Organize photo & video folders for collage and slideshow

Memory Screen Saver Plus reads the folders you add locally on Windows and Mac. It does not reorganize your files for you — so how you store photos and videos on disk shapes what you see on screen. A flat dump of tens of thousands of files still works, but themed folders make playback feel more personal: vacation shots stay with vacation shots, birthdays stay with birthdays, and Soft Effects collages can pull related images into the same view.

This guide covers a simple structure that scales from a few albums to large family archives.

The pattern that works best

Use one main folder — or a few main folders — then nest albums underneath by a common theme such as a date, trip, or event name.

• Main folders are what you add in Settings (for example Pictures\Family and Videos\Home). Keep this list short.
• Subfolders hold related media for one memory or theme. Enable Include subfolders so the app scans them all.
• Files live inside those themed subfolders — not scattered at the top level when you can avoid it.

Example folder layout

Something like this is easy to maintain and friendly to collage:

• Pictures\Family\ ← add this main folder in Settings
• Pictures\Family\2024-07 Italy trip\
• Pictures\Family\2025-05 Maya birthday\
• Pictures\Family\Christmas 2025\
• Videos\Family\2024-07 Italy trip\ ← optional second main folder for clips

Dates at the start of folder names keep albums sorted chronologically in File Explorer. Event names make it obvious what belongs together when collage groups related images from the same folder.

Why themes matter for Soft Effects collages

Soft Effects collage layouts (Polaroid, film strip, binary partition, and more) draw several stills into one composition. When those files sit in the same themed subfolder — the same trip, the same party, the same weekend — the collage tends to feel like one memory instead of a random mix from decades apart. Turn on Same folder for collage photos in Soft Effects to favor related stills.

If every photo lives in a single unsorted folder, collage still runs, but related faces and places are less likely to appear together. Grouping by theme is the best preparation you can do on disk. Enable Soft Effects on their own Settings tab — they are independent of the 29 between-image transitions.

Best practices checklist

1. Pick your roots carefully

   Choose the folders you actually want in rotation. Skip scratch folders, exports, and duplicates. You can always add another main folder later.

2. Name subfolders by date or event

   Use clear labels such as 2023-09 Wedding, Camp 2024, or Grandparents visit. Consistency helps you and the screensaver keep related files together.

3. Keep media local and supported

   Download OneDrive or other cloud-only placeholders to the PC before expecting them in the slideshow. Supported images include JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, and TIFF; optional video formats include MP4, AVI, WMV, and MOV.

4. Add folders and enable subfolders

   In Settings → Media Files, drag your main folders into the list and turn on Include subfolders. Filter by file type if you want photos only or a specific set of formats.

5. Preview before you rely on idle mode

   Use the built-in preview (and Presentation Mode if you like) to confirm themed folders look right across your monitors. See the multi-monitor setup guide for first-time activation.

What to avoid

• One giant unsorted folder with every photo from every year mixed together — playback works, but collage loses thematic cohesion.
• Adding every nested album as its own Settings entry when a single parent with Include subfolders would cover them.
• Cloud-only files that are not downloaded — they are skipped so the slideshow can continue.
• Unrelated dumps in the same subfolder — if a folder mixes several events, collage cannot know which shots belong together.

Cloud photo services vs. cloud file storage

These two get confused constantly, and the difference decides whether your library works at all. Photo services — Google Photos, iCloud Photos, Amazon Photos — keep your collection online behind a service API. There is no folder on disk to add. Those APIs do not allow a PC or Mac to access all of your media — that is Google and Apple policy — so Memory Screen Saver Plus cannot use them as a live source. Export or download what you want first, then point the app at the resulting folders.

There is a second reason not to use those services directly: the library is usually unsorted and unfiltered. Screenshots, duplicates, and everything else the phone saved would load onto your screens as unwanted media. Choose what you export so the screensaver shows the archive you meant to keep.

Cloud file storage — Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox and similar — is a different thing entirely: it syncs ordinary folders onto your disk. Those work exactly like any local folder, and backing up an irreplaceable archive to one of them is strongly recommended. Photos are the files people most regret losing, and a single drive failure takes decades with it.

One setting decides it: mark the synced folders always available offline so real files sit on disk. Left as online-only placeholders, they are skipped during playback — the most common reason a folder looks correct in Settings but shows nothing on screen.

Large archives

Memory Screen Saver Plus is built for real libraries — tens or hundreds of thousands of files. Themed subfolders under a few main roots keep scans predictable and your collection understandable as it grows. Random and sequential order are both supported once folders are added.

Download for Windows & Mac