Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
The slideshow features only displays the photos in the order that they appear in the folder.
It is very important for what I do to be able to randomly shuffle the photos without having to set up or create a project. I just need to click "shuffle" as an option and have it happen. How can I make this happen?
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2)
I'm trying to play the slideshow from an iPad, is there a way this script can be modified so that I can run the script on an album or photos selection from my mac and then start the slideshow from my iPad with the photos shuffled? I use iCloud so the photo album from my mac would sync to the iPad
If you modify the script like this, it will create an album from the list of shuffled photos called "Shuffled Photos Album". You could then try to play this album on the iPad as a slideshow.
-- this script will play the currently selected items as a slideshow and shuffle the items for random results
on getCurrentSelection()
tell application "Photos"
set imageSel to {}
try
set imageSel to (get selection)
on error errTexttwonumbererrNumtwo
display dialog "Cannot get the selection: " & errNumtwo & return & errTexttwo
end try
return imageSel
end tell
end getCurrentSelection
set thephotos to getCurrentSelection()
set nitems to (count of thephotos)
repeat 3 times --shuffle three times for more randomness
if (nitems > 1) then
repeat nitems times --shuffle the photos in the list
set split to random number (nitems - 2) + 1
if (split < 1) then
set split to 1
end if
if split is 1 then
set head to {}
set tail to items 2 thru nitems of thephotos
end if
if split is nitems then
set head to items 1 thru (nitems - 1) of thephotos
set tail to {}
end if
if (split > 1) and (split < nitems) then
set head to items 1 thru (split - 1) of thephotos as list
set tail to items (split + 1) thru nitems of thephotos as list
end if
set thephotos to head & tail & (itemsplit of thephotos as list)
end repeat
end if
end repeat
tell application "Photos"
set ShuffledAlbumName to "ShuffledAlbum" -- change this to the name of the album where you want to save the shuffled list of Photos
try
if not (exists container ShuffledAlbumName) then
makenewalbumnamedShuffledAlbumName
end if
on error errTexttwonumbererrNumtwo
display dialog "Could not create album " & ShuffledAlbumName & errNumtwo & return & errTexttwo
end try
set theShuffledAlbum to containerShuffledAlbumName
addthephotostotheShuffledAlbum
start slideshowusingthephotos as list
end tell
A second version:
Adding all photos at once to the album with "addthephotostotheShuffledAlbum" may change the sort order of the list . If the version above does not work, replace the last tell block by:
tell application "Photos"
set ShuffledAlbumName to "ShuffledAlbum" -- change this to the name of the album where you want to save the shuffled list of Photos
try
if not (exists container ShuffledAlbumName) then
makenewalbumnamedShuffledAlbumName
end if
on error errTexttwonumbererrNumtwo
display dialog "Could not create album " & ShuffledAlbumName & errNumtwo & return & errTexttwo
end try
set theShuffledAlbum to containerShuffledAlbumName
-- add thephotos to theShuffledAlbum
repeat with im in thephotos
add {im} totheShuffledAlbum
end repeat
start slideshowusingthephotos as list
end tell
Thanks léonie that script works! When I test it out on a few dozen pictures it only takes 20 seconds or so but when I try it on my full library of 15,500 it hadn't finished after about 35 minutes of running. I eventually stopped it. Should I just let it run till it completes or is it getting hung up on such a large library?
Apple script is rather slow compared to a compiled program. And the algorithm for this script is meant for a small set of pictures. The computation time will grow proportional to the square of the number of selected pictures. If it takes one minute for a hundred pictures, it will take a hundred minutes for a thousand pictures. If you want a slideshow of your complete library, you'd better use the screensaver from Sytem Preferences.
Shuffeling slideshows is not supported in Photos. You could select your album as the source of the screensaver instead and present you slideshow from the screensaver.
Or use an Apple Script to shuffle your photos.
I posted a script as a user tip: Script: Shuffle Photos for an Instant Slideshow in Random Order
It is just a first try on arranging photos randomly.
You could modify it to repeat the shuffling more than once.
That's not a feature available in Photos at this time. Tell Apple what missing features you'd like restored or new features added in Photos via https://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html.
How can I make a slideshow shuffle the pictures in random order?
