A Guide To Your New Frame
Aura Walden 15″ Digital Photo Frame
Your Aura frame is designed to be easy to live with. Once it is connected to Wi-Fi and set up the way you like it, it will cycle through your photos automatically. You do not need to open the app every day or regularly maintain the frame.
This guide covers the things that are actually useful to know, starting with how the system works and progressing to adding and organizing your own photo collections.
The easiest way to understand your Aura frame is to think of it as three connected pieces:
This is where you enjoy your photos. It connects to Wi-Fi and receives photos through Aura.
This is where you manage your frame, add or remove photos, change settings, and invite other people.
Google Photos is one way to organize larger collections of photos and connect those collections to Aura.
Your photos are not stored on a memory card inside the frame. Aura uses Wi-Fi to manage and deliver the photos associated with your frame.
Once your frame is connected to Wi-Fi, Aura does most of the work.
The frame will:
You do not need to keep the Aura app open on your phone.
↑ Back to contentsMost of the time, you can simply enjoy the frame. But there are several things you can do directly from the Walden without opening your phone.
Your Walden has a touch-sensitive control along the edge of the frame. Use this rather than touching the display itself.
Swipe along the touch bar to move forward or backward through your photos.
This is useful when you want to skip a photo or go back to one you just saw.
Tap the touch bar once.
If information is available for that photo, Aura can display details such as when or where the picture was taken.
You can send a little appreciation for a favorite photo directly from the frame.
Tap the touch bar several times quickly and hearts will appear.
If someone else contributed that picture, Aura can let them know you loved it.
When the photo is showing:
Removing a photo from the Aura slideshow is not necessarily the same thing as deleting the original photograph from Google Photos or your phone.
Press and hold the touch bar, swipe to Off, and follow the prompt.
You probably won't need to do this very often because you can create an automatic sleep schedule in the Aura app.
↑ Back to contentsThink of the Aura app as your frame's remote control and management center.
You don't need it to simply watch the frame. You use it when you want to change something.
From the Aura app you can:
Open your frame in the Aura app and go to:
Settings → Slideshow → TimingChoose how long you want each photograph displayed.
Aura offers a range of timing options. With hundreds of photos on your frame, a shorter interval allows you to see more of your collection.
There is no "right" setting. Pick what feels comfortable and change it anytime.
If it feels as though you're seeing the same photographs repeatedly, shortening the slideshow timing can help you move through a large collection more quickly.
In the Aura app's frame settings, you can establish when the frame should be awake and when it should sleep.
For example, you might have it turn on in the morning and go dark at bedtime.
Once you have a schedule you like, there is usually no reason to manually turn the frame on and off.
You don't need to create an album every time you want another picture on your frame.
For one or several pictures:
Open Aura → Select your frame → Add PhotosChoose the photographs you want.
That's the easiest approach when you simply think:
"I love this picture. I want it on my frame."
Aura allows other people to contribute photos to your frame.
This means family members or friends can send photos to your frame from their own Aura apps, even if they live somewhere else.
You control who is invited.
Inviting someone to contribute photos does not mean you need another frame. Everyone can contribute to the same physical frame.
This is the part that's worth understanding because it gives you much more flexibility with your frame.
The photographs originally gathered for your frame are in the Google Photos album:
Carrie's 60th BirthdaySusan created this album while collecting photographs for your birthday.
That Google Photos album was then connected to Aura so the photographs could automatically be added to your frame.
That is why hundreds of photographs appeared on the frame without being individually uploaded.
Auto-Add simply means Aura watches a particular Google Photos album for you.
When that album is connected to your Aura frame, photos from the album are automatically added to the frame.
Even better, if you add new photographs to that connected Google Photos album later, Aura can automatically add those new photographs to the frame too.
You don't have to upload them twice.
Google Photos album → Aura → Your frame
Put a photograph into a connected album and Aura can take care of getting it onto the frame.
Over time, you may want to organize photographs by subject or event.
For example:
You can create separate albums in Google Photos for any of these.
Then, if you want that collection appearing on your Aura frame, you can connect the album to Aura using Auto-Add.
This is an important distinction.
Creating a new Google Photos album does not mean creating a new frame in Aura.
Your one Aura frame can display photographs coming from many different collections.
Think of your Walden as one big rotating gallery.
Your birthday photographs can be part of the gallery.
Your camping photographs can be part of the gallery.
Your vacation photographs can be part of the gallery.
They can all appear on the same frame.
You have a few individual pictures you simply want displayed.
You have an ongoing collection you want to keep together.
For example, if you regularly take camping trips, a Camping Google Photos album makes sense.
Add your favorite camping photographs to that album, connect it to Aura, and future additions to that album can automatically appear on your frame.
A few random favorites? Add them directly through Aura.
A collection you'll keep adding to? Consider a Google Photos album with Auto-Add.
This is the one area where you should slow down and read what Aura is asking before clicking.
A Google Photos album connected with Auto-Add has an ongoing relationship with Aura.
If you decide you no longer want Aura connected to an album, Aura may give you options regarding photographs that have already been added.
Depending on what you choose, you may be able to:
Stop Auto-Add but keep the existing photographs on your frame
or
Stop Auto-Add and remove photographs that came from that album
These are very different choices.
Before disconnecting an entire Google Photos album from Aura, read the confirmation screen carefully.
If your goal is simply to stop future photographs from automatically appearing, you generally don't want to accidentally remove all of the photographs already contributed by that album.
The birthday collection was the starting point. From here, the frame can continue growing with you.
You might add pictures from next weekend, an old photograph you rediscover, your next camping trip, a family gathering, or something someone sends you.
Don't worry about making the collection perfect.
Some of the older birthday photographs may be scanned, faded, blurry or technically imperfect. They're there because they tell part of your story.
If you enjoy seeing a photograph, it belongs on the frame.
And if someday you decide you don't enjoy seeing one?
Remove it.
It's your frame now.
Everything else will make more sense once you remember those three roles.
Enjoy your frame and all the memories that come with it.