How to Transform Any TV into an AlwaysOn Family Photo Frame

Does your house feel a little bland or you don’t have many pictures hanging up because who wants to print out pictures when you have all of them nicely stored on your phone or Google Photos?

Well, fear not, you are not alone! If you have a spare Google Chromecast or can buy one (only $30), I will help you make it the perfect gift that almost everyone (especially your parents) will love staring at for hours in your house!

Step 1: Acquire a Chromecast

You can buy one here for only $30. It may seem like a lot but this amazing product can do so much more than just show photos as well, so if not for this project get it so you can literally stream almost any content from your phone onto your TV!

Step 2: Set up some Google Photos albums

If you don’t use Google Photos this may require some effort to download the mobile app [iOS/Android] and/or use the website to upload your photos and arrange them into albums.

Making albums is pretty self-explanatory, but there is a feature that I should let you know about. Google is a pretty smart company so this software can actually recognize people’s faces in your photos and create albums that grow as you take new photos with the people you want in it. For example, if you have a family you can create a family album that will select all photos with any of your family member’s faces. Just be careful that you don’t enable this auto-add feature to all of your albums. (If you see any of your albums growing, just go to Options and turn off this feature for the album by removing the faces that are tagged).

Step 3: Set up your Google Chromecast

(skip to the next step if already set up/connected to WiFi)

You will need to connect your Chromecast to WiFi in order to stream all the content from your phone/computer to it.

1. Download the Google Home app [iOS/Android]
2. Plug in your Chromecast into an outlet (or TV if it has a USB power input)
3. Plug the Chromecast’s HDMI cable into your TV
4. Change your TV input to display the Chromecast set-up screen
5. Follow the on-screen instructions to connect your Chromecast to your WiFi network

Step 4: Change the Ambient Mode of your Chromecast [MOST IMPORTANT STEP]

Now that we have your Chromecast all set-up to stream content to, let’s stream some photos ambiently!

1. In the Google Home app, find your Chromecast device and click on it
2. Then click on the 3 dots on the top right of your screen for more
3. Click on ‘Ambient Mode Settings’ (Ambient mode means what your Chromecast will be displaying when no one is actively streaming content to it like Netflix, YouTube, etc)
4. Choose Google Photos and then select what albums you would like to see on your TV (they will be displayed in a slideshow)
5. Customize the settings to your taste: how much time each picture is shown on the TV, temperature, personal info of the photo (album name, photo owner’s name), show portrait vs. landscape photos, etc.

Step 5: ENJOY!

Now your TV will be constantly cycling randomly through all of the albums you selected in the Google Home app. You can change what albums you see as time goes along and you go on more trips and make more fun everlasting memories!

Remember that you can also use the Chromecast to stream almost any content from your phone onto your TV! (think like Netflix, YouTube, Spotify, etc.)

If you have any questions feel free to comment below and we will make sure you can get this to work and reminisce on these beautiful pictures you have taken!