Wanted: My photo library on a connected TV

One of the biggest missing pieces in personal photo management: the screensaver / slideshow

TL;DR

• I want my photos on my TV.
• I want an interface optimised for a TV remote.
• Demo 1 (as described below)
• Demo 2 (using a menu system instead)

The problem

One of the biggest downsides of our large digital photo collections is that too much of it sits around without ever being looked at again. And if we do, it’s often while sitting at a desk, rather than leaning back on a sofa and relaxing. At the same time, the screens in our houses often sit idle much of the time, when they could be displaying an endless slideshow of our photos.

Windows and Mac have photo library screensavers built in, but I find them so limited as to be useless. For starters, randomness alone is pretty useless. How often does seeing a random photo trigger a desire for “more of that”, where “that” might be the same day, the same year, the same place, the same person, same folder, etc? So you want to be able to lock it to that time or thing at any point. And you want to be able to switch between random or sequential order at any point. And all of this should be controllable with the keyboard or a remote control without interrupting the slideshow.

Interactive demo

Here’s an interactive demo of what I mean: Using a keyboard or remote control, Left/Right is previous/next in the sequence of photos; Up overlays options for order (←↑↓→ buttons select); Down overlays options for locking (←↑↓→ buttons select); Play/Pause plays/pauses; Enter/OK toggles visibility of overlays and current settings; Back cancels the current submenu and dismisses the overlays.

While this would be great to have on your computer, obviously where you really want it is on your connected TV, displaying photos from networked storage such as a Synology NAS, or from cloud storage. My demo uses the Roku remote as an example. I’ve surveyed the field for screensavers in Roku and Chromecast, and it’s dismal. There’s nothing remotely like this out there.

By default: a random slideshow of your photos. Left / Right for Previous / Next

Press OK at any time: Displays button actions and current Order and Lock mode

Press Up: Pauses and enters Order menu, with 3 options: Random (press Up), Chronological on timestamp (Left), and A-Z on filename (Right). Down or Back cancels menu.

Press Down: Pauses and enters Lock menu, with 4 options: Lock to this month only (Left), this folder on disk only (Right), Clear lock (Up), or enter further submenu to lock by day, year or tag (Down). Back cancels menu.

Press Play / Pause at any time: Pauses slideshow, displays photo properties. Pressing Down will display additional properties, Up will hide all overlays.

App architecture (using Roku remote)

Alternative interface: menu-based

The interface above is very efficient, and if you use it often you will be able to change settings with just a few presses of the remote control.

However, the interface is less discoverable and familiar, so not ideal if you only use it occasionally. So I created an alternative demo using a more familiar menu-based interface.

Play / Pause and Right / Left buttons work as before, but OK opens a menu:

Press OK to display the menu, which is navigated using the arrow buttons. OK selects an option, Back goes back or exits the menu

The Photo submenu lets you Lock the slideshow to a limited selection of photos, or Unlock it (all photos)

The Order susubbmenu lets you switch between Random, Chronological, and Alphabetical order

There is also a Settings submenu