Disclosure up front. We make PicDock, one of the apps below, so we are not neutral. Everything here is checkable, and we list what our own app cannot do.
A few days after you stand a tablet up as a photo frame, the same gap shows up. The three seconds of a first step, the sound of waves, candles being blown out — your favourite moments are videos, and the frame never shows them. They sit right beside the photos in your gallery, and the frame app quietly steps over them.
Most frame apps only handle stills. Video means dealing with playback, sound, length and transitions separately, which is real work. So the things worth checking are different from a normal photo app.
Four things to check
1. Do videos appear in the same slideshow?
Some apps advertise "video support" but play videos from a separate folder. That is a video player, not a frame. Photos and clips have to flow together, in order, for the day to come back.
2. How are short clips handled?
A three-second clip in a fifteen-second slideshow can go two ways: play once and move on, or loop for the interval. Many apps only do one. In practice people disagree about which is better, so being able to switch matters.
3. Can you mute it?
This matters more than it sounds. A voice suddenly coming out of a frame on the shelf is startling, and worse at night. Check that sound can be turned off, and that it stays quiet while the frame is sleeping.
4. Which storage does video work from?
This is where most apps are vague. "Cloud sync" and "video playback" are advertised separately, and read together they sound like cloud videos will play. Often only the photos come through.
What PicDock actually does
Precisely, for our own app:
- Videos on the device — yes. They appear in the same slideshow, in date order, alongside photos.
- Videos on NAS/SMB — yes, but off by default. You turn it on in settings, because pulling video over the network is a choice worth making deliberately.
- Videos in Dropbox, OneDrive or Google Photos — no. Those sources bring photos only. To show a cloud video, download it to the device first.
- Short clips — plays through by default; you can switch to looping for the interval.
- Sound — an option, off by default, and always silent while the frame sleeps.
- Scrubber — tap a playing video for a progress bar to seek or pause. Pausing also holds the slideshow timer.
Other options
We are not the only app that handles video. Fotoo is the best known dedicated frame app and is strong on cloud sources, and PixFolio comes up often on Apple devices for pairing cloud albums with slideshows. They work differently from each other, so check each against the four points above rather than taking anyone's word for it.
In short
Reading "supports video" on a store listing is not enough. Check the four separately: mixed into the same slideshow, how short clips behave, whether sound can be muted, and which storage videos actually play from. The last one is hard to learn before installing, so start by matching it against where your own photos live.
PicDock — turn an Android tablet or phone into a photo and video frame. Free to use, with an optional paid upgrade for extras.