How To Setup A Screensaver Of Your Photo's
If you've got a large collection of photos you may want to have them appear randomly on your screen as a screensaver after a few minutes of inactivity (I know my parents love this feature), it may even be you've got a folder with some great background pictures you want to use as a screensaver - either way the process is exactly the same...
Step 1:
Head over to System>Appearance and go down to the bottom section that says SCREENSAVER, then click right and choose the top option (screensaver mode)
Step 2:
You'll now be presented with the following screen, simply click right and select GET MORE...
Step 3:
You should now be able to see a list of slideshow addons that can be installed, you can choose any you like depending on what you want your slideshow to do but for use with a local photo gallery we currently have two options - "Multi Slideshow Screensaver" or "Slideshow". We're going to use the standard Slideshow one in this demonstration but the other one is setup in the same way it just has more options of how the pictures are displayed on the screen - it uses scrolling methods not native to Kodi such as a Star Wars intro style, ATV style etc.
Step 4:
On the following screen click on install and it may take a few seconds but you should then have a screen appear showing that it's enabled:
Step 5:
Go back one level (click the 2 dots at the top of the list) and you'll find youself back at the same screen as step 1. Click on SCREENSAVER MODE again and you should now have the option to use the Slideshow, click on Slideshow to activate it.
Step 6:
Go down to the option below where it says "Settings" and we can now quickly setup what photo gallery to use...
Step 7: Basic Settings
In the first tab (Basic) you'll need to setup some basic settings, below is an explanation of what's needed.
Source Of Slideshow Images: You have the options of using your video or music fanart folders, if either of these are selected the slideshow will be of random movie/tv/music backgrounds. We need to set this to Image Folder.
- Folder: This will only be available if Image Folder is selected from the above option. Click here and navigate to the folder you want to use for you photo slideshow, once in the root folder click right and select OK.
Amount Of Seconds To Display Each Image: Pretty self explanitory! An image will be displayed for x amount of time before showing the next one.
Dim Level: You can move this scaler down to whatever dim percentage you want, this is particularly useful to stop "burn in" on TV screens. The higher the percentage the brighter the image will be (100 will be an exact duplicate of the image with no dimming).
Effect: By default it's set to Pan & Zoom which is also the Kodi default when using the built-in slideshow manually There are two other options with this Slideshow; "Slide" will slide the images in from right to left and "Crossfade" will use a transition that blends from one images to another.
Step 8: Additional Settings
Once you're happy with your settings in the previous section click all the way up so you're in the top tab highliting "Basic" then move right to "Additional"
Display Images In Random Order: This will randomize the slideshow rather than have everything appear in the order they're organized in.
Scale Images Full Screen: All images will be scaled to use the same dimensions as the fullscreen, this could cause some stretching.
Display Image Name: If enabled the image file name will also be displayed on screen.
Display Picture Date: If enabled the timestamp (date the picture was created) will be displayed on screen.
Display Additional Picture Tags: If there is any extra EXIF information in the file this will be displayed on screen.
Display Music Info During Audio Playback: A very neat little feature, if you have your slideshow active whilst music is playing in the background then this will overlay the music info on top of your picture slideshow. This is particularly useful when listening to music from your library, not really so useful when streaming live internet radio as the info you'll get is just details of the stream and not what's playing.
Step 9: Advanced Settings
There's not a lot to change in here, the only option is whether or not you want to enable image cache. By default it's enabled and this will cache all the images which means future browsing of these images will be instant and you won't have a slight delay while it thinks about showing the image. The delay is minimal and barely noticeable so if you have a device that's low on storage you may want to disable this option especially if you have a large image library.
Once you're happy with the settings click on OK to save the settings, REMEMBER TO CLICK OK - if you simply escape out of the settings they won't be saved so make sure you click on OK unless you want to enter them all again.
You should now be taken back to the same screen as Step 1 so we'll just go through the remaining options...
- Preview: After making your changes in the above steps it's always worth clicking on this so you can see a preview of what the screensaver will look like, it's easy to make a mistake so this will help you bug track if anything isn't quite right.
Screensaver Time: This is the amount of time you want to allow inactivity before the screensaver is activated. The default is 3mins so if there has been no activity within kodi for 3mins the screensaver will start.
Use Visualization If Playing Audio: When playing audio kodi will show some funky visualizations on the screen, if enabled the screensaver will not override this.
Use Dim If Paused During Video Playback: If you pause a video then by default Kodi will dim the screen after a set time of inactivity, if you disable this option then the screensaver will kick in rather than dim.
If you've got a large collection of photos you may want to have them appear randomly on your screen as a screensaver after a few minutes of inactivity (I know my parents love this feature), it may even be you've got a folder with some great background pictures you want to use as a screensaver - either way the process is exactly the same...
Step 1:
Head over to System>Appearance and go down to the bottom section that says SCREENSAVER, then click right and choose the top option (screensaver mode)
Step 2:
You'll now be presented with the following screen, simply click right and select GET MORE...
Step 3:
You should now be able to see a list of slideshow addons that can be installed, you can choose any you like depending on what you want your slideshow to do but for use with a local photo gallery we currently have two options - "Multi Slideshow Screensaver" or "Slideshow". We're going to use the standard Slideshow one in this demonstration but the other one is setup in the same way it just has more options of how the pictures are displayed on the screen - it uses scrolling methods not native to Kodi such as a Star Wars intro style, ATV style etc.
Step 4:
On the following screen click on install and it may take a few seconds but you should then have a screen appear showing that it's enabled:
Step 5:
Go back one level (click the 2 dots at the top of the list) and you'll find youself back at the same screen as step 1. Click on SCREENSAVER MODE again and you should now have the option to use the Slideshow, click on Slideshow to activate it.
Step 6:
Go down to the option below where it says "Settings" and we can now quickly setup what photo gallery to use...
Step 7: Basic Settings
In the first tab (Basic) you'll need to setup some basic settings, below is an explanation of what's needed.
Source Of Slideshow Images: You have the options of using your video or music fanart folders, if either of these are selected the slideshow will be of random movie/tv/music backgrounds. We need to set this to Image Folder.
- Folder: This will only be available if Image Folder is selected from the above option. Click here and navigate to the folder you want to use for you photo slideshow, once in the root folder click right and select OK.
Amount Of Seconds To Display Each Image: Pretty self explanitory! An image will be displayed for x amount of time before showing the next one.
Dim Level: You can move this scaler down to whatever dim percentage you want, this is particularly useful to stop "burn in" on TV screens. The higher the percentage the brighter the image will be (100 will be an exact duplicate of the image with no dimming).
Effect: By default it's set to Pan & Zoom which is also the Kodi default when using the built-in slideshow manually There are two other options with this Slideshow; "Slide" will slide the images in from right to left and "Crossfade" will use a transition that blends from one images to another.
Step 8: Additional Settings
Once you're happy with your settings in the previous section click all the way up so you're in the top tab highliting "Basic" then move right to "Additional"
Display Images In Random Order: This will randomize the slideshow rather than have everything appear in the order they're organized in.
Scale Images Full Screen: All images will be scaled to use the same dimensions as the fullscreen, this could cause some stretching.
Display Image Name: If enabled the image file name will also be displayed on screen.
Display Picture Date: If enabled the timestamp (date the picture was created) will be displayed on screen.
Display Additional Picture Tags: If there is any extra EXIF information in the file this will be displayed on screen.
Display Music Info During Audio Playback: A very neat little feature, if you have your slideshow active whilst music is playing in the background then this will overlay the music info on top of your picture slideshow. This is particularly useful when listening to music from your library, not really so useful when streaming live internet radio as the info you'll get is just details of the stream and not what's playing.
Step 9: Advanced Settings
There's not a lot to change in here, the only option is whether or not you want to enable image cache. By default it's enabled and this will cache all the images which means future browsing of these images will be instant and you won't have a slight delay while it thinks about showing the image. The delay is minimal and barely noticeable so if you have a device that's low on storage you may want to disable this option especially if you have a large image library.
Once you're happy with the settings click on OK to save the settings, REMEMBER TO CLICK OK - if you simply escape out of the settings they won't be saved so make sure you click on OK unless you want to enter them all again.
You should now be taken back to the same screen as Step 1 so we'll just go through the remaining options...
- Preview: After making your changes in the above steps it's always worth clicking on this so you can see a preview of what the screensaver will look like, it's easy to make a mistake so this will help you bug track if anything isn't quite right.
Screensaver Time: This is the amount of time you want to allow inactivity before the screensaver is activated. The default is 3mins so if there has been no activity within kodi for 3mins the screensaver will start.
Use Visualization If Playing Audio: When playing audio kodi will show some funky visualizations on the screen, if enabled the screensaver will not override this.
Use Dim If Paused During Video Playback: If you pause a video then by default Kodi will dim the screen after a set time of inactivity, if you disable this option then the screensaver will kick in rather than dim.