How to make your TV display art (or family photos).
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it is beautiful and expensive. When not in use, it displays artwork. But if you already have a smart TV, you can achieve something similar with an app or Chromecast. That is how.
Of course, your TV will consume more power if it displays images instead of turning off. That’s the point of Samsung’s Frame TV, too: Instead of displaying a blank black screen or gaudy home screen, you can display art or photos. Whether it’s a Roku TV, Chromecast, or Fire TV, you can approximate the Frame TV experience.
Choose your images
This image works well on TVs thanks to its wide aspect ratio.
Before you go any further, think about what you want to display on your TV. Some of the solutions below offer built-in art gallery modes that will automatically provide you with beautiful art, so you don’t have to worry about images.
If you’re using your own photos, keep in mind that selfies, photos you took in portrait orientation, and old film footage you digitized with a scanner probably wouldn’t look good on your 40+-inch landscape TV.
But if you are sure that you have a lot of horizontally oriented images taken at high resolution, you should go through them and choose the best one from the bunch. If you’re using a Chromecast, it will upload your photos to Google Photos. For FireTVs, it will upload them to Amazon Photos. Roku TVs can use images from your phone or Google Photos. And Apple TVs use iCloud storage for their screen savers. Regardless of the platform, we recommend creating a dedicated album called “TV Slideshow” so that you can easily remember and find it.
Just keep in mind the storage limits you may face when uploading high-resolution images to , , and . Google Photos offers unlimited storage for photos if you allow you to reduce the size of the image. If you want full resolution, you only have . Amazon Photos offers Prime subscribers unlimited storage space and everyone else. iCloud offers five GB of free space and charges $1 a month for 50 GB of space.
If you’re looking for inspiration, check out the , which hosts high-resolution images of famous works of art, or you can use the . Family photos that fit everyone in the frame will probably work well too.
How to display pictures with Roku
We think Roku is one of your . If you have one, you can easily display Google Photo Albums on your TV and even set a screen saver effect to start the album slideshow after a period of activity.
You have two options with most Roku TVs: choose photos from your phone or install the Photo View channel.
If you want to use photos on your phone, open Roku or app and tap the Photos + option at the bottom of the screen.
Choose the screen saver option, then the album you created with the photos you’d like to display. Once you’ve selected the images you want the screensaver to display, you should start seeing them appear on your screen right away. The downside is that you’ll have to update this group of photos manually with the Roku app whenever you want to make changes.
Alternatively, you can use Google Photos to power your Roku screen saver. The benefit is that you can change the photos displayed from any computer, tablet or phone. All you have to do is add or remove photos from the connected album.
To display a Google Photo Album screensaver, you’ll need to install the . Open it and follow the instructions to sign in with your Google account (via the Sign in with Google feature).
Once you’ve installed Photo View, you can choose an album to pull images from, set Photo View as your Roku screen saver, and even adjust the amount of time before the screen saver starts, all from within Roku’s settings. . Go to Settings > Screen saver > Change screen saver. Then choose the PhotoView option. Settings > Screen Saver > Change Timeout allows you to change the amount of time before a screen saver starts, check that it is not disabled.
We recommend that you create a dedicated album in Google Photos and upload the images of the artwork that you like or some of the ones from NASA. . In either case, you must select an album specifically for your TV. Portrait-oriented photos, selfies, etc., may not look good on a large TV. Family photos, on the other hand, can work just fine as long as they’re oriented horizontally.
How to display images with FireTV
Amazon’s FireTV doesn’t have access to Google Photos, unfortunately. But it has its own easy-to-use options. If you like the idea of displaying nature photos on your TV, Amazon already has you covered. All you need to do is turn on the screen saver option and accept all the defaults.
But if you want more control and prefer to make your own personalized album of illustrations or family photos, you just need to download Amazon Photos or app. EITHER . Amazon Photos offers unlimited storage for Prime users or 5 GB of space for everyone else.
Once you sign in, upload your preferred photos and create a folder for them. On your FireTV, go to screen saver settings and change the source to your album. Customize any other settings you like, like the weather, and you’re ready to enjoy art on your TV.
How to display images with Chromecast
Chromecast may be the easiest option if you want to display art, and it’s also relatively easy to customize with photos. Chromecast’s screen saver feature works exactly like the Google Nest Hub (formerly known as Google Home Hub) ambient screen and uses the same controls.
To display art, open the Google Home app and find your Chromecast device. Tap on it, tap on Ambient Mode, tap on Art Gallery and you’re done.
If you prefer to display family photos or images you’ve taken, you’ll want to upload them to a specific gallery in Google Photos. Then choose that Google Photo Album in the Ambient settings.
Regardless of which method you use, displaying art or photos on your TV will only look good if your TV is up to the task and the images you choose look great in large formats. As long as you have those two aspects covered, any method you choose should yield great results.
How to display photos with Apple TV
If you have an Apple TV, you’re in luck, as the device natively supports screen savers created from your iCloud photos.
Once your photos are in iCloud, you’ll want to turn on iCloud integration in your Apple TV settings. When you turn on iCloud, it will ask if you want to turn on Photo Stream and use it as a screen saver. You can choose yes, but if you created a specific album as we suggested above, then you’ll want to opt out of using Photo Stream as a screen saver.
Instead, you’ll go to the screen saver options in your Apple TV’s settings dialog, choose Photos, and then choose iCloud. Here, you will be able to choose which album to use.
Using USB or Plex
Many smart TV platforms have USB ports or Plex apps that you can use to display screen savers. You’ll need to upload your photos to a USB drive or your Plex server, and then add them as an option for a screen saver.
If your primary interface is your Plex server, then you’ll want to set up a personal album to set as your screen saver. But depending on the smart TV, you may need to go into your TV’s screen saver settings and find an option to use USB or Plex as the source of the photos.
