If you own a Chromecast with Google TV, you are probably well aware of the cool pictures it shows when it has been left on and not in use for quite some time. Those are curated by Google. But what if you could use your own Google Photos on your Chromecast with Google TV screen saver? Well you can. And it is actually quite easy to make this happen.
There are basically two big steps for making this happen. First you need to configure the screen saver settings on your Chromecast with Google TV. Secondly, you need to choose Google Photos and the album you want it to show pictures from. Today, we’ll walk you through how to do both.
How to setup the screen saver on Google TV
On your TV, scroll over to the profile picture in the corner of the screen. And tap on it.
Then tap on Settings.
From there, you’ll scroll down to System and tap on it.
Then tap on Energy saver.
Next tap on “Turn off Display”.
Now choose when you want the display to turn off.
After about five minutes, your Google TV will show the screen saver, until it turns off at the desired amount of time – I have mine set to an hour.
How to setup Google Photos as your screen saver
Now for the second part. This part is going to be done on your smartphone in the Google Home app. So if you do not have it installed, we recommend doing so.
Firstly, open the Google Home app, and find your Chromecast with google TV device. Then select it.
Now tap on the gear icon in the right corner of the device page.
Then find “Ambient Mode” in the device settings and tap on it.
Here, you will see a few different options for Ambient Mode. Select the “Google Photos” option from the list.
It will now show albums from your Google Photos account. You can select all the albums or the ones you want to see in Ambient mode (aka the screen saver) only.
After you have tapped all of the albums you want to add, tap on the back arrow in the top left corner.
Google Home does have a few other Ambient Mode options available. You are able to choose whether you want to shoe the weather, time, device information, personal photo data. And can also choose to put portrait photos side-by-side, enable photo curation and adjust the slideshow speed.
And you’re all set. That’s how you can get your own Google Photos into the Ambient Mode on your Chromecast with Google TV.
It’ll look like this, depending on your settings.
