SnapFrame – Home Assistant Photo Frame for Old Tablets & iPads

📸 SnapFrame

Turn your old iPad or tablet into a smart photo frame for Home Assistant.

SnapFrame turns an old tablet or iPad into a beautiful, always-on digital photo frame connected to your Home Assistant.

Your photos stay on your own network — no cloud photo service required.

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✨ What is SnapFrame?

Have an old iPad or Android tablet sitting in a drawer?

Give it a new purpose.

SnapFrame connects your tablet to a photo folder on your Home Assistant server and turns it into a fullscreen photo frame.

You can display your family photos, organize them into albums, show photo information, and even use Home Assistant to control what happens on the screen.

The idea is simple:

Old tablet + your photos + Home Assistant = a smart photo frame.

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🚀 Features

Feature	Description
📸 Photo slideshow	Automatically rotate through your photos
📁 Albums	Organize photos into separate albums
💾 Local storage	Photos can stay on your own network
🔒 No cloud required	No external photo service or account needed
🖼️ HEIC / HEIF support	Automatically convert iPhone photos to JPG
📅 EXIF information	Display photo date and GPS information
🌙 Night mode	Automatically switch the display to night mode during the night
🌤️ Weather mode	Show weather information when triggered
🌡️ Weather badge	Keep the temperature in the corner all day, or only when rain is coming
🗑️ Waste collection reminders	Know the day before which bin to put out
📄 Schedule import	Upload the municipal leaflet, dates are read out of it
🏠 Home Assistant integration	Control SnapFrame using Home Assistant
📟 Ready-made HA entities	Next bin day, photo count and scan state via MQTT
🔐 Optional access token	Viewing stays open, changes need a token
🌍 Multi-language UI	Use SnapFrame in different languages
📱 Old hardware friendly	Give an old tablet a new purpose

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🎥 See it in action

SnapFrame can run fullscreen on an old iPad or Android tablet while Home Assistant handles the rest.

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🏠 Home Assistant + SnapFrame

The real power of SnapFrame comes from combining it with Home Assistant.

For example:

Motion detected → wake the photo frame → show weather → return to photos

Or:

Night time → switch to night mode

Or:

Tomorrow is bin day → remind me on the frame (and on my phone)

Or:

Someone arrives home → wake the display

You can build these automations yourself using Home Assistant.

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📱 Perfect for old iPads

Don't throw away that old iPad just because it can't run modern apps anymore.

If the device can open a modern web page, it may be possible to use it as a SnapFrame display.

This is especially useful for:

• old iPads
• Android tablets
• wall-mounted tablets
• kitchen displays
• family photo frames
• smart home displays

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🛠️ Installation

SnapFrame runs as a Home Assistant add-on.

1. Add the repository

In Home Assistant:

Settings → Add-ons → Add-on Store → ⋮ → Repositories

Add:

https://github.com/emo546/ha-snapframe

2. Install SnapFrame

After refreshing the Add-on Store, you will see:

SnapFrame Add-ons → SnapFrame

Click Install.

3. Configure SnapFrame

Open the SnapFrame add-on and configure your photo share and other options.

Two worth setting straight away: api_token, so that only you can upload or delete photos, and language. Everything else has a sensible default.

Once it is running, Open Web UI shows the frame inside Home Assistant; the tablets go straight to http://<home-assistant>:8099.

For the complete configuration reference, see:

👉 SnapFrame Add-on Documentation

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📷 How it works

             ┌──────────────────┐
             │   Home Assistant │
             └────────┬─────────┘
                      │
                      ▼
             ┌──────────────────┐
             │    SnapFrame     │
             │   Add-on         │
             └────────┬─────────┘
                      │
             ┌────────▼─────────┐
             │   Samba / CIFS   │
             │   Photo Folder   │
             └────────┬─────────┘
                      │
                      ▼
             ┌──────────────────┐
             │  Old iPad /      │
             │  Android Tablet  │
             └──────────────────┘

Your photos remain under your control and SnapFrame serves them to the tablet over your local network.

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💡 Why I built SnapFrame

I had an old iPad that wasn't really useful anymore.

Instead of letting it sit in a drawer, I wanted to turn it into something useful for my Home Assistant setup:

a simple digital photo frame that could also react to my smart home.

That's how SnapFrame started.

It's open source and I'm continuing to improve it.

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🗺️ Roadmap

Some things I'd like to explore:

• More Home Assistant controls — ingress and MQTT entities (3.0.0)
• More display modes
• Better tablet power management
• More customization options
• Additional photo sources
• Improved tablet compatibility
• Trash management in the app

Have an idea?

👉 Open an Issue and let me know.

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🤝 Feedback & Contributions

Found a bug?

Have an old tablet that works with SnapFrame?

Want a new feature?

I'd love to hear from you.

⭐ If you find SnapFrame useful, consider giving the project a star on GitHub.

🐛 Report an issue

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📄 License

SnapFrame is released under the MIT License.

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Made for Home Assistant ❤️

SnapFrame — give your old tablet a new life.