•An HPTLC-bioautography based screening for multi antibiotic residues detection was established.•The bio-compatibility of various HPTLC layers to Aliivibrio fischeri was evaluated.•Under optimized conditions, method sensitivity meats the strictest EU MRLs for the analytes.•A “substance-window” strategy was developed to circumvent background noises due to food matrices. The world-wide usage and partly abuse of veterinary antibiotics resulted in a pressing need to control residues in animal-derived foods. Large-scale screening for residues of antibiotics is typically performed by microbial agar diffusion tests. This work employing high-performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC) combined with bioautography and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry introduces a rapid and efficient method for a multi-class screening of antibiotic residues. The viability of the bioluminescent bacterium Aliivibrio fischeri to the studied antibiotics (16 species of 5 groups) was optimized on amino plates, enabling detection sensitivity down to the strictest maximum residue limits. The HPTLC method was developed not to separate the individual antibiotics, but for cleanup of sample extracts. The studied antibiotics either remained at the start zones (tetracyclines, aminoglycosides, fluoroquinolones, and macrolides) or migrated into the front (amphenicols), while interfering co-extracted matrix compounds were dispersed at hRf 20–80. Only after a few hours, the multi-sample plate image clearly revealed the presence or absence of antibiotic residues. Moreover, molecular information as to the suspected findings was rapidly achieved by HPTLC-mass spectrometry. Showing remarkable sensitivity and matrix-tolerance, the established method was successfully applied to milk and kidney samples.