Our “Back To Then” app (for iOS and Android)

By alvin ~ Posted Thu, 04/07/2022 - 19:13

Back To Then is a “photo frame” slideshow app. Just copy your favorite photos into the app and then press Start Slideshow, and it slowly rotates your photos in full-screen mode on your device. When you want to stop the screensaver, just tap the screen to return to the main menu.

Back To Then doesn’t have any ads, and it doesn’t access the internet, so your photos remain completely private to you.

How It Works

To use Back To Then:

  • Copy your favorite photos from your photo library into Back To Then.
  • Tap Start Slideshow to start the slideshow.
  • Optionally, adjust the slideshow Settings as desired.

When the slideshow starts, your photos will be displayed in a random order, with smooth animation effects. To exit the slideshow, tap anywhere on the screen.

Managing Images

To add and remove images, tap Manage Images on the main screen.

Note: To help make scrolling faster, smaller versions of your images are shown in the Manage Images screen. But don’t worry, your full, large images are shown in the Screensaver.

Adding images

To add one or more images:

  • Tap the “+” button on the Manage Images screen.
  • Select one or more images to add to the Back To Then image library.
As a “pro tip,” if you want to add a large number of images, it can be easier to first create an album in your phone’s Photo app, and put all the images you want in that album. Then you can select all of those images from within Back To Then.

Removing images

To remove an image:

  • On the Manage Images screen, swipe left or right on the image, and it will be removed from the Back To Then app.

Note that this will not affect the image in your phone’s main photo library, because these are two separate locations.

Managing Settings

You can manage the following settings:

Minimum Animation Duration
The shortest time that an image will be displayed during its animation. (Default is 4 seconds.)
Maximum Animation Duration
The longest time an image will be displayed during its animation. Larger images typically take more time than smaller images. (Default is 10 seconds.)
Image Transition Duration
The time for the transition from one image to the next. (Default is 5 seconds.)
Maximum Image Zoom
The maximum amount images will be zoomed-in on during the time they are displayed. (Default is 2x.)

Note that for the time-related settings, the lower the values are, the faster the animations will move across your screen.

Created By

Back To Then is lovingly crafted by Valley Programming (valleyprogramming.com) of Colorado.

The name Back To Then is inspired by our mindfulness app, named Back To Now. You can find both apps in Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store.

Valley Programming is currently a one-person business, owned and operated by Alvin Alexander. If you’re interested in anything you read here, feel free to contact me at “al” at (“@”) this website name (“valleyprogramming.com”), or at the phone number shown below. I’m just getting back to business here in November, 2021, and eventually I’ll get a contact form set up here, but until then, I hope that works.