Using Your Frame
Everything you can do day-to-day, from the button on the frame and from the app.
The button
Section titled “The button”There’s just one. It does everything. Watch the light on the back — it tells you exactly what stage you’re in.
| What you’ll see | What it means | Release here to… |
|---|---|---|
| Green flash (after a quick press) | Wallie is awake | Skip to the next photo |
| Solid red (while holding) | Shutdown zone | Power off |
| Flashing white (keep holding) | Factory-reset warning | Cancel — nothing happens |
| Light goes dark (keep holding still) | Factory reset triggered | Release — Wallie resets its settings and restarts (photos stored on the frame are kept) |
| What you’ll see | What it means | Release here to… |
|---|---|---|
| Green flash (after a quick press) | Wallie is awake | Skip to the next photo |
| Solid red (while holding) | Shutdown zone | Power off |
| All lights flashing (keep holding) | Factory-reset warning | Cancel — nothing happens |
| All lights go dark (keep holding still) | Factory reset triggered | Release — Wallie resets its settings and restarts (photos stored on the frame are kept) |
| What you’ll see | What it means | Release here to… |
|---|---|---|
| Green flash (after a quick press) | Wallie is awake | Skip to the next photo |
| Solid red (while holding) | Shutdown zone | Power off |
| All lights flashing — flashing white on the 10” and 13” v2 (keep holding) | Factory-reset warning | Cancel — nothing happens |
| Light goes dark (keep holding still) | Factory reset triggered | Release — Wallie resets its settings and restarts (photos stored on the frame are kept) |
A quick press is also how you “wake” Wallie if it’s been sleeping for a while — useful if you want it to check for new photos right now.
You don't even need to walk to the frame — your Wallie can be woken from the phone app over Bluetooth any time.
On the 10" and 13" v2, you don't even need to walk to the frame: the phone app can wake them over Bluetooth any time (see Which model do I have?).
Want to factory-reset? Keep holding through every light stage above until the flashing suddenly goes dark — that’s your cue to release. The whole thing takes around ten seconds. See Factory reset for what to expect afterwards.
From the app
Section titled “From the app”Using the desktop app? Day-to-day controls on a computer — sending photos, the Photo server, reconnecting to the frame — are covered in the Desktop App guide. The controls in this section belong to the phone app, for frames set up with a phone.
The Frames list
Section titled “The Frames list”Frames lists everything you own, grouped by room, under the cream header that carries the wallie wordmark. Each row is one frame: the photo it’s showing right now, and its name.
- The gallery name at the top of the list is the one you’re looking at. Tap it to switch to another gallery. If you only have one, there’s nothing to switch to and no arrow appears beside the name.
- List / Layout changes how the frames are drawn. List is the plain list. Layout shows them the way they actually hang — the spacing you gave them, the sizes you own, the arrangement you made.
- Edit — the small gear beside the view toggle — is where rooms get renamed and reordered, and where frames move between them.
- Add a frame is the last row of the list. When you have galleries, the list that opens from the gallery name at the top offers Add a Frame as well.
The rows are deliberately quiet. A frame’s size shows only if you own more than one size, battery only when it’s low enough to be worth acting on, and when every frame in a room shares the same status — all asleep until 7 AM, say — that’s said once on the room’s header line instead of repeated on every row. A gallery with nothing in it yet says No frames yet on its header the same way. Anything that needs you specifically, like a frame that still needs setup, stays on the frame it’s about.
The round button on a frame is how you wake it. It rests pale green and only goes dark — with a spreading ripple — while the app is actually reaching the frame. Anything that needs attention, like a low battery or a frame that still needs setup, shows as a small amber or red chip instead; the chips aren’t buttons, just notices.
Tap any frame to open it. Everything to do with that one frame is in there: waking it, adding photos, changing its album, its schedule, and its settings.
Own just the one Wallie? Then there’s no list to go through — the Frames tab is your frame’s page. The photo it’s showing sits at the top with the wake button resting on its corner, and the frame’s controls sit right underneath, on the page itself. A status line names what’s playing — Now showing, then the album and how many photos are in it — and below it Next photo tells you when the next one is due. Tap the photo itself to open the album it’s playing. Battery appears here only when it’s low enough to be worth acting on.
Pick what’s on the wall
Section titled “Pick what’s on the wall”By default, Wallie plays through your album on its schedule. From the app you can also:
- Show on Frame — hold one photo on the wall instead of the rotation. Good for a birthday, an anniversary, or just showing off a favorite.
- Resume Album — end the hold and go back to playing your album.
- Next Photo — rotate immediately to the next image in the album.
- Refresh — pull the latest changes from your library.
Pointing a frame at a different album happens from the album line on the frame’s screen, or from its settings. Wallie is asked to refresh as soon as you pick one, so a connected frame doesn’t sit on the old album until its next check-in.
Tap a photo
Section titled “Tap a photo”Open an album and tap any photo. A sheet comes up with everything you can do with that one picture.
Show on Frame sits at the top, and one tap is the whole thing — the photo goes up and holds there. How long it holds is a setting, written out under the button so you know before you tap, and the small gear beside the button is where you change it:
| Hold time | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1 hour, 3 hours, or 24 hours | The photo holds that long, then your album picks up again on its own |
| Until I resume the album | No timer — it stays until you end the hold yourself |
It starts at 24 hours and applies to every photo you frame, so it’s a question you answer once instead of every time. The setting is kept on your phone rather than on your account, so a second phone sets its own.
When a photo is already framed, the same sheet opens with Resume Album at the top, and says how much of the hold is left — Holds for 3 more hours, or Holds until you resume. Edit Timer changes that one hold and leaves your default alone.
Resuming asks the frame to refresh straight away rather than waiting for its next scheduled check-in, so the album picks up while you’re still looking at it. A frame the app can’t reach at that moment takes the request at its next check-in instead — or right away if you press the button on the back.
The rest of the sheet:
| Row | What it does |
|---|---|
| Show next | Plays once at the next refresh, then the album continues |
| Add to Up Next | Joins the queue, after anything already waiting |
| Edit Photo | Crop, rotate, and enhance — it’s all one editor |
| Enhancement | Compare an enhanced photo with the original, or restore it. Appears only on photos you’ve enhanced |
| Copy to Album | Puts a copy in another of your albums |
Show next and Add to Up Next step aside while a photo is framed. Queuing behind a hold would promise an order the frame can’t keep.
Deleting a photo is the small icon in the sheet’s top corner, and it asks before it does anything.
To share a photo, press and hold it in the album instead of tapping — that opens your phone’s usual share sheet.
Up Next — queue what plays next
Section titled “Up Next — queue what plays next”Up Next is a short list of photos you line up to play before your albums resume — like queuing songs. Your queued photos show first, in your order, then Wallie goes back to its regular albums and schedule.
From the frame’s screen. Tap Up Next — it carries a count once something’s waiting. Pick any album from the chips at the top, tap the photos you want, then tap Add. You can keep going — switch albums, add more — and tap Done when you’re finished.
From a single photo. Tap the photo in its album and choose:
| Choice | What happens |
|---|---|
| Show on Frame | Holds it on the display until the hold runs out, or until you Resume Album |
| Show next | Front of Up Next — appears at the next refresh |
| Add to Up Next | Plays after anything already queued |
Once something’s queued for that frame, a count appears in the album’s toolbar. Tap it to open the queue and see what’s waiting.
From the Photos tab. Select photos in your library and tap Send to Frame. The app asks which frame, then queues them there.
See when each photo will appear. The Up Next editor shows an estimated time next to each photo (“~6 PM today”). Estimates follow your frame’s schedule and wake hours, so a long queue can span days — and tapping refresh on the frame shows the next queued photo right away.
Reorder or remove any time. Open Up Next from the frame’s screen: drag to reorder, swipe to remove, or Clear all. Editing the queue never wakes the frame by itself — only Show next does. When the queue finishes, the frame simply resumes your albums, and the frame’s screen shows Up Next finished so you know it played through.
Good to know:
- A framed photo holds the display first; Up Next plays after you tap Resume Album.
- Up Next always plays in the order you set — the Photo order setting below applies to your albums, and resumes after the queue finishes.
- Queuing to a Gallery: a gallery set to Together shows the queued photos on every frame; otherwise they spread across the frames.
Photo order — Even rotation or Shuffle
Section titled “Photo order — Even rotation or Shuffle”How Wallie moves through your album, on the frame’s screen in the app:
- Even rotation (default) — every photo shows once before any repeats. Fair and predictable.
- Shuffle — a surprise pick at each refresh.
Up Next always plays first, in your order, whichever Photo order you choose.
Schedule
Section titled “Schedule”Both connected and offline (Direct Transfer) Wallies have a Photo Rotation Schedule. Tap the frame in the app, then Schedule — the row already reads “Awake” followed by the current hours, so you can check them without opening it:
- Wake hours — the times of day Wallie is awake and rotating photos (default 7am–11pm). Wallie sleeps deeply outside these hours to save battery.
- Change picture every — how often the photo changes during wake hours (every 2 hours, 4 hours, etc.).
When changes apply
Section titled “When changes apply”Settings travel to the frame at its next check-in — the frame calls home on its schedule and picks them up; the app can’t push to a sleeping frame. The app shows any settings still waiting and when the next check-in is expected. Don’t want to wait? Press the button on the back once — the frame wakes, checks in, and applies everything immediately.
What’s different between connected and offline
Section titled “What’s different between connected and offline”- Connected (Wi-Fi) has more advanced scheduling: slot albums (show a different album at different times of day — morning kids’ photos, evening travel shots), weekend split (separate schedule for weekdays vs. weekends), and the most precise timing because Wallie keeps its clock in sync with the internet.
- Offline (Direct Transfer) keeps the basic active-hours + rotate-every schedule, but timing drifts a little over time without an internet clock to sync against. Photos still rotate on a regular cadence — it just isn’t accurate to the minute.
Power is managed for you — there’s no mode to choose. The frame sleeps deeply between scheduled rotations for the longest battery life, and listens for your phone over Bluetooth the whole time: the app can wake it at any hour, even outside active hours. Tap the frame in Frames — Next Photo is the button at the top.
Two power modes follow the schedule above. The mode controls what happens between scheduled rotations:
- Responsive Mode (default) — frame stays active during active hours, so changes from the app appear within minutes. About 2–3 months per charge.
- Power Saver — frame sleeps between scheduled rotations. Changes from the app appear at the next rotation, or right away if you press the button on the back. 6 months to a year per charge, depending on your settings.
You can switch between modes any time from the app.
On the 10” and 13” v2, power is managed for you — there’s no mode to choose. The frame sleeps deeply between rotations (longest battery life) and listens for your phone over Bluetooth the whole time: the app can wake it at any hour via Next Photo.
On the original 13”, two power modes control what happens between scheduled rotations:
- Responsive Mode (default) — frame stays active during active hours, so changes from the app appear within minutes. About 2–3 months per charge.
- Power Saver — frame sleeps between scheduled rotations. Changes from the app appear at the next rotation, or right away if you press the button on the back. 6 months to a year per charge, depending on your settings.
You can switch between modes any time from the app.
Status Light
Section titled “Status Light”The light on the back of the frame is adjustable from the app: Frames → your frame → Status Light.
Choose Normal, Dim, or Off.
Choose On or Off.
- 10” and 13” v2 — choose Normal, Dim, or Off.
- Original 13” — choose On or Off.
Even with the light off, the warning lights still show while you’re holding the power button — so shutdown and factory reset always give you their visual cues.
The light’s colors tell you what the frame is doing:
| Light | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pulsing or blinking blue | Ready to pair with the app over Bluetooth |
| Solid blue | Connected to the app, setup in progress |
| Pulsing or blinking purple | The frame’s own Wi-Fi hotspot is on, waiting for a connection |
| Solid purple | A device is connected to the frame’s hotspot |
| Quick-blinking green | Working — receiving photos or refreshing the display |
| Solid green | Done |
| Alternating green and blue | Installing a software update |
In short: blue means Bluetooth, purple means the frame’s own Wi-Fi hotspot, and green means working or done. A slow, steady pulse means the frame is waiting for you; quick blinking means it’s busy.
Households
Section titled “Households”You can share a Wallie with the people you live with. Anyone you invite can add photos to your frames and frame favorites alongside you.
→ See Households for the full guide: invitations, full vs limited access, and removing members.
Multiple frames in your home
Section titled “Multiple frames in your home”Have more than one Wallie? You can run them however you like:
- Same photos, different rooms — point all your frames at one album for matching displays.
- Different albums per room — kitchen shows family favorites, office shows kids’ artwork, bedroom shows your travel photos.
- Name each frame by where it lives (“Kitchen Wallie,” “Living Room”) to keep them straight in the app.
- Match wake hours to each room — your bedroom frame can sleep when you do.
If you set up another Wallie at someone else’s house — say, your parents’ — link it to a shared household album. Every photo you add appears on their frame too. They never have to do anything.
Galleries
Section titled “Galleries”A Gallery is a named group of frames — the three in the hallway, the pair over the sofa. Grouping them lets you point the whole group at one album, refresh them together, and keep them together in the app instead of scattered among your other frames.
Making one. If you set several frames up at once, the app offers to group them when they’re all running: tap Make a Gallery, or Keep them separate if you’d rather run them individually. Naming comes next, on its own screen — along with small diagrams of ways the frames can hang, once the app knows enough about them to sketch any. Nothing there is a commitment: Skip for now (or the back arrow) moves on without deciding, and the name and arrangement can both be changed later. See Setting up more than one.
Switching between them. The gallery you’re looking at is named at the top of Frames, with a small arrow beside it. Tap the name to switch to another one. Frames you haven’t assigned to any gallery stay under Unassigned.
Running one. Every group-level control lives in one place: the gallery’s own menu. Tap the gallery’s name above its wall in the Layout view to open it. The Edit button at the top of Frames reaches the same menu from anywhere — it lists your galleries, and tapping one opens its menu.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Next photo, every frame | Advances the whole group instead of one frame at a time — and says beforehand what will actually happen, frame by frame |
| Set album for gallery | Points every frame in the gallery at the same album |
| Photo style | Together — the frames share an album and move through your photos as a group. Independent — each frame picks on its own from its own mix. New galleries start Together. |
| Edit frames | Add frames to the gallery or take them out |
| Rename gallery / Delete gallery | Rename the group, or break it up. Deleting a gallery leaves the frames themselves alone. |
Edit, at the top of Frames, is also where a new gallery starts: Add Gallery creates one and then asks which frames belong to it.
Once a Gallery has an arrangement, there’s a way to measure it for the wall — see Hanging a Gallery below.
Hanging a Gallery
Section titled “Hanging a Gallery”Hanging several frames so they look deliberate is a measuring job, and the app does the measuring. It gives you a line to strike for each row of frames, every nail mark that sits on that line, and the order to hang them in.
What you need: a tape measure, a pencil, a level (a phone level app is fine) and a hammer.
Charge first. A frame is easier to top up before it’s on the wall than after. Check the battery in the app, and give it a few hours on USB-C if it’s low.
Tell the app about your wall (optional, and it saves you a decision)
Section titled “Tell the app about your wall (optional, and it saves you a decision)”The first thing the guide asks is how wide the wall is — the stretch you’re hanging on, edge to edge. One number, measured once.
It’s worth answering. Without it the guide has to say decide where the middle of the gallery goes, which is the only step in the whole procedure that asks you to make a judgment rather than read a tape. With it, the guide tells you exactly where that line falls — measure 48” from the left edge — and it can tell you whether the arrangement actually fits, with how much bare wall either side, instead of asking you to check.
You can skip it. Skip and the guide works exactly as it always has; you pick the centre yourself. You can add the measurement later from the same screen.
Mark two lines first
Section titled “Mark two lines first”Before anything goes on the wall, mark two lines:
- A vertical centre line, where the middle of the arrangement sits. If you told the app your wall width it gives you the measurement from the left edge; otherwise choose it yourself. Check it with a level either way — everything across the wall is measured from it.
- A horizontal line 57 inches from the floor, level. This is the centre of the arrangement as a whole — every frame together as one block — not the centre of any single frame. Frames sit above and below it, each at its own height.
A light pencil line or a strip of painter’s tape is enough for either.
That 57-inch measurement is the only one you take off the floor. Every other line in the guide is measured up or down from it — 11 7/8” above the 57” line, and so on — because measuring six separate heights off the floor at head height is six chances to be a little out, and nothing holds them together. Measured off one struck line, they can’t drift apart.
Then mark every line before you drill
Section titled “Then mark every line before you drill”The guide gives you one line per row of frames. For each: strike the line, hook your tape at the centre line, and work left to right making every mark on it. A row of frames the same size shares one line, so all its marks sit on it; a row mixing sizes gets a line through the frame centres and each mark sits its own distance above it.
Each line card leads with the one measurement you act on — 11 7/8” above the 57” line. Under the marks it also prints that line’s height off the floor and the distance down to the next line. Those are checks, not instructions: if you’d rather confirm a line a second way they’re there, but you never need to go back to the floor to strike one.
Mark the whole wall before a single nail goes in — a pencil cross is free and a nail hole isn’t, and once everything is marked you can stand back and look at the layout before committing to it.
Then hang them
Section titled “Then hang them”The order starts with the largest, most central frame and works outward. With every mark already measured from the two lines, the order matters less than it used to — but the biggest frame is the one whose misplacement shows most, so it goes up while there’s most room to notice.
Each frame after the first comes with a gap to check against its neighbour. That’s a confirmation, not an instruction: if a gap is off, re-measure that frame from the centre line rather than nudging it to fit, which is how a small error at the first frame compounds across the whole wall.
Two hooks or one — the instructions are opposite
Section titled “Two hooks or one — the instructions are opposite”| Your frame | On the back | How to hang it |
|---|---|---|
| 13” | Four keyholes — a landscape pair and a portrait pair, about 7 inches apart, their centres about an inch below whichever edge is currently the top. Two are in use at a time. | Both nails at the same height and about 7 inches apart. A two-hook frame can’t be straightened once it’s on the wall — the two nails fix its angle. Get the two marks level with each other; the frame then hangs the way they do. |
| 10” | A single hook, centred, about an inch below the top edge. | There’s no spacing to get wrong, so placement is forgiving. It will hang tilted, though — nudge the frame level by hand once it’s on the hook. |
Worth reading twice, because they pull in opposite directions: on a 13” the care goes into the marks, on a 10” it goes into the frame once it’s hanging.
What looks great on Wallie
Section titled “What looks great on Wallie”Wallie isn’t a screen — it’s closer to a print on the wall. Photos with rich contrast, texture, and real subjects come alive on it. Empty white spaces are the only thing that doesn’t translate well.
→ See Image Tips for a short guide to picking photos that sing on the wall.
The frame takes about 30 seconds to fully render a new photo. You’ll see brief flashing during the refresh — that’s the e-ink panel cycling colors. It’s working as intended.
Offline use
Section titled “Offline use”If your Wi-Fi goes down (or you never connected one), Wallie keeps showing your saved photos and rotating through them on schedule. When Wi-Fi returns, it auto-syncs anything new.
Direct Transfer — sending photos without Wi-Fi
Section titled “Direct Transfer — sending photos without Wi-Fi”If your Wallie was set up with Set Up Without Cloud, this is how you send photos to it:
From this computer, the same feature is the desktop app's Copy photos onto the frame flow — see Sending photos in the Desktop App guide. The steps below are the phone app's version.
- Wake the frame with a quick press of the power button.
- In the app, open the frame and start a transfer. Your phone briefly joins the frame’s private Wi-Fi network (
Wallie-XXXXXX). - Photos move directly from your phone to the frame.
- When the transfer finishes, your phone reconnects to your normal Wi-Fi automatically.
Switching between Wi-Fi and offline modes
Section titled “Switching between Wi-Fi and offline modes”Which way you’re going matters.
Without Cloud → Wi-Fi is easy: open the frame in the app and tap Upgrade to Cloud. You’ll sign in and pick your home network. No reset needed.
Wi-Fi → Without Cloud takes a reset:
- Factory reset the frame (how to).
- Pair it again as if it were new (Getting Started).
- Choose Set Up Without Cloud this time.
Your photos and account come back as soon as you re-pair, so the only cost is a few minutes.
Updating Wallie
Section titled “Updating Wallie”Firmware updates happen automatically during scheduled wakes when Wi-Fi is available. You’ll see the light alternating green and blue while it downloads. The frame restarts itself when it’s done — usually overnight. No action needed from you.
Switching to a new phone
Section titled “Switching to a new phone”Wallie encrypts your photos on your phone before they go anywhere, using a key your phone keeps to itself. That’s what keeps them unreadable while they travel and while we store them — and it’s why a new phone needs that key before it can open albums you added on the old one.
The backup that carries it across is already running. Profile → Photo Key Backup keeps a copy with your phone’s own maker — iCloud Keychain on iPhone and iPad, your Google account on Android. Both are end-to-end encrypted: Apple and Google can’t read it, and it doesn’t pass through Wallie. You can switch it off on that screen if you’d rather the key stayed on this phone alone.
The one thing worth doing before you switch is saving your recovery code. On that same screen, tap Show my code and keep it somewhere private — a password manager is ideal, written down is fine. It’s the only copy that still works if the old phone is erased, traded in, or lost. Anyone who has it can open your photos, so treat it like a password.
While you’re there, check that the banner at the top says your photos are protected. If it says they aren’t protected yet, the backup couldn’t be saved:
- iPhone or iPad — turn on iCloud Keychain in Settings → your name → iCloud → Passwords, then come back to the screen.
- Android — make sure the phone has a screen lock set and you’re signed in to a Google account, then come back.
Then sign in on the new phone, open one of your older albums, and check the photos appear before you erase or trade in the old one.
Your frames are unaffected either way. They keep showing and rotating the photos they already have, on the usual schedule.
Using a second phone or tablet
Section titled “Using a second phone or tablet”A second device on the same account — a tablet, or a spare phone — needs that same key. With the backup above in place, signing in is usually all it takes, and your albums fill in on their own.
If older albums stay blank there, open Profile → Photo Key Backup on your first phone, tap Show my code, then tap Enter a code on the second device and type it in. If that screen tells you another phone has a different key, stop there and email us before you switch phones — that one’s worth sorting out with us rather than guessing.
→ If you’ve already switched and older albums won’t open, see Older albums are blank or spin forever in the app.
Caring for your Wallie
Section titled “Caring for your Wallie”Wallie’s display is the e-ink panel itself — a glass surface with a soft matte finish, with no separate cover or screen protector over it. You’re cleaning the panel directly. Keep it simple:
- Dust with a soft, dry microfiber cloth — the same kind you’d use on a phone or eyeglasses.
- No cleaners of any kind. No water, no sprays, no alcohol, no glass cleaner, no wood polish, no paper towels.
- For the wood frame, a light dusting is all it needs.
→ Troubleshooting if something seems off — including Frame Recovery, the built-in rescue that updates a stuck frame’s software straight from your phone (tap the ? on any setup screen).