The family photos are on your phone. The big screen is right there.
Pick what you want, send it to the Chromecast, and let it run. Photo shows keep going after you lock your phone. Videos stream from the phone, so keep Sconce open while one plays.
Your photos and videos go straight from this phone to your TV over your own Wi-Fi. We never upload them anywhere.
The only times Sconce touches the network are the store's billing for the one-time purchase — Google Play's on Android, Apple's on iPhone — and casting. When you cast, three things happen: your TV loads Sconce's TV screen from sconce.zone7studios.com over the internet, your phone serves the photos and videos you picked straight to your TV over your own Wi-Fi, and Google's Cast framework does its own device discovery. Your photos and videos are never uploaded to us or to anyone.
That is the whole network story, and the privacy page spells out the Google part of it — including the bits we can't switch off. Read the whole privacy story →
Everyone has the same evening: a phone full of the weekend, a television three metres away, and no comfortable way to get one onto the other. The apps that promise to fix it mostly want a weekly fee, an account, and a run of ads between your own holiday photos.
Sconce is the boring version. You pick the photos and videos, they go up on the TV over your own Wi-Fi, and the app gets out of the way. One purchase unlocks the extras, and that is the last time money is mentioned.
A photo show and a video are not the same job, and an app that pretends otherwise is setting you up for a black screen. Sconce says which is which, on the screen, the first time you cast.
The pictures are handed to the TV up front, so the television is holding the show, not your phone. Wander off, put the phone in your pocket, lock it — the slides keep turning.
Photo shows keep going after you lock your phone.A video is far too big to hand over up front, so it streams from the phone to the TV while it plays. That means the phone has to stay awake and stay on the Wi-Fi for as long as the video runs.
Videos stream from this phone, so keep the app open while one plays.Put both in one playlist and Sconce handles the join for you: the photo show runs itself, and when a video comes up it takes over the screen and hands back afterwards.
A portrait photo on a wide TV is the normal case, not the exception. Sconce fits the whole picture on screen over a soft, darkened blur of the same photo, so the panel is filled without anybody losing the top of their head.
Photos are turned the right way up before they are sent, so a holiday shot taken sideways arrives the way you took it.
Play, pause, back, next, and jump to any picture. The TV only displays — every decision is made on the phone in your hand.
How much of the show the TV is holding, whether it is safe to lock the phone yet, and — if the TV can't reach the phone — what to try, in plain words.
Dark ground, warm light, big type, and no animation that a small streaming stick would struggle with. A television is looked at from three metres, not thirty centimetres.
Pro is a single purchase through the store you installed the app from, and it stays bought. Nothing renews, and there is nothing to cancel.
Not settings you have to find and switch off. Not in the app at all.
And one line that keeps that list honest, because an absolute should be checkable: Sconce casts to Chromecast and Google TV. It does not use AirPlay, and it does not mirror your screen. Casting runs on Google's Cast framework, which carries Google's own diagnostics, and casting needs the internet — your TV loads the app's TV screen from us. Both are spelled out on the privacy page →
On Android, Sconce asks you two things, and each one only once. The first time you cast, Android asks about notifications, so you can pause or stop the show from your lock screen — say no and the show still runs. If you ever tap “Cast a whole album”, it asks to read that album; picking photos one by one never does. On iPhone there is exactly one system question, and you trigger it: the first time you tap Cast, Apple asks whether Sconce may find devices on your local network — that is how it finds your Chromecast. Sconce never asks for your camera, microphone, location or contacts.
Sconce isn't released yet — it is being built. Android goes first, in Early Access on Google Play, and this page will say so on the day. The iPhone build comes after that, and it has no date.
There's nothing to sign up for here — no mailing list, no email box, no “notify me”. Zone7 doesn't email people, and that starts with this page.
Sconce is a Zone7 Studios app — the same quiet-software rules as the rest of the family: private by design, no ads anywhere, and nothing that treats your attention as inventory.