Google is changing the way apps can entry Google Images libraries, which is creating issues for homeowners of some digital picture frames. Whereas the change is designed to make your picture library extra personal, it’s additionally breaking how digital picture frames — comparable to these made by Aura and Cozyla — mechanically replace slideshows on their gadgets.
Aura makes cloud-connected picture frames that show digital photos you or anybody you’ve granted entry to the body provides. Whereas the corporate provides several ways to get photos onto the device, one neat function is which you could create a Google Images album with, say, photos of your children after which activate auto-sync to mechanically add any new pictures within the album to your body. So, you possibly can share the album with Grandma’s Aura body, and she or he’d get a relentless stream of recent photos of her grandkids.
Nevertheless, based on Jenisse Curry, senior director of communications at Aura, on March seventeenth, 2025, Aura will disable its Google Images auto-sync function. Whereas Grandma will nonetheless have that album on her body, it should now not auto-update with any new pictures you add to it. As a substitute, you’ll should manually add pictures to it by way of the Google Images app.
Having performance faraway from a tool you paid for is rarely good.
Aura has to do that as a result of Google is altering its Google Images API, a transfer the corporate introduced last September that goes into impact on March thirty first. Curry says Aura is getting forward of the change to assist prospects transition.
The change limits how apps can entry your picture library and now not permits integrated access to your entire library or the administration of shared albums. As a substitute, apps can solely entry pictures or albums via the brand new Google Photos Picker API, which requires customers to manually “decide” every picture.
“We had a deeper integration with Google Images that enabled direct entry from inside the Aura app and the flexibility to auto-sync a Google Images album,” Curry mentioned in an interview with The Verge. “That can go away as a result of our app can now not talk along with your cloud library.”
In line with this Reddit thread, Cozyla has also informed its users that its Google Images auto-sync function is ending. The Verge reached out to Cozyla however had not heard again from them by the point of publication.
If auto-sync was your favourite function, Curry says Aura’s iCloud integration works in an analogous manner. “You’ll be able to choose your Favorites album, for instance, after which each time you coronary heart a photograph, it should present in your body,” she says. There’s additionally the choice to activate auto-add with native albums in your camera roll on iOS or native albums in folders on Android, she says. Nonetheless, having performance faraway from a tool you paid for is rarely good.
Google spokesperson Colin Smith informed The Verge, “We’re at all times in search of methods to replace our APIs to enhance person privateness, and we have now APIs particularly designed for digital picture frames and a program to assist our companions replace their merchandise.”
Final month, Google introduced that Google Photos slideshows would soon be available as ambient displays or screensavers on extra third-party gadgets. The function is at the moment accessible on Google Nest shows and Google TVs. In a weblog submit, Google mentioned it was working to broaden the function to good TVs, tablets, fridges, and digital picture frames.
Smith wasn’t capable of present extra info relating to which gadgets this function will probably be accessible on and the way it may be enabled. Curry of Aura mentioned that, so far as they have been conscious, this new operate wouldn’t substitute the auto-sync function that’s being eliminated.
Up to date March fifth: Added a press release from Google.