The kind of photo i like displaying on my Netgear Meural Canvas II. Image Anthony Nelzin-Santos. — Antwerpen (BE), 2026.08.

MeuralManager: i wrote a CLI so i never have to open the Meural app again

The Netgear Meural Canvas II digital photo frame is one of my favourite devices i own. Its 21.5″ display offers adequate colour reproduction and superb viewing angles. Its design is nothing to write home about, but combined with the matte coating that prevents most if not all glare, it doesn’t read as ‘i’ve put a glaring display on the wall’. It turns on in the morning, it turns off in the evening¹, and in between, it’s a subtle reminder of holidays, events and moments. It’s just plain nice… if it weren’t for everything else about it.

Until Netgear silently rewrote their authentication flow a few months ago, their app would disconnect immediately after i connected, a bug that’d been going on for years. They designed their website to discourage you from uploading your own pictures and push you towards their subscription service. Their backend is slow and unreliable, you can’t delete multiple items at once, deleting a playlist silently leaves its contents behind, and moving items from one playlist to another is torture. You can disconnect your Meural Canvas from Wi-Fi and use SD cards, but you most definitely won’t, thanks to their insane list of requirements.

Trying — and failing — to upload the photos from my trip to Antwerpen and my visit to the Apple Museum was the last straw. I broke down and spent a few hours writing MeuralManager, a command-line interface for the Meural API. It fixes almost all of my pain points with their app and website:

it can list every playlist with an item count;
it can identify orphaned items;
it can upload photos in a new or an existing playlist;
it can move photos between playlists without re-uploading them;
it can delete photos and playlists.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t make Netgear’s backend faster and more reliable. MeuralManager can resize your photos before uploading them, saving on both transfer times and server-side processing. When the upload times out, which happens fairly often, it waits for 4 seconds before retrying. If it still times out, it backs down to 8, then 16 seconds, before a new attempt. If that still doesn’t work, or if the upload is interrupted, re-running the same command will continue from where it left off without creating duplicates.

As a safety precaution, write commands default to a dry run. You have to pass the --execute argument to expressly authorize them to change things in your library. In addition, deletions require typing DELETE at the prompt to confirm the operation. The export command allows you to back up your photos before doing anything destructive. (Don’t ask me why i’ve added these safeguards.)

Netgear, like many others, moved their authentication gateway behind bot-detection middleware that signs each login request with headers generated by obfuscated in-page JavaScript. In effect, usernames and passwords (and every older script that still uses them) are now useless. MeuralManager doesn’t scrape your authentication token on your behalf²: you have to paste it from your browser’s developer tools.

Thanks to MeuralManager, i’ve been able to completely reorganize my playlist and upload my latest photos in a few commands. It’s not fast, but that’s not my fault, and it’s much more reliable than Netgear’s own app and website. As it was debugged and documented with the help of Claude Code, i’m dedicating it to the public domain under the CC0 1.0 Universal licence. I hope it’s useful! You can download MeuralManager and read its complete documentation on GitHub.

About the Z1NZ0L1N dispatch system

Z1NZ0L1N is a dispatch system operated by Anthony Nelzin-Santos, transmitting from the field since January 2025. This document describes the operator, the protocol’s naming convention, its transmission history, its field office, and how it’s funded.

Operator

Anthony Nelzin-Santos is a writer at heart, teacher by instinct, flâneur by habit. He’s known to wander in search of old shopfronts, to spend an inordinate amount of time curating his music library, to craft pocket notebooks with vintage roadmaps, to keep a collection of half-repaired typewriters and half-empty fountain pens, to wear jeans and hiking shoes all year round, to watch his plants grow, to roam around with the heaviest long-tail bike on the planet, and to acquire more books than can be read. He’s married to the only person willing to put up with all of it.

Naming convention

“Zinzolin” is a shade of purple between lavender-field blue and crushed-blackberry red. The medieval Italians traced it to jujube fruits (giuggiolino). The Mozarabs, were they still around to argue the point, would insist on sesame seeds (djoudjolân) instead. The operator chose it because it’s his favourite colour — partly because it sounds like his name.

Transmission history

The operator was born before the world wide web was invented, but grew up surrounded by computers. He launched his first website in 2000, started his first blog in 2004, recorded his first podcast in 2005, and uploaded his first video in 2006. He went pro in 2008. In 2025, after years spent transmitting in French, the frequency switched to English.

Funding

Z1NZ0L1N is proudly ad-free. The operator covers hosting and the domain name — roughly €120 a year — out of pocket. The best way to support his efforts is to subscribe to the RSS feed and share your favourite dispatches with your friends. That being said, if you ever feel like sending one, a cup of coffee is always welcome.

Tools

Notebooks: handmade. Ink: purple, one of many. Pen: a fountain pen, often a Lamy Safari, also one of many. Backup: a Leuchtturm1917 Drehgriffel Nr. 1 ballpoint, a Uniball Zento Signature rollerball, or a Caran d’Ache 849 mechanical pencil. Notes when the notebook’s out of reach: Bloom. Computer: MacBook Air. Mechanical keyboard: more than one. Writing: Lettera, formerly Ulysses. Coding: BBEdit. Proofing: Antidote. Publication: Hugo.