Get started API reference What it can picture Plans and limits Using the picture When a feed fails Paying
Using the picture
The picture lives at one address, image_url. Anything that can show an image from an address can show it.
A web page
<img src="https://stillframe.us/f/TOKEN.png" alt="Sales board" width="1920" height="1080">Use the size of your canvas for width and height so the page does not jump when the picture arrives. The address answers with Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *, so a script on another site may read the picture too.
Browsers and caches may keep the picture for up to the feed's refresh time, plus the same again while they fetch a new one. A viewer can see a picture up to twice the refresh time old. If Stillframe is unreachable, a cache may keep showing the last picture for up to a week.
A README
GitHub and similar sites show images through their own servers, and those keep a copy. How long, and whether they ask us again sooner, is theirs to decide. We have not tested it with a Stillframe address. If the picture in your README lags, that is the likely reason.
Home Assistant
Use the Generic Camera integration. From Home Assistant's own documentation (read 2026-10-11): Settings, Devices & services, Add Integration, Generic Camera. Paste the feed's image_url as the Still Image URL. Leave the stream source empty; a still image address alone is enough. No user name or password is needed.
Home Assistant asks for the picture when it wants it. Stillframe changes the picture only as often as your refresh time, so asking more often shows the same picture.
TRMNL
TRMNL's Image Display plugin takes an address to an image. Its help (read 2026-10-12) says it accepts images of any size and fits them to the device's screen with a cover fit, so a picture with a different shape is cropped from the centre. The same page lists the original TRMNL's screen as 800 by 480 (5:3) and the TRMNL X's as 1872 by 1404 (4:3). Stillframe's canvases are 16:9 and 9:16, so the edges of a 1080p page picture are cropped on either. To control exactly what shows, make a push feed with canvas native and send it a picture of your device's own size. Paste the image_url as the plugin's address.
Email and chat programs keep their own copy
Some programs do not show your picture straight from our address. They fetch it through their own servers and keep what they got:
- Apple Mail often shows the picture as it was when the phone first fetched it, and keeps showing that.
- Gmail fetches through its own servers. Whether it asks again for a new picture is disputed in what we have read.
- Slack keeps its own copy, for a time that differs between sources. The usual fix is to change the address, which defeats the purpose of a permanent one. We found nothing on Teams, so we do not promise it either.
We have not tested our address in any of them. A picture that must be fresh when someone reads it is safest on a web page, a wiki or a README, not in an email or a chat message. In an email, treat the picture as the one that was current when it was sent.