It sounded like it was time to pull that Chromecast out of the drawer and try this idea out. Lieb had a practical almost obvious reply. I even went the official route on the LG forums and suggested it wasn't ideal to see the same photo of some dog I've never met a thousand times. As a photographer, this drove me nuts and I spent way more time than I'd like to admit messing with it trying to get it switched.
#GOOGLE PHOTOS SCREENSAVER PICASA SOFTWARE#
Apparently, the software designers insisted that all the consumers would love looking at the same four pictures over and over with no way to really change them. I have an LG ultra-high-definition Smart TV.
You see, there is a funny story about the photos on my television.
#GOOGLE PHOTOS SCREENSAVER PICASA TV#
It was at this time a tweet from David Lieb announcing the Live Albums feature made me mention that I wish my smart tv supported it. I now have over 11,000 photos and counting in the album. Luckily, I was not along in hitting this maximum so the Google Photos team listened and removed the cap. This just never felt natural to me and I ended up opting for the Apple TV or Roku instead.įast forward a number of years and Google Photos stepped in with a new feature called Live Albums allowing you to make select a group of detected faces into a family album and have it auto-update with new photos. I have been using Google Photos since it was Picasa Web Albums, then everything uploaded to Google+ went there, so my family album of myself, my wife, and two boys hit the limit of 10,000 photos right away. You could not just pick things on the screen as I had assumed it would work. You needed to do the choosing of what to watch on the phone, then cast it to the television. Then I went to use it and realized there was no remote. I was excited about the small little device and immediately bought one. When it first came out, my Google fanboy status was at an all-time high. I actually have a love-hate relationship with Google Chromecast.
GOT Class? Become a member of our Geeks On Tour online classroom and learn from our tutorial videos and members forum.If your television has an HDMI port and the abode sports WiFi, I suggest getting a Chromecast and using Google Photos as a modern-day picture frame. Receive notice of every new Picasa tip by signing up for our Picasa Tip-o-the-week Email. Maybe it’s best to select a smaller number of photos so you won’t be tempted to just stare for hours! You can also select the transition, and the timing. Since it is Picasa doing the work, you get the edited version of the photo, not the original. I choose to show my Picasa Starred photos, but you can also use the special Screensaver album, or any combination of folders. The most important is that you can choose the pictures to show.
The rest of the options are on the Settings … button. This means that, if I don’t touch the computer for 10 minutes, the slideshow will start playing. How long do you want it to wait to start playing the slideshow? Mine is set to 10 minutes.
The first option is right on the first screen. If you ever want to turn it off, just go here and select ‘None.’ In Picasa, use the Tools menu and click on Configure Screensaver … From there, you should see the following screen, and you can select ‘Google Photos Screensaver’ from the drop-down list.