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Polyptych shows one picture across several iPhones and iPads laid side by side, treating them as a single screen with gaps where the bezels are. Pick the pictures, gather the devices, and lay them out the way the app tells you.
A polyptych is a painting made across several separate panels. That is the idea.
Available for iPhone and iPad, in English, Spanish, Catalan, French, German, Portuguese and Italian.
Polyptych on the App Store — or see Download, which has the code to scan and says where Android has got to.
One device is enough to try it — the app comes with a test show you can start on its own — but it is worth having on every device you want to lend a screen. Inside the app, Get it on another device shows this same code for the person beside you.
- Download — codes for the App Store, and where Android has got to
- Support — quick start, FAQ and how to reach us
- Privacy Policy — what we collect (nothing), and where your pictures do go
- Conditions of Use — the terms, in plain language
One device opens a room and shows a QR code; the others scan it to join. A room is the gathering of devices; a show — the pictures, their order and their timings — is what plays in it, and the show can be swapped without anyone joining again. The host measures every screen in millimetres, works out how to arrange them, and tells each device where to stand — its own number, which way to hold it, and the numbers either side.
Every device is then given every picture up front. That is what makes the transitions instant: once the pictures are there, changing what is on screen costs a few hundred bytes instead of a megabyte. Each device is sent only a position, a size and a rotation, timed on a clock the devices have agreed between them, so all the screens move together.
Nothing goes through the internet. The pictures travel directly between the devices in the room.
A show can be one video rather than a sequence of pictures. The same trick makes it work: every device is given the whole file up front and then told a single moment to play from, so the screens stay together without anything more crossing the network. The wait to hand the file out is the price, and the sound is muted — five phones playing one soundtrack milliseconds apart is a mess.
You can try a show before gathering anything: the preview runs it across as many devices as you care to imagine, from 6.1-inch phones to 13-inch iPads, using those models' real measurements. And any app that can share a GIF or a photo can send one straight in as a new show.
Polyptych also arrives with one show already on it: a set of test cards — a lettered grid, straight lines and circles that cross the seams, then greys and colour bars. It is there so there is something to start straight away, and so that when an arrangement comes out looking wrong, a single photograph of the screens says what is wrong with it.
An Android app that can join a room is in progress. It is not released yet, and it will lend a screen rather than host — see Support for what it will and will not do.
Polyptych is free, with no ads and no tracking. Questions, problems and suggestions are welcome at info@nowhereman.eu — see Support for a quick start and the common questions.