Desktop App

The Wallie desktop app runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. It can set up a frame and put photos on it without a phone — useful when your photos live on a computer, or when you’re setting up a frame for someone who doesn’t use a smartphone.

Download it at wallieframe.com/desktop.html. Setting up from a phone instead? See Getting Started.

Pick how the frame will get photos

During setup, the app asks How will you use this frame? There are two answers, and they work quite differently:

	Copy photos onto the frame	Get new photos over your home Wi-Fi
Where photos live	On the frame itself	In folders you choose on your computer
How they get there	You send them over the frame’s own wireless network	The frame fetches them over your home Wi-Fi, on its schedule
Getting new photos	Only when you connect and copy them — the frame never looks for new photos on its own	Automatic — add photos to the folder and they appear on the frame’s schedule
Needs home Wi-Fi?	No — no network or internet involved	Yes (no internet needed)
The computer afterwards	Can be off, asleep, or elsewhere	Must stay awake with Wallie open — unless a separate server (Pi, NAS) serves instead

Copy photos onto the frame is the same Direct Transfer feature the phone app uses — just driven from a computer. Get new photos over your home Wi-Fi turns Wallie into the frame’s photo source: the app runs a Photo server, and the frame checks in with your computer instead of the cloud.

This choice lasts for the life of the pairing. You can change it later, but that means factory-resetting the frame and setting it up again — so pick with a little care.

Before you start

• Wake the frame. Press the button on the back once. A brand-new frame shows its setup screen — with a QR code and a 4-character code — on the display.
• Turn on Bluetooth on your computer. The app finds nearby frames over Bluetooth. No Bluetooth? There’s a manual path below.
• Stay near the frame for the whole setup.

Set up a frame

In the sidebar, click Add a frame (or Add your first frame if the list is empty). The Set Up New Frame wizard walks through Select, Configure, then Connect — with a Photos step before Connect if the frame gets photos over your home Wi-Fi.

Step 1 · Select

1. The app scans for nearby frames. When yours appears, click it.
2. Under Confirm Frame, type the 4-character code shown on the frame’s display. Lowercase is fine, and the code never uses easily-confused characters like 0/O or 1/I.

If the display isn’t showing the code, click Show on Frame to bring the setup screen back up.

If the app says the code doesn’t match, check each character against the display and re-enter it. After too many incorrect codes, the frame pauses code checks until it restarts — hold its power button for about 2 seconds to turn it off, press once to turn it back on, then try again.

If the app says No frames found, make sure the frame is awake and showing its setup screen (press the button on the back once), then click Scan Again.

Step 2 · Configure

• Name Your Frame — e.g., Living Room.
• Orientation — Portrait or Landscape.
• Change picture every — how often the photo rotates. Frequent changes use more battery; you can adjust this any time later in the frame’s settings.
• How will you use this frame? — choose Copy photos onto the frame or Get new photos over your home Wi-Fi (see above).
• If you chose the home Wi-Fi option, pick where photos are served from: This computer (easiest — Wallie must stay open and the computer awake) or A separate server (a Raspberry Pi, NAS, or any always-on machine — this computer can sleep). Running your own server? Click Connect… right there to point Wallie at it; see Self-Hosted Server to set one up.

Then click Set Up Frame — or Continue, if the frame gets photos over your home Wi-Fi.

Step 3 · Connect — if you chose Copy photos onto the frame

The app checks the code with the frame and sets it up automatically. When you see “[your frame’s name] is ready!”, the frame’s own network details appear under Frame Wireless Network:

• Network — the frame’s network name, like Wallie-XXXXXX
• Password — with a copy button next to each

Click Connect to Frame and the app joins that network for you (or join it manually from your computer’s Wi-Fi settings — the copy buttons are there for exactly that). Once connected, the app takes you straight to your frame’s page, where you can pick photos to send.

Network not showing up? Press the button on the back of the frame once, then try again.

Step 3 · Photos — if you chose Get new photos over your home Wi-Fi

The frame needs somewhere to get photos from, so the wizard asks for at least one photo folder before it will finish setup. Pick a folder — photos you add to it later show up on the frame automatically. If you’ve already added folders (say, for another frame), this step is just a checkmark.

An empty folder is fine — the wizard tells you the frame will stay on its current screen until you drop photos in.

Step 4 · Connect — if you chose Get new photos over your home Wi-Fi

The app asks for your home network’s name and password. It sends them to the frame over Bluetooth; the frame restarts and joins your network.

Wallie uses 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi. If your network shows two options, pick the regular one — not the one with “5G” in the name.

The wizard then waits until the frame actually checks in — setup isn’t “done” until your frame has reached the photo server. Once it connects, the screen flickers through a few colors while the first photo draws; that’s normal, and takes about 30 seconds. If the frame can’t connect after a couple of minutes, the wizard says so — a mistyped Wi-Fi password is the usual cause, and the frame goes back to its setup screen so you can just re-enter it and try again.

Once the frame connects, remember the trade-off you chose: Wallie must stay open on this computer for the frame to fetch photos.

Sending photos — Copy photos onto the frame

Right after setup, you land on your frame’s page already connected — click Choose photos to send…, pick as many as you like, and they transfer straight away. Your first photos can be on the frame within a minute of finishing setup.

Any time after that:

1. Press the button on the back of the frame once to wake it.
2. In the app, click your frame in the sidebar, then Connect to Frame. The app joins the frame’s network and keeps retrying while the dialog is open.
3. Once connected, click Choose photos to send… to pick files and transfer them in one step. Prefer browsing? Browse Files and your photo library are there too — Send transfers one photo; select several and Transfer All sends the batch. You can also Add a photo folder so its photos always appear here, ready to send.

Photos are stored on the frame itself. When you’re done, close the app, shut the laptop, leave the house — the frame doesn’t need the computer again until you want to send more.

The frame’s network goes back to sleep after a period of inactivity. Whenever it isn’t found, a single press of the button on the back brings it back.

The desktop app can’t wake a sleeping frame on its own — the button press is what wakes it.

Day to day — Get new photos over your home Wi-Fi

• Add photos in the Photos tab. Point Wallie at a Local Folder, connect Google Photos, or generate art — the frame picks up new photos on its schedule.
• Keep Wallie open. The sidebar shows Photo server · Running while the frame can reach it.
• Want a photo to land right now? Press the button on the back of the frame — it checks in immediately.

If the frame stops updating, the usual cause is the computer being asleep or the app closed — see Frame not checking in.

Advanced — don’t want to keep this computer awake? The frame can use a Wallie photo server running on another machine (a spare computer or home server that’s always on). In the app, go to Photo server → Server Settings → Remote and point it at that server — the frame fetches photos from there instead, and this computer no longer needs to stay awake.

No Bluetooth? Manual setup

On a computer without Bluetooth, the wizard offers a manual path instead of scanning:

1. On the frame’s setup screen, find the frame’s network name — it looks like Wallie-XXXXXX.
2. Type it into the wizard, along with the 4-character code from the display (or the full password shown under the QR code).
3. Continue with Configure as usual.

Switching modes later

The mode you picked during setup is permanent for that pairing. To switch between Copy photos onto the frame and Get new photos over your home Wi-Fi: factory reset the frame, then run Set Up New Frame again and choose the other option.

Next

→ Troubleshooting — Desktop app if something isn’t connecting.