How to Use Your Google Nest Hub as Digital Photo Frame? Best Method

The Google Nest Hub and Home Hub are exceptional devices that can be used for controlling smart homes, checking the weather, checking the news, to set alarms or timers. However, if you don’t have the Ambient Display set to show your photos, you might be missing out on one of the best features it has to offer.

Google Nest Hub cannot be simply classified as a Voice Assistant

You probably are familiar with using voice commands quite a bit with your Google Nest Hub, however, that’s like neglecting its main feature that separates the Hub from other Google Nest smart speakers the display. The Nest Hub’s display can display the weather, it can play news with video, recite step-by-step recipe instructions, control your smart lights, and it can even play YouTube videos. However, one of the Nest Hub’s best features, ambient display mode, only appears when the hub is not being used.

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With the Nest Hub, Google introduced the “Ambient EQ” light sensor, which allows the device to change its brightness as well as color temperature to work best in accordance with its environment. Essentially, the Hub should look good no matter what room it is placed in. It almost feels like you’re looking at a printed photo instead of a screen.

So, when you’re not working with the Google Nest Hub, you can have it display your photos?

If you have more than one Nest or Home Hub, you can have them show the same set of photos without adding them one at a time. Your photos need to be stored in Google Photos. You can even choose which people/pets show up on your Hub.

How can you Upload Your Pictures to Google Photos?

To view your photos on your Nest Hub, you have to upload them to Google Photos. If all you want to see is some beautiful art, you can go ahead and skip straight to turning on Ambient Mode on your Google Nest Hub.

Start by uploading your pictures to Google Photos. All the photos you care about may be already there, this is highly true if you are using an Android phone to take your pictures. However, if you haven’t, open Google Photos, then log in using your Google Account. Then upload all the images you want to put up for display on your Hubs. You can do this from the Google Photos iPhone/Android app as well. If you already have all your photos on a computer, you can load up everything at once from the browser.

After your photos are uploaded, click on the search bar. You’ll then see a row of faces, click on them to label the faces to group your photos by people. This can prove useful later if you want the Google Nest Hub to display specific people.

Take your time to identify the people in more than one picture, especially children who may have photos at different stages in life. Google may not recognize a person at age four, then at age six as the same person. However, if you label each with the same name, it will offer to merge the pictures. Keep doing this, eventually, Google will learn, then it will accurately display children as they grow even when you haven’t identified some photos.

Impressively, we also have seen Google recognize a person with an obscured face based on the outfits they were sporting. Google has named this feature Live Albums. It isn’t limited to just the Google Nest Hub. You can share these albums with family as well as friends via the Google Photos app.

Regrettably, Face Grouping isn’t available in the UK, Illinois, or Texas.

How can you Activate Ambient Mode on Your Google Nest Hub?

You can set up ambient mode on each Google Nest/Home Hub you own.

1. Open the Google Home app on your phone, scroll to Google Nest device, then tap on its icon, it can be found above the “Play Music.”
2. If you have a Personalize Ambient option, tap on that. If not, tap on the more options menu, it looks like three vertical dots, then tap on “Ambient mode settings.”
3. On the next screen, you can choose what to display when your Google Nest Hub is in Ambient Mode. Google Photos will retrieve photos from your Google Photos albums;
4. Art Gallery will show Google chosen images, like fine art, NASA-generated images, pictures of cities, and more.
5. The Full-screen clock is what it sounds like.
6. Experimental retrieve images from your linked Facebook/Flickr accounts.
7. Let us choose Google Photos as an example to view our photos.
8. If you have existing albums, you can select them. Or, you can try Recent Highlights; this relies on Google’s algorithms to surface interesting photos you’ve clicked recently. A.I. can learn things, but it doesn’t understand them, so there is a possibility it may produce odd results, like a collage of carpet swatches being featured.
9. If we decide to tap on “Select Family & Friends”, then choose four people to highlight. Google creates a new album named Family & Friends, this created album can be used on other Google Nest Hubs, as well. Tap on the back arrow in the upper left to leave this screen after making your choice.

Then we’ll be returned to the Ambient Mode settings scroll down to find more settings options. Here you have the ability to turn on and off Weather, Time, as well as Personal Photo Data. Personal Photo Data adds marking to the display, it explains what album the photo came from, and also whom it belongs to, in case you’re sharing your Google Photos.

If “Personal photo curation” is set to “Live albums only,” Google will work on weeding out any blurry/badly exposed photos. If the setting is left on “All albums,” all photos will be shown, good as well as the bad. Below the options, you’ll find slideshow speed. We recommend setting this to one minute, however, choose whatever feels best according to you. Choose the options you prefer, then tap on the back arrow in the upper left.

You’re done! Repeat the steps mentioned above for any other Google Nest or Home Hubs you have. When you turn off the lights, your Nest Hub will dim automatically, it will change and display the time instead. If you liked this article (or if it helped at all), leave a comment below or share it with friends, so they can also know How to Use Your Google Nest Hub as a Digital Photo Frame?