Today it is very common to find a smart speaker in our homes to help us with day-to-day tasks. From playing music, controlling home automation, making calls to other users, etc. But of course, perhaps there are certain functionalities that you do not know about these speakers. Today we want to show you one of them in particular, dedicated to Amazon smart speakers. We explain how to turn an Amazon Echo Show into a photo frame .
Compatible smart speakers
The first thing you should know about this curious functionality is, of course, which smart speakers are compatible with it. And, as you can imagine, when talking about a photo frame, the only indispensable condition is that it has a screen.
Therefore, within the current Amazon catalog, the speakers with a screen that we can use to do this process are:
- Amazon Echo Spot.
- Amazon Echo Show 5.
- Amazon Echo Show 8.
- Amazon Echo Show 10.
So, if you still don’t have any at home, you can take a look at all of these through Amazon’s own website. Our recommendation is that if this photo frame action is interesting to you, go for the 8-inch or 10-inch Echo Show . Since the other two are quite small, especially the Echo Spot.
How to turn an Echo Show into a photo frame
Now, we go with the truly important thing in this article, which is to configure our Amazon smart speaker as a photo frame.
The truth is that it is a very simple process. The first thing is to access the configuration of the screen of our equipment and, for this, we can do it through several ways. The most complete (and simple) is the following:
- Enter the Alexa app with your phone (Android or iOS).
- Click on the “More” button, then click on the “Settings” section.
- From here, in this new menu, look for the “Photos” section .
- Once inside, we will see 2 options. The “Accounts” section shows us the services related to our photographs that are linked to our profile, that is, Amazon Photos. On the other hand, we have the option of “Devices” where all those that can be affected by this part of the photographs are grouped, in other words, all those associated with a screen. The first thing you should do is create (or link it if you already have one) an account in Amazon Photos , since in the next step we will need it.
- When you have created the account, go back and access the “Devices” section that we saw before.
- Picha on the equipment that you want to configure as your photo frame.
If you follow these instructions step by step you will get to the photo settings menu of your, for example, Amazon Echo Show. Here we will have different options available to do this:
- Daily memories : it is a selected collection of our photos (hosted in Amazon Photos) that is automatically updated and that will go on as a slide.
- This day : photographs taken on a day like today but from the previous year. For example, if today is June 1, 2021, a slideshow of photos (hosted on Amazon Photos) that you took on June 1, 2020 will be displayed.
- More Collections : Here you can choose any collection (album) that you made through your Amazon Photos account.
- Uploaded photos : if you don’t want to link your Amazon Photos account, you can do without it and place up to 10 photos from your mobile phone gallery in this frame. Of course, every time you want to put a new one you will have to do it manually.
It’s that simple to use one of Amazon’s smart speakers with a display as a digital photo frame. Of course, keep two small details in mind:
- As shown in the Alexa app itself, the “free” storage of any user in Amazon Photos is 5 GB . If you need more space, you will have to purchase it with some of the subscription methods that it has.
- In the case that you use an Amazon Echo Spot in particular, by not having a “usual” aspect ratio, your photos may be cut off . In this model you should choose to be shown those photographs whose main content is in the central part of it.
How to activate the Amazon photo frame
Now, how can we make our Amazon smart speaker (or an Amazon Fire TV connected to a screen) reproduce our photographs.
First of all, if you want it to be seen automatically, you can configure it through your computer’s screensaver. Both in the case of smart speakers and a Fire TV, this section is found in the computer configuration:
- In the Echo Show we will see it as a photo presentation.
- In the Amazon Fire TV it will appear as a screensaver.
In this way, making the pertinent adjustments, we will configure that the selected photo collections appear automatically on said equipment after a certain period of inactivity.
However, if you want to do it manually, you just have to ask the wizard himself with one of the following commands:
- “Alexa, Play My Photos” – This will make Amazon’s smart assistant automatically launch a slideshow of your chosen photos.
- “Alexa, show me my photos” : on the contrary, if you only want to access the catalog, this voice command will allow you to reach it. Then, from here, you can play that slideshow or other cool actions.
This is just one of those more “eye-catching” features that you can use with your smart speaker with Alexa. But, if you want to know many more interesting aspects, or simply discover what the experience of living with the complete system of these speakers with Alexa is like, you can take a look at the video we made on our YouTube channel:
