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You probably already have everything you need to do it. Check out the following choices to View Photos on Your TV. It’s hard to do your photos right on the small screen of your phone or camera, whether you’re sharing photos from a recent trip or going down memory lane.
So why not use the big screen you already have your TV to watch movies? When our TVs were smaller, it wasn’t a big deal to see a black screen. In this day and age of cheap big TVs, they’re just ugly. This is especially true if your TV is dirty and has fingerprints on it.
You just got back from a trip and want to show your friends and family the pictures and videos you took, but the screen on your phone probably isn’t big enough. The big Samsung TV in your living room might be the right screen for the job, but it doesn’t have the Photos app.
Ways to View Photos on Your TV
Stream Images Using Chromecast
If you have a Chromecast, you can use it to send your pictures straight to your TV. As long as it’s all set up and on the same network as the source device, you should be good to go.
You can also use your own pictures as the background for Chromecast choices. To make this happen, open the Backdrop setting and turn the “Your Photos” switch on.
View Photos With Kodi
If you haven’t heard of Kodi before, you should look into it. It is open source software for a home theater center that has everything you need. You can easily look at pictures and movies, watch videos, listen to music, and do a lot more.
Use a USB Drive
If you have an extra USB drive or external hard drive, you can just copy the files to it and connect it to your TV. That is, if your TV has a USB port. Turn on the TV, plug in your drive, and then choose USB as the source. Some TVs can find new media on their own, while others can’t. Use the TV remote to move around the drive and look at the pictures however you want.
Stream Images Using Plex
For this to work, you’ll need to set up Plex as a media server, but if you already use the media center, you can use it to share your pictures as well as movies and TV shows. From the Plex home page, you can get to an app that is just for your photos and movies.
Set up Plex to share your picture folder(s), and then open the media center on your TV. If you choose Photos from the Home page, you can see all of them in any order you want.
Connect Your Device Directly to Your TV
If your laptop or tablet has a USB port and your TV has a USB input, you can connect the two to show your pictures on your TV. Whether you use Windows or Apple, you can mirror your laptop screen to your TV and play your pictures that way. This has the extra benefit of letting you make slideshows to spice things up.
- If your TV has Bluetooth, it’s easy to connect your phone or computer to it. Go to the Settings menu in Windows and choose Devices.
- Next, click the box that says “Show notifications to connect using Swift Pair.” This will let you connect via Bluetooth.