(Note our connection with Flickr has been officially dropped for now due to technical issues)

Connecting your PhotoSpring digital photo frame to a Google Photos is one of the easiest ways to load photos onto your frame. When you connect the frame to Google Photos, the frame will immediately begin to mirror all albums and their photo contents.

Mirroring will sync with Google at least once per hour for the following actions:

• If you add a new album, or someone shares an album with you - the frame will also add the new album.
• If you add new photos to an album, or someone adds photos to a shared album - the frame will also add the new photos.
• If you delete an album or photo from an album - the album or photo will also be deleted from the frame.

Note: to ensure proper operation of sync, please limit the size of each album to no more than 500 photos. If you have an album with more than 500 photos syncing may stall. For people with slower Internet, this photo limit per album is smaller. 

The following are instructions on using Google Photos with your frame. 

 

Decide how to connect with Google Photos

Direct Method

You can connect your frame to an existing Google Photos account. Any albums in the Google Photos account will automatically be mirrored in the frame. That includes all photos and the Album itself.  This is a great way to add photos to the frame if you want all the albums in the account to be added.

 

Indirect Method

There are cases where you want to create a new Google Photos account and connect the frame to the new account. For instance:

• You may not want ALL albums to be mirrored with the frame in your existing Google Photos account, then you should create a new one.
• There are multiple people who will be sending photos to the frame. Setting up a new Google Photos account lets multiple people send photos to the frame. This is usually the case for families where photos might be sent from multiple kids to parents.

To send photos to the frame you can then Share photos from your existing account to the new account you created. This is illustrated in the diagram below.

Recommendation

Connect the frame using the Direct Method if

• you're sending photos to your frame AND
• the photos on the Google Photos account are family friendly

Use the Indirect Method if 

• you're sending photos to someone else's frame frame OR
• the photos on the Google Photos account are not family friendly

Setting up a connection with Google Photos

First, tap on the frame's Menu Button. The menu button can be found on the Photo Info Screen and the Playlist Screen. When you tap on the Menu Button a dropdown menu will appear. Tap on the Cloud Accounts menu item as shown below:

 

This will open up a the Manage Cloud Accounts page as shown below. To create a connection with Google Photos tap on the Add Account button as shown below:

 

You will be given the option of syncing with Google Photos or backing up to Google Photos. Note: You can back or sync with Google Photos, but you cannot do both at the same time. Tap the Sync button.

 

The next screen shows you what you can expect when syncing with Google Photos.

Next, you will be asked to log in to your Google account using either your smart phone or computer. You can either:

• Scan the QR code with your phone or
• Go to photospring.com/gift from a browser and enter the 5 digit numeric code shown on screen. Note: please do not use the 12345 code shown below. It's just an example.

 

 

After successfully logging into your Google Account you must further authorize PhotoSpring to view your Google Photos library. Tap on Allow to authorize PhotoSpring to access your Google Photos Library:

Once you authorize PhotoSpring to view your Google Photos Library you should then see an icon representing your Google account in the Cloud Account Management screen.

 

Viewing your Google Photos Albums on the frame

 

After the frame has downloaded the albums from your Google Photos library, you can view these downloaded albums in the Select Playlist screen. This screen will contain a row labeled "FROM GOOGLE PHOTOS".

This row will contain all of your albums from Google Photos. You can scroll left or right in this row to browse all the albums you have on the frame. Tap on any Album thumbnail to select it as the current playlist. 

If you just connected your frame to your Google Photos account, it may take some time to download all of your photos. At the bottom of each album thumbnail you will see the number of total photos that belong to the album along with the number of photos that have been downloaded to the frame. So in the example below, four out of ten total photos have been downloaded.

The album thumbnail will also be marked with a Cloud icon at the top left of the Album thumbnail. This lets you know at a glance that the album is a cloud album. Keep in mind that, while these are cloud based albums,  the photos are actually downloaded and stored on your frame.

 

Mirroring with your Google Photos Library

PhotoSpring will periodically sync with your Google Photos library at least once an hour, and mirror the contents of all albums. During syncing, if there are any changes to your library, your frame will detect those changes and make sure it is in sync with your library.

NOTE: The frame's contents will not be synced to Google Photos. The Sync is from Google Photos to PhotoSpring.

There may come a time when you want to force a sync with your Google Photos library - like when you added a few items in your library or someone just shared a new album with you. To force a sync just select a Google Photos album from the Select Playlist screen.(See instructions above).

Once you have selected a Google Photos album as the current playlist, then go to the Playlist screen.

Next tap on the Sync button located near the upper right corner of the screen.

 

Below is a closeup look at the top of the Playlist screen for a Google Photos album.  To force a manual sync, tap the Sync with Google Photos button as highlighted in the red box below:

 

 

Managing your Google Photos connection

You can manage the connection with your Google Photos account by going to the Cloud Account Management Screen.

To get there, first tap on the frame's Menu Button. This can be found in the upper right corner of either the Photo Info Screen or the Playlist Screen. When you tap on the Menu Button a dropdown menu will appear. Tap on the Cloud Accounts menu item as shown below:

 

This will open up an Accounts Management page as shown below. Select the account you want to manage:

 

 

The will take you to a screen that will allow you to manage you account. 

 

There are two things you can do with your account as follows:

Pause and Resume Syncing with Your Account

You can prevent the frame from syncing with your Google Photos account by going into the Cloud Account Management Screen and switching the Status switch shown below from "syncing" to "not syncing". While set at "not syncing" the frame will not attempt to sync with this account. However the photos currently on the frame will still remain on the frame.

 

 

Forcing a Sync

Patience is a virtue but sometimes you just don't have time. You can force a sync with the Sync Now button as shown below.

 

Disconnecting from Your Account

You can also remove the connection between your frame and your Google Photos Library.  To disconnect from Google tap the Disconnect button.

 

You will be given a choice to keep the photos already downloaded or remove them from the frame. 

• You can keep the photos downloaded from Google on the frame.
• Or you can remove them from the frame. (The photos will remain on Google)

 

Limitations and Issues Syncing With Google

Please be aware the following limitations and issues when syncing with your Google Photos account

• The photos stored in Google Photos will go towards your Google storage quota for your account. So depending on how many photos you send to Google, this may incur a fee for you.
• The frame will only sync with photos/videos it finds in Google albums.  If you have photos or videos that are not in Google albums then the frame will not download them.
• The album limit is 2000. If you have albums larger than 2000 there is no guarantee the frame will download them.
• The total photo limit is 10,000. Google accounts with more than 10K photos will have issues downloading all the photos.

 

 

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Tags:

Google Photos, Flickr, cloud accounts, cloud sync, Google Keep, Transfer Photos