Your digital picture frame won’t lose Google Photos sync after all, at least if it’s an Aura

It’s a fact of life with modern, connected hardware: Any kind of device that relies on remotely communicating with distant systems runs the risk of losing functionality when that access changes or gets cut off. Just look at how Amazon revoked the ability to download and transfer books to Kindles over USB. Earlier this month we looked at a change that threatened to impact digital picture frames, as Google Photos updated its API and changed the way devices are able to sync with your albums in the cloud. While that change is still happening, it’s looking like manufacturers are starting to work out some alternative solutions to minimize the impact on users.

As we mentioned at the time, companies that make digital frames, like Cozyla and Aura, had been reaching out to registered users of their products, informing them of this pending change. Due to new privacy-protecting measures in the Photos API that go into effect at the end of March, the old way of accessing images saved to the cloud will no longer be available to these frames, causing them to lose the ability to sync with Google Photos.