Photo Cycle shared albums

One link, the same photos on everyone's wallpaper. No accounts.

In short: put your photos somewhere on the web that anyone with the link can open, make a list of them (a plain text file with one photo address per line is enough), and send the list's address to your family. Each person pastes it in Photo Cycle under Your photos › Shared album and taps Save.

What Photo Cycle does with the link

It downloads each photo once and keeps it on the phone, so the photos still show offline.
It checks the list again every few hours while the wallpaper is showing, or when you tap Get photos now. New photos are downloaded. Photos taken off the list are removed from the phone.
With Download only on Wi-Fi on (the default), it waits for Wi-Fi before downloading.
It only downloads. Nothing is ever uploaded, and there is no account. See the privacy policy.

Links that can't be used

Google Photos and iCloud shared album links don't work. Google and Apple don't offer apps a way to read those albums, so Photo Cycle doesn't try. To put a photo from Google Photos (or any other app) on your wallpaper, open the photo, tap Share and choose Photo Cycle. You can also tap Add photos in Photo Cycle.

The four kinds of list Photo Cycle reads

1. A plain text file, one photo per line

# Spargur family album
https://example.com/family/beach.jpg
https://example.com/family/birthday.jpg
grandkids/first-day.jpg

Lines starting with # are notes. An address can be complete, or relative to the list's own address (so grandkids/first-day.jpg next to https://example.com/family/photos.txt means https://example.com/family/grandkids/first-day.jpg).

2. A JSON list

{
  "title": "Spargur family",
  "photos": [
    "https://example.com/family/beach.jpg",
    { "src": "2019/cake.jpg", "d": "2019-03-14" }
  ]
}

title (optional) is the album name the app shows. Each photo is an address, or an object with src (the address) and d (optional: the date the photo was taken, as YYYY-MM-DD, used for the date caption and "On this day" when the photo file has no date of its own).

3. A bare JSON array

["beach.jpg", "birthday.jpg", "https://example.com/other/party.png"]

4. A web folder listing

Many web servers can show a public folder as a plain "Index of /family" page of links. Paste that page's address and Photo Cycle uses every link on it to a .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .webp, .heic, .heif or .gif file.

Rules

Every address must start with https://.
Photos must open without signing in.
JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC/HEIF and GIF (shown as a still picture), up to 40 MB each. Anything else is skipped.
Up to 5,000 photos per list.
Photo Cycle stops downloading when the phone has less than about 300 MB free.

Where to put the photos

Your own website or web hosting: upload the photos and a photos.txt list to one folder, then share the address of photos.txt.
GitHub Pages (free): a public repository with the photos and a photos.txt or photos.json file. Anyone with the link can see the photos, so use it only for photos you're happy to have public.
A home photo server or NAS that can share a folder as a plain web folder listing over https.

To add photos later, upload them and add their lines to the list. Everyone's phone picks them up at its next check.

En español

Un solo enlace, las mismas fotos en el fondo de pantalla de todos, sin cuentas. Pon tus fotos en un lugar de la web que cualquiera con el enlace pueda abrir, haz una lista (basta con un archivo de texto con la dirección de una foto por línea) y envía la dirección de la lista a tu familia. Cada persona la pega en Photo Cycle, en Tus fotos › Álbum compartido, y toca Guardar.

Photo Cycle lee los cuatro tipos de lista de arriba: texto (una dirección por línea, # para notas), JSON con title y photos, un arreglo JSON, o una página de carpeta web ("Index of").
Las direcciones deben empezar con https://. Fotos JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC/HEIF y GIF, de hasta 40 MB cada una, y hasta 5,000 fotos por lista.
Descarga cada foto una sola vez y la guarda en el teléfono. Con Descargar solo con Wi-Fi (activado de forma predeterminada) espera una red Wi-Fi.
No se pueden usar enlaces de álbumes de Google Fotos ni de iCloud: Google y Apple no permiten que las apps los lean. Para una foto de Google Fotos, ábrela, toca Compartir y elige Photo Cycle.

Questions

Email info@spargurtax.com.