u/Global_Historian3667

Hey all,

A week ago, we shared our slideshow app designed to keep our Portals alive after Meta pulled the plug. The response from this community blew us away—150+ signups and 60 of you bought the Pro tier to support the servers. That’s at least 150 Portals saved from e-waste and landfill. I can’t thank you enough for this.

You asked for two main things:

1. Can it run on other devices?
2. Can we get Alexa back?

Well today, we’re launching our answer. SaveMyPortal is now Mantel Frame.

What’s New:

* Companion: We didn't just bring back a voice assistant; we built something better. Mantel Frame now features a Gemini-powered conversational AI. It's warm, patient, understands context from the photos being displayed, and provides on-screen subtitles. Click here to try it out

* More Devices: We now support Google Nest Hubs, Amazon Fire Tablets, iPads, and pretty much any tablet with a web browser. (Note: Echo Shows are still hit-or-miss because Amazon strictly locks down microphone access in their browser, but they work great as silent frames).

To the 56 original Pro users: Your purchase literally funded this update. As a thank you, your accounts have automatically been upgraded to our new Lifetime Pro tier. You have full access to the AI features right now!

To the original Free users: We sent an email with a massive 3-day discount code just for you, so you can grab Lifetime Pro for $9.99 before the price officially jumps.

We built this because we hated seeing good hardware go to waste, and we're exploring how Companion can help combat loneliness and delight our users.

We'd love for you to try out the new features and let us know what you think. Thank you for all of your support.

We had 80 signups to this weekend with 34 Pro purchases. You guys are incredible — this was all from one Reddit post and zero advertising.

I've been reading every comment and DM, and two requests keep coming up more than anything else:

1. "Does this work on Echo Show / my tablet / another device?”

Short answer: hopefully! early testing shows it works on Echo Show with some degree of stability. I'm now testing across more devices and building a compatibility list. If you try it on something other than Portal, let me know what device and how it went — that helps massively.

2. "Can you bring back a voice assistant?"

This one's exciting… Alexa was turned off a long time ago but the hardware is still there, several of you have asked about building a simple voice assistant right into the photo frame — tap to ask a question, get a spoken answer with subtitles on screen. I'm exploring this seriously.

I want your input:

- What would you actually use a built-in assistant for? Weather? General questions?

- What other features matter most to you?

- What devices are you hoping to use this on?

This project is being built for this community. Your feedback literally shapes what I work on next.

I’ve built a working photo frame solution for Portal devices using the built-in browser. It pulls from iCloud and Google Photos shared albums and runs on our Portals around the house and across our extended family.

I’m considering turning this into a hosted web service so others can use it. Photo frame restoration seems like the most requested feature here, but I’d like to know: what other lost functionality would you actually use if someone built it?

If there’s enough interest I’ll launch this as a community tool. Fair warning — hosting costs money, so I’d need to figure out a sustainable model (donations, small subscription, etc). Open to input on that too.