Turn an old phone or tablet into a digital photo frame
A spare Android device, the Windows PC your photographs are already on, and your own Wi-Fi. No cloud service, no account, no subscription, and no hardware to buy.
The short version. QuickImageViewer is a free image viewer for Windows. Its companion app, qIV Remote, connects to it over your own network and mirrors whatever the PC is showing. Start a slideshow on the PC, prop the device up, and it is a photo frame. The pictures never leave your machine.
The viewer is free and open source. The Android app is free to install and its Watch screen — the photo frame itself — is part of a one-off in-app unlock; the app's demo mode runs that screen in full before you decide. What is free and what is not →
Why not a real photo frame
Bought photo frames ask you to hand your family pictures to somebody's cloud, pay a subscription to keep them there, and trust a company to still exist next year. The ones that do not want a subscription want an SD card you have to physically carry back and forth every time you take a new photograph.
The device in your drawer already has a screen, a battery and Wi-Fi. The photographs are already on your PC, in the folders you already keep them in. No new hardware, no recurring cost, and no third party involved at any point.
What you need
- A spare Android phone or tablet running Android 13 or later.
- A Windows 10 or 11 PC with your photographs on it.
- One Wi-Fi network that both are connected to.
That is the whole list. There is no hub, no bridge, no account, and no cable. See what is free and what is not before you start — the frame itself is the paid half, and the app will show it to you first.
How to set it up
1. Install QuickImageViewer on the PC
It is a single executable of about 9.7 MB. Download it, put it wherever you like and run it — there is no installer, no Visual C++ Redistributable and no background service. To remove it later, delete the file.
2. Switch on the local server
Press F9 in QuickImageViewer. That starts its local server and asks you to set a password. The password is compulsory for anything other than the machine itself, it never crosses the network, and five wrong guesses from one address cost that address fifteen minutes.
3. Install qIV Remote on the device
It is free on Google Play, has no ads and needs no account. It also has a demo mode, so you can see every screen before connecting it to anything at all.
4. Connect the device to the PC
Open the app, enter the PC's address and the password you set. The connection is direct: the phone opens a socket to your PC and nothing else is involved. If the two are on the same Wi-Fi it takes a few seconds.
5. Start the slideshow and prop it up
Start a slideshow on the PC. The device follows it — every picture the PC shows appears on the frame, at the pace you set. Stand the device against something, plug it in, and that is a photo frame showing your own photographs from your own machine.
More than one frame at a time
The PC drives as many connected devices as you have. A phone in the kitchen and a tablet in the hall both show the same picture from the same machine, and adding a third costs nothing but finding a third old device. Each one can also be told to show a different folder if you would rather they did not agree.
It is a remote control too
The same app that acts as a frame is a full remote for the viewer: next, previous, zoom, slideshow, a live preview of what the desktop is showing, and a search that opens a picture when you type part of its name. Useful from the sofa, and useful when the PC is plugged into a television. Every screen, in detail →
What this is not
It is not a standalone frame. The PC holds the pictures and drives the display, so it has to be switched on and on the same network. If you want something that works with the computer off, this is the wrong tool and a bought frame is the right one.
It is not a cloud album. Nothing is uploaded, which is the point, and it also means the frame does not work from somebody else's house.
Questions
What is free, and what is not?
QuickImageViewer, on the PC, is free and open source under the AGPL. Every feature, no advertising, no telemetry, nothing held back and nothing to buy.
qIV Remote, on the phone, is free to install — no ads and no account — and its Simple remote works on one saved PC without paying anything. The Watch screen is the photo frame described on this page, and it is part of a one-off in-app unlock, along with the Advanced remote, the Stream screen and saving more than one PC. It is a single purchase, not a subscription.
You can see it before you buy it. The app's demo mode runs every paid screen against a viewer that does not exist, so the frame can be judged on the phone in your hand rather than on this description of it.
Do my photos go to a cloud service?
No. The phone talks to your PC directly. There is no server in the middle, no account, and no copy of your pictures anywhere but the machine they were already on.
Does the PC have to stay switched on?
Yes. This turns a machine you already leave running into the engine behind the frame; it does not replace one.
How old can the device be?
It needs Android 13, which rules out anything older than roughly 2022. Beyond that, age does not matter much — the app is small and the PC does the work.
What picture formats does it handle?
Whatever the PC can open, which is 44 file extensions across more than twenty formats — JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC from an iPhone, AVIF, JPEG XL, camera RAW and others. The full list →