NAS Slideshow Apps Compared
Which app should play your NAS photo library? Six of them side by side, including where another app is the better answer.
| Feature | Pixette | Fotoo by Bopp Studio | nFolio by Snapwood | FrameSway by Maandrik, Lda |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Description | ||||
| What it's good at | The only app here on iPhone, iPad, Vision Pro and Apple Silicon Macs as well as Android, and the only one with native Immich support. Face and saliency detection decide the crop, so group shots don't lose heads to the frame edge. Plus EXIF filters, overlays, scheduled sleep, Custom Margins for a bezel, and QR-code setup. | The most polished dedicated frame app on Play, and the one to beat on presentation. It's the only app here that reads the big cloud services, adds background music, a weather and clock overlay and scheduled screen brightness, and it filters screenshots and documents out of your library automatically. No native Synology Photos or Immich support: a NAS is reached over SMB. | The one that gets your NAS photos onto a television. Fire TV, Android TV and Chromecast are all covered, which no other app here matches, and it will mix local photos with network shares in a single shuffled slideshow. Clock, weather and photo info overlays, and it starts the slideshow on boot. | Narrow by design, and good at what it does. Star-rate a photo on the frame and the rating writes back to Synology Photos in real time, which nothing else here does. Live Photos play their video portion before settling on the still, and portrait shots get a blurred background fill instead of black bars on a widescreen tablet. |
| Pick it if | You're on iOS, or you run Immich, or you want one app across several different devices, or you want the cropping and EXIF filtering. | Your household is Android-only, your photos live in Google Photos or Dropbox rather than on a NAS, or you'd rather pay once and never think about it again. | You want the slideshow on a TV or a streaming stick, or your NAS only exposes DLNA. | You're a pure Synology household, you want it free, and rating photos from the couch appeals. |
| Store rating | 4.7 / 5 App Store, 170 ratings 4.4 / 5 Google Play | 3.8 / 5 Google Play, 6,580 ratings | 3.9 / 5 Google Play, 559 ratings | 4.4 / 5 Google Play |
| Platform | ||||
| iPhone, iPad, Vision Pro, Apple Silicon Mac | ✓ | No | No | No |
| Android phones and tablets | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| TV platforms (Fire TV, Android TV) | No | No | ✓ | Android TV |
| Photo sources | ||||
| Synology Photos, natively | ✓ | Via SMB | Via SMB or DLNA | ✓ |
| Immich, natively | ✓ | No | No | No |
| WebDAV | ✓ | No | No | No |
| SMB / CIFS | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | No |
| DLNA / UPnP | No | No | ✓ | No |
| Cloud services (Google Photos, Dropbox, OneDrive) | No | ✓ | No | No |
| Features | ||||
| Face and saliency-aware cropping | ✓ | Not listed | Not listed | Not listed |
| Blurred fill instead of black bars | ✓ | Not listed | Not listed | ✓ |
| Two portrait photos side by side | ✓ | Not listed | Not listed | Not listed |
| Custom margins to fit a real bezel | ✓ | Not listed | Not listed | Not listed |
| Transition effects (Ken Burns and similar) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Shuffle / randomised order | ✓ | Not listed | ✓ | Not listed |
| EXIF filters (date, camera, metadata) | ✓ | Not listed | Not listed | Not listed |
| Plays videos in the slideshow | ✓ | Not listed | ✓ | ✓ |
| Apple Live Photos | ✓ | Not listed | Not listed | ✓ |
| Background music | No | ✓ | Not listed | Not listed |
| Clock, date and photo-info overlays | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Not listed |
| Weather overlay | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Not listed |
| Scheduled sleep and wake | ✓ | ✓ | Not listed | Not listed |
| Motion-aware sleep (dims an empty room) | ✓ | Not listed | Not listed | Not listed |
| Offline playback from a local cache | ✓ | Not listed | Not listed | Not listed |
| Star ratings written back to the NAS | No | Not listed | Not listed | ✓ |
| Price | ||||
| Pricing | Free tier, then less than $5/year | Free tier, then ~$25 once | Free | Free tier, then one-time |
| Cost over five years | Under $25 | ~$25 | Free | Free, or one-time |
| Where to get it | About Pixette | Listing | Listing | Listing |
Who wrote this: I did, and I make Pixette, one of the apps above. So it isn't a neutral review. Every claim comes from each app's own published listing, checked in July 2026; "Not listed" means the listing doesn't mention it, not that the app can't do it. If something here is wrong or out of date, tell me and I'll fix it. That goes for the other developers too.
Also worth knowing #
Two more that play NAS photos, each for a narrower job than the four above.
Photos Frame for Slideshow
by Vyacheslav Korolev
Worth knowing if your NAS is still on Synology's older photo packages: it speaks Moments and Photo Station as well as the current Synology Photos, and lets you pick specific albums on the NAS.
Pick it if: You're on an older DSM with Moments or Photo Station rather than Synology Photos.
Freemium · Android
Photos Frame for Slideshow listing
SlideShow – Digital Signage
by Milan Fabian
Really a signage player rather than a photo frame: playlists, layouts, scheduling and remote management, with photos as one content type among many. It overlaps with Pixette on Android panels, but the job is different.
Pick it if: You need scheduled playlists, mixed content and remote management across several screens: a shop or an office rather than a hallway.
Free, with paid signage tiers · Android phones, tablets, TV boxes
SlideShow – Digital Signage listingWhere Pixette wins, and where it doesn't #
What Pixette does that the others don't
- It's the only one of these on iPhone, iPad, Apple Vision Pro and Apple Silicon Macs. Every direct competitor is Android-only.
- It's the only one with native Immich support, which matters as more people move off cloud photo services.
- Widest protocol coverage: Synology Photos and Immich natively, plus WebDAV and SMB, so it works with QNAP, Nextcloud, TrueNAS, ownCloud, Seafile and Unraid too.
- Face and saliency detection decide the crop, so a portrait photo on a landscape screen keeps the person in frame.
- Setup transfers from your phone by QR code, which is the difference between a five-minute job and a fight when the screen is on a wall.
Where another app is the better buy
- Fotoo charges once and never again. Pixette's Premium renews yearly. It works out cheaper over five years, but if you'd rather buy outright, Fotoo is the one.
- Pixette reads NAS and on-device photos, not Google Photos, Dropbox or OneDrive. If your library lives in the cloud, Fotoo fits better.
- nFolio and FrameSway give their core away free. Pixette's free tier caps out at 500 photos, and the frame features are Premium.
- nFolio runs on Fire TV, Android TV and Chromecast. Pixette targets phones, tablets, Android displays and Macs, so a television is not its job.
- FrameSway writes star ratings back into Synology Photos as you watch, so you can curate from the couch. Pixette can't.
If you'd rather not install an app #
All free, and all of them mean leaving a browser running full screen instead of a native app. For a self-hoster with a spare screen, that's often fine.
If you already run Immich, its web app will play a slideshow in a browser. Free, and nothing extra to install.
A kiosk-mode web frontend for Immich, built for exactly this job. Needs a browser left running full screen.
Self-hosted photo library with its own slideshow view. A whole photo platform rather than a frame app.
Turns a Home Assistant dashboard into a photo screensaver. The obvious choice if the screen is already a smart-home panel.
Comparing against hardware instead?
How a tablet running Pixette stacks up against an Aura or Nixplay smart frame.
Already decided?
Step-by-step setup guides for Synology, Immich, QNAP, Nextcloud, TrueNAS and more.
Try Pixette on your own library
Free to download, on iOS and Android. The free tier costs nothing to test.