How to turn your Echo Show into a digital photo frame

As screens multiply in our homes, it’s excellent to put them to good use when they’re not in use. Your Echo Show smart display, like your computer, can be customized to show attractive pictures when it’s not giving up YouTube recipes or streaming your favorite tunes and TV shows. In fact, all of the Echo Show smart screens double as more-than-capable digital photo frames.

The Echo Show lineup currently consists of the Echo Show 5, Echo Show 8, Echo Show 10, and the newest picture-perfect addition, the Echo Show 15. The most straightforward way to use one of these devices as a digital photo frame is to use Amazon’s Photos service, which offers free unlimited photo storage to Amazon Prime members. However, you may also use Facebook picture albums or upload images from your phone’s camera roll.

We’ll show you how to configure your Echo Show to display your images.

Image: Amazon

Configure your Echo Show using Amazon Photos, Facebook, or your smartphone.

TConnecting your Echo Show to your preferred photo source is the first step in transforming it into a digital photo frame. You can add photographs to an Echo Show in three ways: via Amazon Photos, Facebook photo albums, or your smartphone’s camera roll. All three use the Alexa app to transmit photos to the Show (they are not saved on the device itself); you may use all three at the same time if you wish.

To use Amazon Photos:

• Get the Amazon Photos app from the app store (iOS, Android or desktop).
• Go to Settings > Upload Settings > Save Photos in the app. This will upload all photographs from your camera roll to Amazon Photos automatically.
• You may also manage your images via the Alexa app (but you still need the Amazon Photos app installed).
• Go to Settings > Photos > Auto-Save in the Alexa app.
• Tap Manage under Upload Settings and turn on Auto-Save.

You may browse your albums on the Echo Show once your photographs have been saved to Amazon Photos.

To use Facebook’s photo albums:

• Open the Alexa app and navigate to Settings > Photos > Facebook, then choose Link Account.
• To enable the Facebook Photos capability, follow the instructions below.

To upload photos from your phone:

• Open the Alexa app and go to More > Settings > Photos
• Tap Devices and select the Echo Show you want to display photos on
• Tap Upload Photos
• You can only upload 10 photographs at a time; however, you can repeat the 10 photo upload process as many times as you like.
• The uploaded album will be available on all your Echo Show devices

Begin using your Amazon Echo Show as a digital photo frame.

Once you’ve uploaded your photographs to your Echo Show, follow these steps to transform your smart display into a digital photo frame.

Using your Echo Show:

• Say, “Alexa, set up my photo display,” or swipe down from the top of the Echo Show screen and select Settings.
• Select Clock & Photo Display. (For the Echo Show 5. select Home & Clock > Clock & Photo Display.)

Once that’s done, you can choose one or more sources for your photos, which can include:

• Photo albums uploaded to Amazon Photos
• This Day (photos from this day in past years)
• Daily Memories (an automatic selection of your pictures daily)
• Facebook photo albums
• Photos from your phone

Using the Amazon Photos app:

• In the Amazon Photos App, tap the Amazon Smile icon in the top left of the home page to take you to your profile
• Select “Personalize Amazon Devices,” and you’ll see a list of your compatible smart displays (including Echo Shows and Fire TV displays)
• Choose your device and select the albums you would like to display

The selected photo albums or photo collections will now appear on the Show screen. You can swipe left or right to scroll through them or just let them rotate automatically.

Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

More tips for showing photos on your Echo Show

You can ask Alexa to show specific albums with your voice. using commands like:

• “Alexa, show photos from This Day.”
• “Alexa, launch photos of my hiking album.”
• “Alexa, tell me more about this photo.”
• “Alexa, show photos from last summer.”

You can also share a photo with your Alexa contacts by saying: “Alexa, share this photo with [Mom].”

If you only want to see your photos and not the other rotating content an Echo Show can display, go to Home > Settings > Home Content on the Echo Show and toggle off all the options you don’t want to display on your home screen.

Finally, if you are using an Echo Show 15, swipe down from the top of the screen and tap Photo Frame to bring up full-screen photos.