Live Slideshow (“Diashow”)

The Live Slideshow is a dedicated, token-only, fullscreen URL for an event that auto-picks-up newly uploaded photos while it runs — designed for a projector or screen at a live event (weddings, concerts, parties). Guests at the venue watch the photos appear in near real time; the photographer keeps culling and uploading from the back of the room.

It is separate from the normal guest gallery: its own link, no gallery password, no chrome — just the photos.

Enable the feature

Live Slideshow is off by default. Turn it on under Settings → Features → Live Slideshow. While it’s off, no slideshow UI appears and any existing slideshow link returns “not active”.

Create a slideshow link

1. Open the event, find the Live Slideshow card.

2. Click Generate slideshow link. This mints a unique link of the form:

   https://your-host/gallery/<event-slug>/show/<token>

3. Copy it (or Regenerate to rotate the token and kill the old link, or Disable to remove it). The link is a secret — the token is the access; there is no separate password.

The link only shows published, non-hidden photos — the same set guests see.

Run it on a projector

Open the link on the machine driving the projector. You’ll see a ▶ Start slideshow splash. Click it once — browsers only allow fullscreen in response to a click — and it goes fullscreen and starts cycling. From then on it runs unattended: cursor hides, it loops at the end, and shows a “Waiting for photos…” screen if the event has none yet.

Global defaults (Settings → Slideshow)

The PicPeak-wide look and feel lives in one place: Settings → Slideshow. These apply to every slideshow.

• Default style for new slideshows — the transition, display time, transition speed and color filter that new events inherit. Each event can still override these.
  • Transitions: Crossfade, Cut, Slide, Ken Burns, Dip to white, Dip to black.
  • Color filters: None, Black & White, Sepia, Warm, Cool, Vignette.
• Image fit — Fill screen (crop) or Black bars (no crop). Use black bars if your set is portrait-heavy and you don’t want faces cropped. (Live — applies to running slideshows immediately.)
• Watermark — overlay a logo in a corner, TV-station-ident style.
  • Logo: your light logo, dark-mode logo, favicon, or the event’s own logo (shown with a live preview).
  • Style: White (recolors a dark/transparent logo white) or Original colours (for a logo that already has its own colours/box).
  • Position, opacity, and size. (Live — applies immediately.)

Per-event options

On the event’s Live Slideshow card you can:

• Generate / copy / regenerate / disable the link.
• Override the display style (transition, timing, color filter) for this event.
• Override the watermark: Use global default, On, or Off — e.g. turn the watermark off for one sensitive event without changing your global setting.
• Set the Play order: Chronological (upload order, the default) or Random (shuffle).
• Restrict it with Show only category, which defaults to All photos. The picker is hidden for events with no categories, and the filter is enforced on the server — including the photo count on screen.
• Override the Gallery QR code: Use global default, On, or Off.

Gallery QR code on screen

The running slideshow can carry a QR code so guests scan the gallery straight off the projector. Turn it on under Settings → Slideshow → Gallery QR code, where you also set its Position, Opacity (%) and Size (% of screen) — bottom-left at 90% opacity and 14% size by default.

It sits in a white padded box so it stays scannable over any photo, and it shows even while the slideshow is still waiting for its first photos. It encodes the gallery share link, not the slideshow link, so guests reach the gallery rather than the kiosk view.

How live updates work

While a slideshow is running it polls a lightweight endpoint every few seconds:

• New uploads are appended quietly at the end — the current slide is never interrupted or skipped.
• Settings changes apply live — change the display time, transition, image fit or watermark and the running projector picks it up within a few seconds. No need to regenerate the link or restart.
• Disabling the feature (or the link) kills it — turning off the Live Slideshow feature flag, or disabling/regenerating the link, makes the projector stop on its next poll.

Good to know

• The token is the secret. Anyone with the link can view the slideshow — published photos only: a slideshow link is display-only and cannot download, upload, or post feedback. Rotate it with Regenerate if it leaks; Disable removes it entirely.
• Regenerate / Disable ends the sessions of the old link. A running projector stops within one poll. In builds containing PicPeak PR #1809  the session it opened stops working too: every request checks that the link it was opened with is still the event’s current one and that the feature is on. Sessions opened before the upgrade carry no such mark and run out on their own within 12 hours. On older builds a session keeps working for up to 12 hours after the link changed; turn the Live Slideshow feature flag off for a hard cut-off.
• A slideshow session only reaches what the slideshow shows. With Show only category set, photos of other categories are refused on every image route, not just left out of the list, and a slideshow session cannot fetch original files (builds containing PicPeak PR #1809 ).

• Slideshow views don’t pollute analytics. The projector is excluded from your event’s visitor view/download counts.
• Turning the feature off suspends, doesn’t destroy. Existing links stop working while the flag is off and resume when you turn it back on — the token isn’t deleted.