Play a slideshow

A slideshow plays your collections full-screen, one photo after another, with no menus or browser chrome in the way. It’s built for the big screen: a banquet projector, a TV at an end-of-season party, or a laptop propped up on a table.

Start a show

Go to Organization > Slideshow, then either choose Choose collections and pick what to play, or start from one of the presets:

• This year so far, every collection dated in the current year.
• Everything, shuffled, all of your collections in random order.
• Just the latest, your most recent collection on its own.

A preset drops you straight into the setup console, where you can adjust anything before you begin. When you’re happy with it, choose Start.

Everyone in the group can play a slideshow, including view-only members. You’ll only ever see collections you already have access to.

Slideshows need a computer. They are not in the Fika Photos app or in a phone browser, since the player is built for a large display.

Set the pace

The Playback settings control how the show moves:

• Order: newest first, oldest first, or shuffle.
• Seconds per photo: anywhere from 3 to 20 seconds.
• Transition: fade, cut, or slide.
• At the end: loop back to the beginning, or stop on a closing screen.

Set the look

The Look settings control how each photo is presented:

• Ken Burns drift slowly pushes in on each photo. Choose off, gentle, or strong.
• Portrait photos decides what to do with tall shots. Letterbox centers each one on black. Pair puts two consecutive portraits side by side so they fill the screen together.
• Captions while playing shows the collection name and the date the photo was taken.
• Photo count while playing shows your position in the show, such as 48 / 320.

Captions and the photo count always reappear when you pause or move the mouse, even when they’re switched off.

Hide duplicate copies

Groups collect duplicates, and the same shot twice in a row is noticeable on a big screen. Two optional settings under Photos thin them out for the show:

• Remove duplicates hides exact copies of the same file, keeping one.
• Remove near duplicates extends that to near-identical shots, such as a resized or recompressed copy of a photo that’s already in the show. It’s only available while the first setting is on.

Both are off by default, and both only affect what’s projected. Nothing is deleted, moved, or changed in your collections.

To actually clean up copies, see find and remove duplicate photos.

While the show is playing

Move the mouse to bring up the controls, and they fade away again once you stop. Along with play, pause, previous, next, and a scrub bar, you’ll see roughly how much time is left.

Keyboard shortcuts work throughout:

• Space pauses and resumes.
• Left and right arrows step between photos.
• Escape ends the show.

Choose Settings during a show to change the pace, the Ken Burns drift, captions, the photo count, or duplicate hiding without starting over. Changes take effect on the next photo.

Fika keeps your screen awake while a show is running, so a long slideshow won’t be interrupted by a screensaver or sleep.

When the show ends

If you set the show to stop rather than loop, a closing screen offers Play again, Reshuffle and play for a fresh random order, or Back to setup.

What’s included

Slideshows play photos only. Videos in your collections are skipped.

A single show plays up to 5,000 photos. If your selection is larger than that, Fika plays the newest 5,000 and tells you on screen.

Your saved setup

Fika remembers your setup and your recent shows in the browser you’re using, so you can pick up where you left off or replay a show in one click from the Slideshow page. Because it’s saved to that browser, a co-leader on another laptop will start fresh from the presets. Start over clears the saved setup and returns you to the beginning.

Related

• Organize with collections
• Browse and view photos
• Find and remove duplicate photos