PhotoCloud

Android Digital Frame App for Tablet and Phone.

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)
• ownCloud/Nextcloud server, 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 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
• 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.

Offline Licenses

Offline Licenses are no longer available. PhotoCloud is only available on Google Play.

Privacy Policy

See Privacy Policy for more details.

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+) - the background music; asked for only once you pick a music file
• 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 (if so configured)
• 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. Please do not use PhotoCloud’s in-app purchases if you plan to use the app on the Amazon Fire tablet.

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

• Discussions forums
• Bugs, issues, feature requests

FAQ

Located here: Frequently Asked Questions