PhotoCloud

Android Digital Frame App for Tablet and Phone.

On an Amazon Fire tablet: PhotoCloud on the Amazon Appstore.

Turn an old Android tablet or phone into a digital photo frame. Sit back and watch your photos with your family: PhotoCloud shows a slideshow of photos from your own devices, your home network and your cloud storage. No fluff, no bloat: an old-school app that is simple to use and just works.

Shows photos from any combination of these sources:

• Local Gallery (photos on the device)
• Nextcloud/ownCloud and other WebDAV servers (such as a Synology or QNAP NAS), even with a self-signed https certificate
• Windows shares (Samba / SMB)
• SSH / SFTP servers
• DLNA / UPnP media servers
• Dropbox
• Microsoft OneDrive
• Box
• Flickr
• Mega
• iCloud shared albums (Public Share)

Google Photos and Google Drive are no longer supported; see the FAQ for why. You can still show them, and other sources too, by syncing them to the device with a sync app such as FolderSync, then adding the synced folder to PhotoCloud; see this PhotoCloud mailing list thread.

Respects your privacy: PhotoCloud only reads your photos; it never changes, uploads or deletes them. It is one of the few photo frame apps that work with your own Nextcloud/ownCloud or WebDAV server (including self-signed https certificates), your own SFTP server or the photos on your Windows PC, so your photos never have to leave your home.

Features

• Plays all photos of a source, or only chosen folders and their subfolders, from any combination of sources
• Random or ordered playback, configurable delay, transitions and Ken Burns effect
• Photos are cached on the device; when offline, the slideshow goes on from the cache
• Clock, date, battery status and weather forecast on screen
• Shows EXIF data, the file name and where the photo was taken
• Moments: show only photos from a date range, or older photos less often
• Background music from the device
• Day and night brightness and dimming
• Starts automatically on boot or when the charger is connected (Android 9 and older; see the FAQ), stops when the charger is disconnected
• Browse the photos of a source by hand
• Cast the slideshow to your TV with Chromecast
• Works as the Android screen saver (Daydream)

Supported image types:

• bitmap: jpg, jpeg, png, gif, bmp, webp
• HEIF / HEIC: enable in Settings / Filters/Moments / Include HEIF/HEIC in Slideshow. Android 9 and newer decode it natively; on older Androids PhotoCloud uses its own experimental decoder.
• raw: crw, cr2, nef, raf, dng, mos, kdc, dcr. Off by default, since RAWs are large and generate huge network traffic; enable in Settings / Filters/Moments / Include RAWs in Slideshow.

Please note: this is just a digital frame and photo browser. It doesn’t edit photos, create videos or replace your gallery app. It does one thing - shows a slideshow of your photos - and does it simply and right.

A slideshow from network or cloud sources downloads a lot of data, so PhotoCloud waits for Wi-Fi or another unmetered connection by default (Settings / Metered Connection Protection).

Ideas, bugs and questions are welcome at the bug tracker page.

Screenshots

Streams	Slideshow	Browser
Welcome screen with the streams	A paused slideshow, showing EXIF and the location
where the photo was taken	You can browse the stream for photos and files

A short 3 minute introduction video:

Pricing

PhotoCloud is a free download at Google Play. No ads, no subscription. There are two separate one-time in-app purchases:

• The “Remove Nagging Screen” purchase removes the “please purchase” image the free version shows once in a while during the slideshow;
• The “Daydream” purchase lets PhotoCloud run as the Android screen saver (Daydream), which starts when the device is charging or docked.

The in-app purchases are located in PhotoCloud Settings - simply touch the appropriate item to launch Google Play purchase process. If the “Purchase” items are missing, it could be that the In-App Purchases API is not available on your device (for example Amazon Fire tablet with Google Play). To verify that, please open the About Dialog and scroll to the bottom: in the “System stats” Section there will be the “In-App Purchases API available:” line. If it says “false”, then unfortunately the In-App Purchases API is not available on your device, which means two things:

• You can’t unlock the features of this app from such device;
• Even if you use another device to purchase the features, these features still won’t be unlocked on this device.

In such case please don’t use in-app purchases.

Amazon Fire tablets

Fire tablets have no Google Play, so on a Fire tablet get PhotoCloud from the Amazon Appstore instead. There it is a paid app (€4.99 or the local equivalent) with everything unlocked: no nagging screen, Daydream included, no in-app purchases. The purchase follows your Amazon account, so it reinstalls for free on your other Fire tablets. Chromecast is not available in the Amazon version, as Fire OS lacks Google’s casting services.

A purchase in one store doesn’t carry over to the other: a Google Play purchase doesn’t unlock the Amazon version, nor the other way round.

Offline Licenses

Offline Licenses are no longer available. PhotoCloud is available on Google Play and, for Fire tablets, on the Amazon Appstore.

Privacy Policy

See Privacy Policy for more details.

Terms of Service

See Terms of Service.

Required permissions

• INTERNET - to download photos from network and cloud sources, the weather forecast, Chromecast
• READ_MEDIA_IMAGES (Android 13+), READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE (Android 12 and older) - the Local Gallery source; asked for only once you add a Gallery stream
• READ_MEDIA_AUDIO (Android 13+), READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE (Android 12 and older) - the background music; asked for only once you set up background music
• BILLING - In-app purchases
• ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE - to wait for Wi-Fi or another unmetered network, avoiding mobile data charges
• RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED - to automatically start the slideshow on boot (if so configured; Android 9 and older)
• ACCESS_WIFI_STATE, CHANGE_WIFI_MULTICAST_STATE - to discover DLNA devices
• WAKE_LOCK - to keep Wi-Fi awake while talking to DLNA devices
• FOREGROUND_SERVICE - Chromecast, and the auto-start service on Android 8-9

PhotoCloud 1.15.8 and older also asked for WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE (photo cache on older Androids) and GET_ACCOUNTS (Google Drive).

Devices Support

PhotoCloud needs Android 5.0 (API level 21) or newer; it runs on phones and tablets. Android 4.x and older are not supported.

Unsupported Devices

It has been reported that in-app payments on the Amazon Fire tablets with Google Play installed do not work - the payment goes through but the annoying “Please Purchase” image stays. On a Fire tablet, please get PhotoCloud from the Amazon Appstore instead (see Amazon Fire tablets).

Also, Android TV is not supported at the moment; see bug #198 for more details. In short: Google rejected an update because of a vague Android TV requirement and didn’t reply to e-mails, so PhotoCloud is no longer offered on Android TV in Google Play. You can still show the slideshow on your TV with Chromecast.

Links

• Questions, bugs, issues, feature requests

FAQ

Located here: Frequently Asked Questions