Electronic Photo Frame Help, MacOS Compatible

[Huntn]

For Christmas, my wife wanted an electronic photo frame so we looked for a relatively inexpensive solution an came up with:

Digital Photo Frame WiFi 10.1Inch HD 1280x800 Touch Screen IPS Display 16GB Storage Automatic Rotation with iOS and Android Frameo App for Men for Women for Parents and Family

AZXL 10.1 Inch Wifi Digital Picture Frame 1280x800 Touch Screen IPS HD Display 16GB Storage Automatic Rotation With iOS and Android Frameo App Christmas Gifts For Parents and Family

smile.amazon.com

This device has a touch screen and wifi, both are nice. But as you may know, regarding my recent thread about Apple Photos and Google Photos, I have been moving many of my wife’s photos over to Google Photos, which she can still look at on her iOSDevice, plus she has a MacBook Air where there are still many photos.

This device:

• It uses an app called Frameo to transfer pictures to the frame.
• So the first thing I looked for was a MacOS compatible app, nope.
• Then I found an iOS app, but once you give it access to the photos on your device, in my case an iPad, it only sees the photos sitting in Apple Photos, it does not see Google Photo photos.
• So any photo I want to move to this frame, has to be cycled through my or my wife’s iPad. Definitely not going to do this though our phones.

At this point I am frustrated, I may return this. Moving photos to this frame is more or less an infrequent event, but what I really want is a MacOS App, where it would not be a hassle to work there with photos to get them on this frame.

What is your experience with photo frames? My position is that a MacOS app is a requirement. I don’t want to have to cycle everything through my iPad. I can do some research , but I think this is going back to Amazon.
Thanks!

 

[Dave Braine]

Can you not use the microSD card option?

 

[Huntn]

Can you not use the microSD card option?

Yes, I can if I get a SD card reader, my understanding is that SD cards used to be a standard for this sort of thing, but now they come with wifi, and so I would avoid SD as a primary means of managing photos if I have a choice. I don’t want to manage them on my iPad or worse iPhone. As is it does not appear to see photos on Google Photos when on my iOS device, this is just another complication. I’m just disappointed that Frameo does not come as a MacOS app while I hope another manufacturer sees fit to produce an app that is MacOS compatible.

 

[JamesMay82]

I forgot all about those digital photo frames - I remember they were popular awhile ago but you don't seem so much now a days. Also was chatting to my wife about how we just don't print photos out anymore like our parents did etc.

Anyways - your post got me thinking - do you think an iPad will be suitable as a digital photo frame? we have an old from 2014 thats not used much and digital photo frame would be cool to have.

 

[alFR]

We have a Nixplay one, they do have an iOS app but you can also transfer photos to it via their website or by emailing the photos to an address you set up on their website for the frame. We've used it for a couple of years now without ever using the app, works fine.

 

[Huntn]

I forgot all about those digital photo frames - I remember they were popular awhile ago but you don't seem so much now a days. Also was chatting to my wife about how we just don't print photos out anymore like our parents did etc.

Anyways - your post got me thinking - do you think an iPad will be suitable as a digital photo frame? we have an old from 2014 thats not used much and digital photo frame would be cool to have.

I did not think about that. We do have an extra iPad! I’ll report back.

 

[synicalx1]

Personally I would consider any IoT picture frame a risk - the pump and dump companies that make junk like that will undoubtedly stop patching and maintaining their software, and it’s quite likely to ship with security vulnerabilities that will never get spotted or fixed. That is also assuming it’s not harvesting your data, they can collect a lot of useful data from personal photos.

You might consider a Google Nest Hub (which you could safely bank on being patched at least for a few years) if you don’t mind google spying on you, but you’d need to sync the photos you want to google’s photo service. But really I think something entirely offline with a card reader is a safer bet.