When Should Photos and Videos Arrive
Photos should arrive at the frame in less than 30 seconds on a broadband connection. We process photos in the Cloud before making them available to the digital picture frame for download. Photo processing includes downscaling to our frame resolution, converting to JPG if necessary and making sure no duplicates arrive on the frame.
Videos can take 3-10 minutes to arrive. We process videos in the Cloud before making them available to the digital frame for download. Video processing includes downscaling to our frame resolution, converting to MP4, if necessary, and downscaling the frame rate if necessary.
In some cases, during heavy loads it can take some time for photos or videos to arrive on the frame.
If you suspect you may have a slow connection you can go to www.SpeedTest.net. Both your upload speed and download speed will affect the time it takes for you to receive photos. A very basic upload and download speed should be at least 2Mbps.
What Happens When Photos Arrive
Download Indicator
The first thing that you should see is the Download Indicator will become active. You can see this at the bottom of the Slideshow and Playlist screens - it will look something like this:
A full description of the download indicator is available here.
Adding Photos and Videos to the Slideshow/Playlist
The frame will take about 10-30 seconds to process each photo after it arrives. Once completed:
- If you are in slideshow mode, new photos will arrive and be displayed automatically.
- If however you are browsing photos in the Playlist you will see a message like the one below. PhotoSpring will not interrupt your browsing of photos on this screen until you tap to load the new photos.
New Photos/Videos Have Arrived Indicator
When new photos or videos arrive on the frame a notification will appear in the following ways:
- If you allow notifications to appear on the Slideshow screen then you will see a green dot in the upper right corner of the slideshow screen. By default, notifications are allowed on the Slideshow. You can change this setting in the Slideshow Settings Screen.
- In the Playlist and Photo Info screens, the menu in the upper right hand corner will have a green dot. Like this:
- When you tap the Menu button above it will reveal a dropdown menu. Near the top you will see the notification. Tap the button to get a list of photos that have arrived:
- Note: Once you view the notification it will disappear
You can read a complete writeup of frame notifications here.
Troubleshooting
If you haven't received photos then please try the following in order. We have ordered these by the most common issues.
Confirm that the frame is connected to WiFi
The easiest way to confirm that your frame is connected to the Internet is to use the view the notifications. PhotoSpring will notify you if it has lost its connection to the Internet - and it will tell you if the WiFi connection is responsible or if there is a network issue. If the frame is not connected to the Internet then you will see a red dot notification. Read more about Frame Notifications here.
Make sure the date on the frame is correct
When the date on the frame is off by more than a day or so it may have problems downloading photos/videos or in rare instances connecting to wifi. Check that the date and time on your frame is correct. Here's a the help article on this topic. If you need to change the date, turn off Automatic time adjustment first.
- Tap the date to change the day, month or year.
- Tap the year to scroll up/down to change the year
- Scroll up/down on the calendar to change the date
The time is not as critical.
When you are done making changing turn Automatic time back on. Then tap continue to save.
Make sure the frame is not in Airplane or Power Save Mode
Some PhotosSpring models have an airplane mode which will shut down Wifi. This allows you to have the device on so you can browse photos but it will not allow you to download photos. Please check that airplane mode is not on.
Additionally some PhotoSpring models also have a power save mode which will shutdown wifi when it goes below a 20% charge in order to preserve the battery. In this case either turn power save mode off or charge the frame.
Both airplane and power save modes can be turned on/off in the device setting screen.
Make sure the frame is on the proper album
The PhotoSpring frame is like a digital photo album. If the frame is displaying photos from a specific album, then any photos and videos that arrive for a different album will not be shown. If you use the All Photos and Videos playlist, you can see all the photos and videos on your frame. You can see the most recent photos that have arrived by the following steps:
- From the Playlist screen tap on the Switch Playlist button (as shown by the red arrow below)
- On this screen you should see several playlists, each with a Name and Photo Count. Tap on the All Photos & Videos playlist in the upper left corner (highlighted in red).
- The All Photos & Videos playlist contains all the photos on your frame except the photos in the Hidden Playlist. Tap this item.
- This takes you to all the photos on your frame. From here tap the sort icon in the upper right corner of your screen and sort photos by Arrival time.
Reboot the frame
If none of the above locates your photos then try rebooting the frame. Sometimes the connection between the frame and wifi/network just needs to be reset. This is not very common but its very easy to try. Press the power button for 8 seconds to turn the frame off. Then press power again for 8 seconds to turn the frame back on. Once it reboots you will hopefully see photos start to download.
Reboot the Wifi Router
Sometimes the routing table in the wifi router isn't allowed the connection from the frame. This is again very rare, but rebooting your wifi router is pretty easy to do. Just unplug the wifi router from power, wait 10 seconds and plug it back in. Don't worry - wifi routers are made to come back up automatically after a power outage and these steps just simulate it. You can confirm the router is back up when you can surf the Internet again. Once connections are reestablished, you hopefully will see photos downloading.
You may have hidden photos on your frame
PhotoSpring allows users to hide photos from view. Any hidden photo will not appear in any playlist except the Hidden Playlist. To view photos in the Hidden Playlist:
- From the Playlist screen tap on the Switch Playlist button (as shown by the red arrow below)
- On this screen you should see several playlists, each with a Name and Photo Count. Tap on the playlist labelled Hidden under the Quick Playlists row. You may have to scroll the row to the right to reveal it.
Photos are being filtered
This is very rare. Click here to see an explanation of the filters.
There are actually no photos on your frame
To verify this look for the following
- In Switch Playlist screen check the item count for "All Photos & Videos". You should see it just below the title of the playlist. If the item count is zero, then you have no processed items on the frame. This doesn't mean you have no photos on the frame. It just means none have been processed. Go to the next step.
- In Settings, check the number of photos downloaded onto the frame. If this number is zero, then that means you aren't downloading photos. Here's how you find the number of photos downloaded to the frame:
- From Playlist, tap on the Menu button in the upper right hand corner. It should open a drop down.
- Tap Settings
- From the settings screen you should see a row that says CAPACITY followed by the number of Photos and Videos on the device.
If all of these are zero, then either
- You are not connected to a Wi-Fi that has working Internet connection
- Something is wrong and we need to further debug. Please contact us.
Contact PhotoSpring
That's all we got. If you are still having trouble please contact us. The Help button is located in the lower right corner of this screen. Tap/click on it and file a ticket with us.
Tags: photos missing, photos haven't arrived, can't upload, showing, displaying, just sent, not accepting, frame full, download