When at home, I listen to most of my music through AppleTV. This means the TV is on a lot, so I’d like an interesting screen saver. Unfortunately, AppleTV falls a little short in this area. It can rotate a set of photos as the screen saver, but you can only choose from a small group of Apple photos, your own iPhoto collection, or photos from a specific Flickr account. I like my photos, but don’t want to look at them all the time, and I had a hard time finding a Flickr user with a large enough album to keep things interesting.

What I really wanted was a way to display the Flickr interestingness collection. Interestingness is a pool of, you guessed it… interesting photos, that changes all the time. Unfortunately, since AppleTV only provides the ability to link to specific Flickr accounts, you can’t access this dynamic collection.

After searching for a solution, and inspired by this post, I finally came up with workaround. It’s a script that queries photos from interestingness via the Flickr API, then adds them as favorites to a special Flickr account I created called dailypool. The script runs every night, so there are always fresh photos. Since this Flickr account can be viewed by anyone, you can easily link to it on your own AppleTV.

Here’s what you need to do to set it up. This assumes you’re using AppleTV v2.

Add the dailypool Flickr account:

1. On your remote, press Menu to get to the main menu
2. Select Photos in the left menu, then Flickr in the right menu
3. Select Add Flickr Contact, then type dailypool using the onscreen keyboard

Set dailypool favorites as your screen saver

1. Press the Menu button on the remote until you get back to the main menu
2. Select Settings in the left menu, then Screen Saver in the right menu
3. On the Screen Saver screen, scroll down to and select the Slideshow menu
4. On the Choose Photos screen, select Flickr, then select dailypool, then favorites
5. Press the Menu button on the remote until you get back to the main menu

That’s it! Next time your AppleTV goes into screen saver mode it should display interestingness photos that will be refreshed every day. Enjoy!