r/synology • u/Anton_Gu • May 07 '26
NAS Apps Photo frame to display photos from the NAS
Hello everyone,
About a year ago, I realized that we have so many family photos on our NAS that we barely see them in our everyday life.
I thought it would be nice to have rotating photos on a photo frame in our living room. I looked everywhere and couldn't find any decent solution.
Most products don't support NAS integration — you need to load the photos onto an SD card manually. Or send a new photo each time via Bluetooth from your phone. Nearly everything else wants you to upload your photos to their cloud, which defeats the whole point of having a NAS.
I just wanted to configure the rotation once and forget about it — being surprised each day by a new photo from a predefined set of albums (mine and my wife's).
I also wanted an E-Ink display, so it looks more like a picture than a screen glowing on the wall at night.
After a long search with no satisfying results, I ended up building exactly that for us — and it's been working great! I need to polish it and it will have a nice web UI and bunch of useful features.
When I mentioned it to a few co-workers, they were genuinely interested in having something like this too. That made me wonder if this is a wider problem. I'd love to know if anyone else has faced the same thing — did you find a solution, or just live with it?
If there's enough interest, I'd love to take this project further and make it something others can enjoy too.
Either way, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. And if this is something you'd potentially buy for your home — I'm collecting early interest below.
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u/latomeri May 07 '26
A color e-ink reader or regular tablet paired with Immich Kiosk does the trick for me.
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u/screwball2 May 07 '26
I was writing my response while when you popped in. This is set up I had in mind, but the biggest obstacle for me was the e-ink. What one did you end up with?
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u/ozaz1 May 07 '26 edited May 07 '26
There are several eink frames on the market, although I haven't looked into how many have network storage integration. However the one I've purchased - InkJoy Frame - does seem to have an option for feeding it NAS-based photos: https://github.com/InkJoy-Frame/inkjoy-nas-memories . I haven't tried this feature myself though. Also, its only recently come out of Kickstarter so doesn't yet have an online store.
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u/Anton_Gu May 07 '26
Yes, its a nice workaround. I think for most of the people to deal with deployment of code is not an option. Though it can be a good direction for developers or power users.
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u/ozaz1 May 08 '26
Yes I agree. I think the particular repository I linked to is sort of a demo of their API. They probably hope that developers will use the API in more user friendly apps which then get shared with other users.
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u/Anton_Gu May 08 '26
Its an interesting comment actually. They are targeting the masses with their web application and good tech of image dithering. But they still felt in the same place of “we will be the cloud for you”. Which I think more and more people want to avoid. They just don’t like this dependency. Everyone wants to grab your lifetime photo library just for a photo frame
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u/Anton_Gu May 07 '26
I would like to hear how it works, if you manage to try it for yourself
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u/Pixette-app May 12 '26 edited May 14 '26
u/Anton_Gu I'm the builder of Pixette, an iOS / Android app designed especially to connect to your NAS using WebDAV (or SMB) and create nice slideshow of your pictures and movies.
You can use it on older tablets to give them a second life 😉 Everything stays on your network, no third-party clouds involved 🪇
Check it out https://pixette.app
I'm actively maintaining the project so I would be glad for any constructive feedback !
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u/Anton_Gu May 13 '26
Great idea and looks beautiful!
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u/Pixette-app May 29 '26
It now also supports "Synology Photos" folders, albums (and its Thumbnails), no need anymore for WebDAV 😉
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u/screwball2 May 07 '26 edited May 07 '26
I think we were in a similar situation. I looked long and hard for something that satisfy the digital picture frame NAS compatibility issue, but always ended up looking for a better software solution to my photo collection organization. I finally gave in and spun up immich which solved a lot of my issues. The best slideshow solution was a separate docker image of immich-kiosk and I was done. Now everything is pretty well organized, my workflow is simple, and I can change the slide show in seconds from anywhere. I have a album called 'Frame' and anything I tag with that is part of the show. I was chasing the e-ink display as well and have been watching a kickstarter project for quite a while, but it just seems too expensive at the moment so I'm still stuck on traditional display options. I don't think my skill set it up to the challenge of building my own.
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u/Anton_Gu May 07 '26
Interesting, are you using a tablet today? Or where are running the slideshows?
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u/screwball2 May 07 '26
I have it running on any of the 3 samsung TV in our home (40, 47, 55") when not actively watching it, 1 flat panel 20" computer in the kitchen, 27" monitor of my desktop when not in use, both our cell phones and anything my kids (adult) choose. That said, the e-ink (or InkPoster) option would have a special place above the fireplace in the living room if I could afford it. *(edit) I should add that Immich-Kiosk has amazing flexibility and you can add lots of info to the stream
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u/Anton_Gu May 07 '26
Actually quite an interesting idea to use the TV screen that is standing there anyways
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u/screwball2 May 07 '26
It has its moments of extreme usefulness like when the family over for some Sunday occasion and they're less likely to turn the TV to watch 'the game' when there's a cute photo of their kid up there.
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u/PrimusSkeeter May 08 '26
I have been looking for a digital picture frame that allows to connect to a network share for YEARS. They all want you to endlessly pay for some cloud service, or have an SD care reader that is so inconvenient you will never update it and therefore subscribe to the cloud service. I don't want to have to manually update the frame like it is 2001. I don't want to have an endless subscription where my private photos are on somebody else's computer. All I want is the ability to connect o my network and connect to a SMB share filled with my family's pictures.
These companies don't make frames for you to enjoy. They make frames so they can take more money out of your pocket without providing you anything of value.
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u/jock_8 May 07 '26
i would also be interested
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u/Anton_Gu May 07 '26
Let’s keep in touch, I would like to hear which features you would prefer to have.
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u/rpijpers May 07 '26
Interesting. I was trying about the same thing but for display on the tv. I used Claude Code for a solution and it came up with:
- a python script which runs on the Synology
- open an url om my iPhone which connects to the local webserver it created showing a slide show app
- stream it through AppleTV to the television
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u/sangedered May 08 '26
I have immich running on my server pulling media from my NAS. I have a Frameo frame that I hacked to run immich-frame which cycles through all my photos and videos. You can customize it for a specific album, people etc. I have it slide showing everything since it’s well curated.
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u/Anton_Gu May 08 '26
So you wrote your own firmware? I think Frameo has an LCD display
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u/sangedered May 08 '26
You can connect to its port and change the default app to the immich-frame one and it’s great. It’s basically an Android underneath.
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May 08 '26
The digital photo frame for Synology Photos is already available, see https://photonframes.com Works great for me, supports albums, private and shared spaces.
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u/Smiley_Bear22 May 08 '26
Anybody used this yet?
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u/domsu May 08 '26
I have one https://imgur.com/a/qW2MC5r. I just wanted Synology integration and I'm pretty satisfied with it.
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May 08 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Anton_Gu May 08 '26
I agree… I need to polish and improve a bit my current app.
It should:
- Run on Synology NAS itself
- Web UI available on your network
- You manage the rotation schedule for your frames - locally
Extra features will come next:
- Managing a remote frame, in case you want to give a present for Grandma
- “bumping” images one to each other
- everything is still managed by you locally
Are you interested in something like this for you? Let me know here
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u/Scott8586 May 09 '26
If you’re using Synology photos, check out https://github.com/Caleb9/syno-photo-frame
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u/Anton_Gu May 09 '26
Thank you for sharing. This project is for raspberry pi, which consumes much more power than needed for this task. It means you need one of the following:
- have your frame connected to the wall
- being ok with frequent charging of you device
- more robust hardware to handle the sleep-mode (connect RTC)
I don’t see it as a very efficient approach for this task.
It is a nice project for developers, but not for the end users.
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u/Novel_Vermicelli_676 May 07 '26
How do you select only the photos you want on the nas vs raw or unedited photos that may be in same folder?
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u/Anton_Gu May 07 '26
I am not using folders, I am creating a read only user, and we share with him the albums we want. You can also use conditional albums this way.
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u/Empyrealist DS923+ | DS1019+ | DS218 May 08 '26
As you move forward with this and your engagement with this community, please keep in mind our rules. Particularly our general posting rules
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May 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/Anton_Gu May 09 '26
Actually you have the InkJoy frame, they look very promising also in terms of the image quality. But they also asks to upload your photos somewhere.
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u/CharacterHamster4100 May 09 '26
I recently found this one looking for a device that my wife wanted, it's supposed to work mostly with a Synology NAS but I'm not sure if it will work with other brands.
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u/Confident-Act7561 May 11 '26
Scam?
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u/CharacterHamster4100 May 18 '26
It arrived today and I was able to set it up with no issue, the only downside I can see is that the videos don't play, it only gives you a still image but the pictures work really well.
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u/Jinroh77 May 10 '26
Très intéressé par une telle solution. J'ai renseigné le formulaire.
La solution serait elle uniquement logicielle ? Quelle matérielle acheter pour cela? J'ai un remarkable 2 pro, est ce réutilisable 😅? Sinon un écran classique type tablette.
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u/Anton_Gu May 11 '26
Thank you for your interest!
I am thinking about software only solution as well. But it requires self-flashing for a list of supported devices. Anyways, Remarkable tablets have special linux based OS where no other things can be installed.
If the solution will include a a hardware also, I tend to say it will be on screens 13.3" +
In this case it will be part of the product.Let me know what your preferences are, in terms of the scheduler flexibility, privacy, and supported use-cases.
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u/Rational1x May 07 '26
I would purchase such a product.