Sconce on a phone: a collection of twelve photos, with Add more, Play here and Cast to TV

Your photos,
up on the TV.

Cast photos and videos from your phone to a Chromecast or Google TV, over your own Wi-Fi. Then sit back.

  • No ads
  • No accounts
  • No subscriptions
Get it on Google PlayTry Sconce on iPhone with TestFlight

The room and the photos are illustrations; the phone screen is the real app.

Gather · style · watch

Three steps to the big screen

Pick the pictures, set the pace, and let the television take it from there.

Your photos, ready for the TV. Build a collection from your own library.
Set the pace and the fade. Seconds per photo, fade, cut, slide or zoom.
Then sit back and watch. Cast to your TV, or play right here.

Backgrounds are illustrations; the phone screens are the real app.

How it works

Photos and videos play differently

An app that pretends otherwise is setting you up for a black screen. Sconce says which is which the first time you cast.

Photos

Handed to the TV up front, so the television holds the pictures, not your phone. Lock it, pocket it, and they keep turning.

Your photos keep playing on the TV after you lock your phone.

Videos

Far too big to hand over, so a video streams from the phone while it plays. The phone has to stay awake, and on the Wi-Fi, until it ends.

Videos stream from this phone, so keep the app open while one plays.

Put both in one collection and Sconce handles the join: the photos run themselves, and when a video comes up it takes over the screen and hands back afterwards.

On the wall

Choose what surrounds the picture

A portrait photo on a wide TV is the normal case, so Sconce fits the whole picture and nothing is cropped by default. The look is what fills the space around it. Try them here.

Look
Transition

All four transitions are free.

A simulation of Sconce's TV screen with illustrated photos. The looks and the transitions are the app's own.

Upright, every time

Photos are turned the right way up before they are sent, so a shot taken sideways arrives the way you took it.

Something behind the pictures

A background sound under a collection: one of five that come with the app, or an audio file of your own, set per collection. Part of Sconce Pro.

When nothing is playing

Press stop and the TV holds a quiet Sconce page, then hands itself back a few minutes later. Sconce Pro can make it the name on its own, or a dark screen.

In your hand

The phone is the remote

Every choice, from the sofa

Play, pause, back and next from the phone, and pause or stop from your lock screen.

No Chromecast? Play here

The same collection on the phone or tablet in front of you, with the same timings, transitions and sound.

A video your TV refuses

Sconce can convert it on the phone and keeps the copy, so it is only done once. Sconce Pro converts a whole collection in one go.

It tells you what it is doing

How many of the photos the TV is holding, whether it is safe to lock the phone yet, and what to try if the TV can't reach it.

The Looks screen: a live preview of a photograph on the Gallery white surround, above six rows that each carry a tile of the same picture
Six looks for what the TV draws around a photo
An open collection: its name, the line that says how it will play, the grid of photographs, and the cast button
A collection: the photos, and how it will play
The Background sound screen: five bundled sounds and a row for a file of your own, with one chosen and its loudness at the shipped default
Background sound: five bundled, or your own file
How this collection plays: seconds per photo, the four transitions, and the top of the sound card
Seconds per photo, and the four transitions
Play here: a photograph fitted on the phone's own screen, the space around it a dimmed, cropped copy of the same picture
No Chromecast? Play here runs it on the phone
The collections screen: three saved collections, each with its own cover and count, and the button that makes another
Saved collections, and the button that makes another

Captured from the release build. The photographs on these screens are demo pictures we made ourselves, because your photos are yours.

The film

Thirty seconds with Sconce

The presenter is AI-generated. Everything else is the real app: live phone captures, and Sconce's own TV screen playing a collection. Watch on YouTube

Quiet by design

What Sconce will never do

Your photos and videos go from this phone to your TV over your own Wi-Fi. We never upload them.

Casting needs the internet: your TV loads Sconce's TV screen from sconce.zone7studios.com, and casting uses Google's Cast framework, which is covered by Google's privacy policy.

Sconce also uses the network for the store's billing for the one-time purchase. Read the privacy page

Not settings you have to find and switch off. Not in the app at all.

  • Ask for an account or a sign-in
  • Carry an ad, or an ad SDK
  • Put a watermark on your TV
  • Charge you weekly, monthly or yearly
  • Upload your photos or videos anywhere
  • Beg you for a rating
  • Interrupt your photos with an upsell

Sconce casts to Chromecast and Google TV. No AirPlay mirroring, and no screen mirroring of any kind: your notifications and messages never appear on the television. Your phone and your TV have to be on the same Wi-Fi and able to reach each other, and a VPN on the phone stands in the way of that: Sconce checks for one and says so on the phone.

Free, and Pro

The free Sconce is a real one

Sconce

  • One collection of up to 30 photos and videos
  • Cast it to the TV, or play it here on the phone
  • Seconds per photo, all four transitions, loop and shuffle
  • The Soft blur look, and Fill the screen
  • Converting a video your TV cannot play, and keeping the copy

Sconce Pro one purchase

  • As many collections as you like, as big as you like
  • The other five looks
  • Background sound behind a collection
  • A time for one photo on its own, and the order they play in
  • A whole collection converted in one go
  • The quiet page after stop: the name on its own, or a dark screen

A single purchase through the store you installed the app from, and it stays bought. Nothing renews, and there is nothing to cancel.

Get Sconce

Sconce is on Google Play for Android, and on TestFlight for iPhone.

Get it on Google PlayTry Sconce on iPhone with TestFlight

Nothing to sign up for here: no mailing list and no newsletter. What changed in each version