
A stadium sign has to read from the far stands, so it runs at a large text size in team colors. The NFL game day LED fan sign opens in amber with a football and a faster scroll. Switch the color to your team’s and the words to your chant before kickoff.
A shop sign tells people walking past that you are open before they reach the door. The open and closed LED sign for shops runs in green on a tablet or TV in the window. Change OPEN to CLOSED or BACK IN 10 MINUTES in a few taps, with no app to install.
A celebration sign turns a phone or TV into a name banner for the couple, the birthday guest or the guest of honor. The wedding LED sign starts with JUST MARRIED in warm white with strong glow, ready for the send-off. A birthday sign and other party presets sit beside it in the gallery.
A rally sign has to read over a crowd, so it uses big yellow letters on black and one clear line. The protest and rally LED sign starts with EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL at full text size. Type your own cause and hold the phone or tablet high above the crowd.
FAQ
Four questions come up most: what an LED scroller actually is and how this one runs inside your browser, whether a shared link stores your message, which browsers show the sign full screen, and how running text, scrolling text and a marquee differ.
An LED scroller is a tool that scrolls text across a screen like a dot-matrix LED sign, with each letter drawn as lit dots.
Running Led Text draws those dots on a canvas inside your browser, and your message never leaves it, so any phone, tablet or TV becomes a scrolling LED sign.
No. Your message is not stored on a server: it lives only in the part of the link after the # sign, the fragment, which browsers do not send to the server.
Every share link carries the whole banner, and you can turn it into a QR code so a friend can scan it and show the same sign on their phone. Your recent signs stay in this browser, under My signs.
So far the full-screen sign has been tested in desktop Chrome and in Chrome’s phone emulation, where it fills the screen edge to edge and keeps the screen awake.
On iPhone, Safari does not let a web page go fully full screen, so add Running Led Text to your home screen and open it from there to hide the browser bars. Real iPhones, iPads and smart-TV browsers are still to be tested.
Running text, scrolling text and a marquee are three names for the same thing: words that move across a screen or sign so a long message fits a small space.
Running text is often used for LED shop signs, scrolling text is the usual name on phones and the web, and marquee comes from theater signs. Use it as a free LED scroller, LED banner maker or digital marquee maker: type your message, pick a style and show it full screen with no app and no sign-up.