The Frame guide.

Enter your Immich server's URL and an API key (create one in Immich → Account Settings → API Keys). The wizard shows the short list of read-only permissions the key needs — nothing that can write — then tests the connection before letting you continue and names anything that's missing. Pictaria Frame v1 requires Immich 2.0 or newer and has been tested with Immich 2.7.5 and 3.1.0. Other versions may work but are not explicitly validated; check Pictaria's release notes before upgrading Immich. HTTP and HTTPS are both supported; include https:// explicitly when using TLS and enter the Immich root address without /api.

For a least-privilege Frame key, enable exactly these six read-only permissions: asset.read, asset.view, asset.download, asset.statistics, album.read, and tag.read. Immich's All option also works, but grants access the Frame does not need.

Choose an album to display. On first install, you will be able to choose one album of up to 100 photos. To select any album, you will have to upgrade to Pictaria Pro — you can do this anytime in Settings once you are in the app.

Connect to a Pictaria Server, if you run one. You'll enter the server's URL and app password, and name this frame ("living-room", "kitchen") — that's how it appears in remote control and stats. Connecting needs the Pictaria Connect upgrade, so on a first install just tap "Skip Server for Now". You can add all of this later in Settings.

Quick tips, starting with the one worth memorizing: a long press anywhere on the screen opens Settings. The Crash Reports choice is here too — pre-selected, one tap to decline (details under Diagnostics). On a first-time setup, select the required “I agree to the Terms of Use ↗ and acknowledge the Privacy Policy ↗” checkbox. Finish stays disabled until you accept the current terms; a current stored acceptance is not requested again. Then the slideshow starts.

The free version is the full display experience with one album of up to 100 photos, free forever. Three one-time upgrades are bought once through Google Play — no subscription:

• Pictaria Pro — any album, any size, and up to five blended into a single slideshow. Adds Timeline mode and Calendar Memories.
• Pictaria Connect — connects the frame to your Pictaria Server: voice commands, remote control, weather, and smarter photo rotation.
• Pictaria Complete — Pro and Connect together, at a discount.

Purchases restore automatically on any device signed into the same Google account. The Upgrades section sits at the top of Settings until you own them, then moves down the list. If an owned upgrade does not appear, tap Restore purchases there to ask Google Play to check that account again; nothing is charged.

Optional. When on, opening Settings asks for a 4–6 digit PIN — so houseguests (and children) can't rearrange your frame. It deters casual fiddling; it is not a security boundary. Forgot it? Recovery resets the app to the setup wizard. Your photos in Immich are untouched.

Where your photos live. Use an address your tablet can reach — on the same network that's usually a LAN IP like http://192.168.1.20:2283, not localhost. The key needs six read-only permissions; the app lists them and names any that are missing. The Test button verifies both URL and key.

HTTP and HTTPS are both supported. An address without a scheme uses HTTP, so include the full https:// scheme when you want TLS. Use the Immich root address without /api (the app removes one trailing /api if supplied). Publicly trusted certificates work normally. For a private or home certificate authority, install that CA certificate on the Android device first. Pictaria validates HTTPS certificates and does not provide a skip-validation setting.

This frame's name on the server — the Remote page, the device list, voice stats. Running several frames? Give each its own name.

Which albums the slideshow draws from. The free version displays one album of up to 100 photos; the Pictaria Pro upgrade lifts the limit.

Shows your Immich photo timeline newest-first instead of selected albums. Pictaria Frame pages through it continuously, then starts again with the newest photos after cycling through the library. Timeline loads images only — videos are never fetched — and respects Immich's timeline visibility, so archived, locked-folder, and hidden assets do not appear. Your orientation settings still apply, and photos tagged frame/never-show remain excluded. No other album, tag, quality, or AI screening is applied. New photos appear automatically because Timeline always follows the newest photos.

In Albums mode, this controls how often the frame re-reads the selected albums to pick up photos you added since. Off means it refreshes only when you open Settings or restart the app. Timeline does not need or use this setting.

Match how the tablet is physically mounted.

On a landscape frame, show two portrait photos side by side instead of one with big empty bars. There's a companion option to also allow single landscape photos into a portrait frame's rotation.

Seconds each photo stays up.

Photo date and place as a quiet overlay. Whatever you choose, a screen tap can toggle overlays anytime (see Screen Taps).

A corner clock, independent of the metadata overlay.

A slow, gentle drift on each photo — "alive" rather than animated. Off = perfectly still.

Pulls evenly from across your selected albums instead of drifting toward one corner of them — useful with very large albums.

Follows the room's ambient light so the frame never glows in a dim room or washes out in a bright one. The level picks how aggressively it dims.

In a dark room the slideshow gives way to a dark screen with a soft clock — a bedside frame that doesn't light the room. Night Clock Brightness controls only that clock.

Favors photos taken around today's date in past years — anniversaries surface themselves.

Preview is Immich's optimized rendition — sharp on tablets and much lighter on your network. Original is full resolution for large, close-viewed displays.

What fills the space when a photo doesn't cover the screen — a soft blur of the photo itself, or a plain white/black mat.

Tap the left or right edge to move backward or forward.

Tap the top half to favorite the current photo — curation from the couch. With paired photos, top-left or top-right picks which one. Favorites are saved by your Pictaria Server as the frame/favorite tag in Immich (how tags work); Immich's own favorites are untouched. Needs a connected server and the Pictaria Connect upgrade.

Tap the bottom half to show or hide the clock and metadata.

Same rules as the Immich connection: an address the tablet can reach, plus the server's app password. The Test button confirms it.

The switch for hands-free control. Say the wake phrase, then a command — the frame listens for specific words, not free-form speech.

Which voice the frame answers with. It's the server's text-to-speech setting, shown here once connected — change it in Pictaria Server settings.

"Hey Pictaria" is built in — no download needed. Custom wake phrases are managed in Pictaria Server settings and installed from there; once installed, a phrase keeps working even if the server is temporarily offline.

How sure the frame must be before it wakes. Higher values reduce false activations but can miss quiet wake phrases.

How the frame answers: text on screen, spoken aloud, or both.

Every command has its own switch, in the order shown below. NOTE: with paired portrait photos, add "left" or "right" to target one — e.g., "favorite left", "hide right". Works for Favorite, Hide Photo, Interesting, and More From This Day.

• Ask a Question · "Tell me …" — ask anything, answered aloud. Off by default: the one command that sends your words to a cloud model.
• Favorite · "Favorite" — favorites the current photo (the frame/favorite tag in Immich).
• Hide Photo · "Hide", "Don't", "Do not" — takes the current photo out of the rotation.
• Interesting · "Interesting" — the frame tells you something interesting about this photo.
• More From This Day · "More" — more photos from the same day.
• Navigation · "Next", "Forward", "Last", "Previous", "Back" — move through the slideshow.
• Photo Metadata · "Where", "When" — where or when this photo was taken.
• Photo Search · "Show …" — search your library: "show beach photos from 2019".
• Remote Control · "Remote", "Remote control" — puts a QR code on screen; scan it with your phone to open this frame's remote control.
• Time · "Time" — the current time.
• Volume · "Volume up", "Volume down" — the frame's speaker volume.
• Weather · "Weather today", "Weather tomorrow" — the forecast for your set location.

Appears under the Weather command when it's on. ZIP/postal code or city name for the forecast — the server does the geocoding.

The one optional feature that talks to anyone other than your own servers. When it's on and Pictaria Frame crashes or hits an internal error, a diagnostic report goes to Sentry, the crash-reporting service we use, so bugs get found and fixed. There is no session tracking and no usage analytics — reports exist only when something breaks.

The setup wizard's final step presents the Crash Reports switch pre-selected — one tap declines, and nothing is sent until you finish that step either way. Without a yes, reporting never runs. Change your mind anytime in Settings → Diagnostics: switching it off shuts reporting down on the spot, and later crashes are not uploaded (Reset App also clears a previous yes).

The error itself (type, message, stack trace), the Pictaria version, and standard device context: model and manufacturer, Android version, memory, storage and battery state, connection type (Wi-Fi vs. cellular — not your network's name), screen orientation, locale and timezone, plus recent breadcrumbs — app-lifecycle events and the app's own log lines. Reports carry a generated installation identifier so repeat crashes group together, and Sentry may note a coarse location (country/region) from the upload, the way any web request reveals one. Before a report leaves the device, URLs, IP-shaped strings, and Immich-style IDs are scrubbed from its text, and network-request breadcrumbs are dropped. So: no account identity and nothing from your library — but not "anonymous" in the strictest sense, which is why the switch is yours.

Reports are processed by Sentry and deleted automatically after 30 days — the retention on our current Sentry plan; only the Pictaria team can see them. Withdrawing consent is the same switch — off means off, from that moment. More in the privacy policy.

The app's version and build number — the first thing to check when reporting a problem. Third-party notices live here too: the "Hey Pictaria" wake-word model and Google's speech_embedding model, with the Apache 2.0 license viewable in place.

Starts the onboarding wizard again and removes this device's Immich and Pictaria Server connections, saved credentials, Settings PIN, album choices, and display preferences. It does not remove photos, Google Play purchases, diagnostic history, or server-side device records. The confirmation step makes it difficult to do accidentally.

The app tests a connection when you save it. These are the exact messages it can show, and what each one is telling you:

• "Couldn’t reach Immich / Pictaria Server" — nothing answered at that address. Nine times out of ten the URL works on your computer but not from the tablet: use the LAN IP (not localhost), check both devices share a network, and mind http:// vs https://.
• "…took too long to respond" — something answered, but too slowly. Same checks as above.
• "A server responded at this URL, but it does not appear to be Immich / Pictaria Server" — that address is serving something else. Check the port: Immich is usually 2283, Pictaria Server 4080.
• "API key rejected by Immich" — the key is mistyped or was deleted in Immich. Paste it again, or create a fresh one.
• "This API key is missing required permissions: …" — the key works but lacks some of the read-only permissions; the message names the missing ones. Edit the key in Immich and tick those boxes.
• "This server does not support Pictaria Frame’s connection check" — Immich is older than 2.0. Update Immich.
• "Server reached, but the password was rejected" — the app password doesn't match. It's the same password the server's own web pages use.
• "This app is too old for the server" — your Pictaria Server is newer than the app supports. Update Pictaria Frame from Google Play.
• "…was reached but returned an error" — the server answered with an internal error. Check that Immich or Pictaria Server itself is healthy.

Check Content Source → Album Auto-Refresh — if it's Off, the frame only re-reads albums when Settings open or the app restarts.

That's likely Night Dimming doing its job in a dark room — see Slideshow. Turn it off if you want photos around the clock.

Voice needs the Pictaria Server connection (URL + password tested green), Voice enabled, and the microphone permission granted. Try lowering the wake-word sensitivity threshold if it triggers too rarely — or raising it if it triggers on TV dialogue.