DailyLens is a Ring camera companion app. It automatically captures one photo from your Ring camera every day (or on any schedule you choose), then builds a beautiful visual timeline of your home or project that you can scroll through and turn into a time-lapse video.
Think of it like time-lapse photography — but completely automatic, using cameras you already own.
Your account, timelines, and photos are safe. DailyLens signs you in through Ring, so if you open DailyLens another way — a saved bookmark, a different browser, or after a long time away — you'll land on the public welcome page instead of your dashboard. Re-open it from Ring and you'll be signed straight back in:
🔗 Open DailyLens's Ring AppStore page →
Open ⚙️ Settings → Cloud Storage (Cloudinary) and connect a free Cloudinary account — this is where your photos are stored. (Full steps in "Cloud storage" just below.)
From the Dashboard, tap ＋ New Timeline. Give it a name, choose your Ring camera, and pick a schedule (once a day, every few hours, or every few minutes).
Open the timeline and tap 📸 Take Snapshot Now. If it says "no image", walk in front of your camera (or start a Live View in the Ring app) to give it a fresh frame, then try again. After that, captures run automatically on your schedule.
Before you can create your first timeline, you need to connect a free Cloudinary account. This is where your photos are stored — securely, in the cloud, with 25 GB of managed storage included. That's enough room for tens of thousands of snapshots and dozens of full time-lapse videos.
To save your photos securely in the cloud and access them anytime, from anywhere. Without it, photos would only live on the app server temporarily and could be lost during updates.
This is the most important thing to understand about DailyLens. Ring cameras do not record video continuously by default — they only record when something triggers them (motion, doorbell press, or live view). DailyLens can only capture frames Ring has actually recorded. Your photos depend on how your Ring camera is set up.
Inside any timeline's Settings page, you'll see a small ? button next to the "Timeline Settings" heading. Tap it to open a focused popup that explains how camera captures work — the same three modes as above (24/7 Recording, Snapshot Capture, Motion-Only).
It's there as a quick reminder so you don't have to come back to this Help page just to check the Snapshot Capture menu path or the difference between modes. Use it any time you're configuring a new timeline and want to remember what your camera setup means for capture frequency.
From the Dashboard, tap + New Timeline. Pick a name (e.g. "Front Garden 2026"), select your Ring camera, and choose how often you want photos captured.
Three options:
The pause / resume button on each timeline card stops captures temporarily without deleting any photos.
Toggle Date & time stamp on photos in Timeline Settings to overlay the date and time in the corner of each photo. Great for time-lapse videos where you want to see the date changing.
In Timeline Settings you can pick a Card color. This adds a colored stripe at the top of that timeline's card on the Dashboard, making it easy to spot at a glance.
Useful when you have several timelines running at once — give each one its own color (orange for "Front Door", green for "Garden", blue for "Renovation") and you can identify them instantly without reading the names.
Choose from 8 colors, or "None" to keep the card plain.
The Duplicate Timeline button (in Timeline Settings) makes an exact copy of the timeline's settings — same camera, same schedule, same date-stamp option, same card color — under a new name (originally "… (Copy)", you can rename it).
Photos are not copied. You start with an empty new timeline using the existing configuration.
Useful when you want to start a fresh project (e.g. "Spring 2026 Garden") using the same camera and schedule as an existing one ("2025 Garden") without filling out the New Timeline form again.
The green 📸 Take Snapshot Now button captures a photo immediately, without waiting for the schedule. Use this to test that your camera is working, or to capture a specific moment.
If it's the first time, walk in front of your camera (or start a Live View in the Ring app) first to make sure your camera has fresh footage to pull from.
When you tap any photo in your timeline, it opens full-screen in the lightbox. Two rows of icons appear: utility icons at the top, action icons at the bottom.
Saves the photo to your phone or computer's Downloads folder.
Copies the photo's URL to your clipboard so you can paste it into messages, notes, or share it.
Mark this photo as a favorite. Tap again to unfavorite. See all favorites by tapping the ⭐ Favorites filter on the timeline.
Makes this photo the cover image on the timeline's card on the Dashboard. Useful for picking a representative photo instead of always showing the most recent one.
Add a personal note to this photo (e.g. "first frost", "fence repaired", "Aunt Lily's visit"). Notes are private to you.
Permanently deletes this single photo (asks to confirm first). Cannot be undone.
Favorites are photos you've manually marked as special — your best shots, the most interesting moments, the ones you want to find easily later.
Tap any photo to open the lightbox, then tap the ⭐ Favorite icon at the bottom. Tap it again to unfavorite.
On any timeline page, tap the ⭐ Favorites button next to "All". The grid filters down to just your favorited photos.
The month buttons at the top of your timeline filter photos by month. Tap a month to see only photos from that period. Tap All to see everything.
For long timelines, only the 10 most recent photos are shown by default. Tap 📂 Show All N Photos at the bottom to load the full set.
Scroll to the bottom of any timeline to see Recent Capture Activity — the last 10 capture attempts with their result. The best place to diagnose problems.
Possible statuses:
Tap 🎬 Make Time-Lapse on any timeline with at least 2 photos. A popup appears asking three things before the build starts:
Choose the date range to include. Defaults to the full available range (your earliest photo to your latest), but you can narrow it — for example, build a "March only" recap, or compare just the last 7 days.
How fast the video plays. Higher fps = each photo stays on screen for less time, so the video is shorter and feels faster.
Tap 🎬 Build Time-Lapse. A progress bar appears at the bottom. You can navigate away — the video keeps building on the server. When it's done, a "Time-Lapse Ready" popup appears with the playable video and a download button.
On the first day of each month, DailyLens automatically creates a time-lapse video of the previous month's photos. They appear in the Monthly Recap Videos section at the bottom of your timeline page, with Play and Download buttons.
Requires at least 2 photos for that month. No setup needed — just keep capturing.
Tap the ⚖️ icon in the top nav bar to open the Compare page. Pick:
You can compare from the same timeline (e.g. January vs December) or two different timelines (e.g. Front Door vs Back Door).
Once both sides are selected, a Slide to Compare view appears below — drag the orange handle left or right to wipe between the two images.
The 🔍 Scan button on each timeline checks every photo record to make sure the actual image still exists (either as a local file or in your Cloudinary cloud).
If a photo's file has been lost — e.g. because it was captured before you set up Cloudinary, and the local copy got wiped during a server update — it's called a "broken record". The thumbnail won't load and time-lapse builds will fail on it.
If broken records are found, tap 🗑 Remove N Broken Records. It deletes only the broken database entries — none of your visible photos are touched.
After cleaning, time-lapse builds run faster and the timeline stops trying to render missing thumbnails.
In ⚙️ Settings, toggle Auto-Clean broken image records ON. Then DailyLens silently removes broken records every time you open a timeline — no manual scan needed.
You can add DailyLens to your phone's home screen so it looks and feels like a real native app — full-screen, no browser bar, custom icon. Behind the scenes it's the same web app, just dressed up.
Go to ⚙️ Settings → 📱 Install as App. The card detects your browser and shows the right method:
Note: this uses a standard web technology called PWA (Progressive Web App). It's completely free, doesn't require an app store, and doesn't take up nearly as much space as a regular app.
Your Ring camera has no recent recorded events. Start a live view or walk in front of the camera to trigger a motion event, wait 30 seconds, then try Take Snapshot Now again. Once motion is detected, future captures will work automatically.
If this keeps happening, check that Snapshot Capture is enabled in the Ring app (see "How camera captures actually work" above).
If your capture log shows lots of 🔄 NO NEW FOOTAGE entries, it means Ring is returning the exact same frame as the previous capture — your camera hasn't recorded anything new in between.
This is the app working correctly: it refuses to save 100 copies of the same image.
If a red banner appears at the top saying "Your Ring connection has expired", your authentication tokens with Ring need to be refreshed.
You don't need to re-enter your email or set anything up again — DailyLens recognises returning users and signs you back in automatically.
This usually means the photo's local file was lost during an app update, and there's no Cloudinary backup for it. Set up Cloudinary in Settings if you haven't already (see Cloud Storage above), then run 🔍 Scan on the timeline to remove broken records.
Go to ⚙️ Settings → Delete My Account at the bottom of the page. You'll be asked to type DELETE as confirmation. Once you confirm:
dailylens/ folder is wiped).This action cannot be undone. If you change your mind later, you'll need to set up a fresh account from scratch.
Your photos live in your own Cloudinary account, so you already have direct access without going through DailyLens at all:
dailylens/ folder.For DailyLens-specific data (timeline names, schedules, notes, capture log), email xenastore@outlook.com with subject DATA EXPORT REQUEST and we'll send you a JSON dump within 30 days.
You don't need Ring Protect to use DailyLens, but it dramatically improves your experience. Here's why:
Ring only records during motion or doorbell events. DailyLens can only pull frames from those events, so when nothing's happening at your camera you'll see the same frame repeated. The 🔄 NO NEW FOOTAGE entries in your capture log indicate this. You can refresh by walking in front of the camera or starting a live view in the Ring app.
For all support, privacy, or abuse issues, email xenastore@outlook.com.
Yes. Captures happen entirely server-side, completely independent of your phone or computer. As long as your Ring camera has internet access, captures keep running 24/7 — even when you're asleep, on holiday, or have your phone off.
Yes. Each device that signs in gets its own 30-day persistent session. Sign in on your phone, your laptop, your tablet — all stay logged in independently. Sign out on one and the others keep working.
That depends on your Ring Protect plan, not on DailyLens. Ring Basic keeps videos for 60 days; Ring Protect Plus, 180 days. DailyLens captures still images from that footage at the moment of capture — once a snapshot is saved to your Cloudinary, it's permanent regardless of what Ring does with the original video.
Yes — there are two easy ways:
Both methods permanently remove the single photo from your timeline. The action cannot be undone, so you'll be asked to confirm.
All your timelines, photos, settings, and time-lapses stay exactly where they are. Re-linking just refreshes your authentication with Ring — your data is yours, tied to your Ring account, not to a particular device.
No. DailyLens only takes still images — no video, no audio. It captures one snapshot at a time on the schedule you choose, then stops until the next scheduled capture. Continuous video recording is a feature of Ring itself (Ring Protect Plus), not DailyLens.