Your Digital Picture Frame Won’t Lose Google Photos Sync After All, At Least If It’s An Aura
Jimmy Westenberg / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google announced changes to the Photos API last year, going into effect at the end of the month.
- As a consequence of this shift, digital frames could lose the ability to sync up with your Photos albums.
- Frame manufacturer Aura now confirms that it’s working with Google to deliver a solution that will keep its frames functional.
It’s a fact of life with modern, connected hardware: Any kind of device that relies on remotely communicating with distant systems runs the risk of losing functionality when that access changes or gets cut off. Just look at how Amazon revoked the ability to download and transfer books to Kindles over USB. Earlier this month we looked at a change that threatened to impact digital picture frames, as Google Photos updated its API and changed the way devices are able to sync with your albums in the cloud. While that change is still happening, it’s looking like manufacturers are starting to work out some alternative solutions to minimize the impact on users.
As we mentioned at the time, companies that make digital frames, like Cozyla and Aura, had been reaching out to registered users of their products, informing them of this pending change. Due to new privacy-protecting measures in the Photos API that go into effect at the end of March, the old way of accessing images saved to the cloud will no longer be available to these frames, causing them to lose the ability to sync with Google Photos.
While we knew that Google was working to bring photo frame support to new devices, it wasn’t at all clear what that meant for legacy hardware. We still don’t have the full picture there (no pun intended), but today we can share one very promising development, with Aura reaching out to Android Authority to confirm that it has found a solution to its Google Photos problem.
The details sound like they’re still in the works, but Aura is clear about the result: its frames will not be losing the ability to automatically sync with Photos. That “automatic” bit is key here, as one of the alternate solutions we mused about before would have involved users having to manually send pics to their frames.
Aura says that it’s still collaborating with Google to make this happen, and will have a future update to confirm the precise details, but this already sounds like great news. And if there’s a path forward for Aura, we have to be hopeful that there’s a similar solution out there for other companies interested in keeping their own digital picture frames updated and functional.
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