Google Photos is the default gallery app on Android, and it shines with media backup, useful editing tools, seamless sharing, and several other tricks. However, it can be overwhelming if you prefer an offline app to view and organize photos. The best Android phones from Samsung, OnePlus, Vivo, and Xiaomi come with the company’s gallery app. The Google Play Store also packs capable third-party options. Here are the top alternative gallery apps to better manage your photos.
F-Stop Gallery
F-Stop comfortably tops our recommendation list with an easy-to-use Material Design UI, excellent search engine, tags, and nested folders to organize photos and Smart Albums. The app includes the option to search through photos based on metadata, including ratings, the camera model, a map view, smart albums, and password protection. The layout is customizable, and F-Stop offers the ability to nest folders by creating subfolders, which is convenient if you have lots of pictures on your phone. Most of these power functions are only available in the Pro version, which costs a one-time $5 fee.
1Gallery: Photo Gallery & Vault
1Gallery shines with a simple yet effective user interface to manage media files like a pro. Once you give storage permission, the app displays the device albums on the main page. You can create new folders, move images from an SD card to device memory, and keep your favorite photos separate for easy access. You can check the detailed information of your media files and hide confidential photos under a secure album. The default photo editor completes the job with crop, rotate, resize, filters, and video trimming tools. Go ahead, give it a try.
Simple Gallery – Photo and Video Manager & Editor
Simple Gallery is one of our favorites on the list. It’s easy to use, responsive, and comes with neat features, such as photo editing, access to hidden folders, and support for various file types, including RAW, SVG, GIF, and panoramic. There’s also built-in trash that lets you recover images you mistakenly removed.
The app is ad-free, and the pro version gives you access to more perks, such as protecting access to the app with a PIN or fingerprint, as well as the option to create secret folders. The developers no longer support the free version (it was last updated on October 2021). You must purchase the pro version to continue receiving new features. But given the app costs about $1, it’s definitely worth your money.
Piktures: Gallery, Photos & Videos
Piktures is a simple yet powerful photo gallery. Like most of the gallery apps on the list, you can use it to edit photos and play videos. It can access your cloud photos and show them in a single place, which is convenient if you back them up online. The app supports popular cloud storage services like OneDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox.
Some advanced features include a GIF maker, as well as a secret space to hide your photos. The calendar and location views are unique and a good way to look at pictures taken on a particular day or somewhere specific.
Aves Gallery
Aves Gallery is one of the rare Android apps to adopt the Material You app icon. Aves has a neat floating menu bar at the bottom to check your albums, videos, and favorite files. The animations are sleek throughout the app. The Stats menu is an excellent add-on to check top countries, image types, and more data in a couple of graphs. Apart from the standard dark theme, Avas supports a pure black theme to save some battery juice on AMOLED displays.
Gallery Go by Google
Google Photos is simple and organizes photos by location automatically. However, you may not want your pictures stored on the cloud, especially not when they’re processed by algorithms to detect who’s on them. Gallery Go by Google is designed to work offline to save data and solve privacy concerns. The app automatically organizes your content into categories, namely People, Selfies, Nature, Animals, Documents, Videos, and Movies. In addition, it also comes with editing tools that enhance photos in a few clicks.
Gallery – Simple and fast
Gallery app offers similar features to Gallery Go and has a sleek interface. It’s free of ads, works offline, and comes with a built-in collage-making tool. If you’re looking for something that recognizes people’s faces and automatically categorizes photos and Gallery Go doesn’t work for you, give Gallery app a try.
A+ Gallery – Photos & Videos
Used by 9+ million users, A+ Gallery is one of the solid alternative gallery apps on the list. It offers a responsive and simple user interface with a handful of useful features. The app automatically organizes your photos based on when and where you took them, with an option to display them on a map. If you’re looking for a particular color, you can filter based on the criteria without an internet connection. There’s also a built-in vault that protects private photos with a password. A+ Gallery is also well integrated with cloud storage platforms, such as Facebook, Dropbox, OneDrive, and Amazon Cloud Drive, letting you sync your pictures or download albums locally.
Gallery Vault – Hide Photos And Videos
The Locked Folder in Google Photos leaves a lot to desire. Due to glaring limitations, it’s not an ideal way to hide sensitive media on a phone. Gallery Vault is worth considering to keep your photos and videos as private as possible. You can protect your media with a password, pattern, or fingerprint. The app also supports fake pins and fake content to fool prying eyes.
You can use the built-in private camera to take and send photos and videos to the app. Gallery Vault has a break-in alert to take intruder selfies when someone tries to break into your privacy by tapping the wrong passwords.
PhotoMap Gallery
If you travel and want to look back at your memories, PhotoMap Gallery is the app you need. It helps you rediscover the places you’ve visited by plotting the photos you’ve taken on a map. It does this with the files on your phone, and you can link to Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, FTP/FTPS, and CIFS/SMB, allowing you to fetch media you backed up online. You can view photos in the Calendar view, as well as in AR. If you like to share your travel experiences with others, you can export your trips to GPX/KML files, making them easy to send.
Try out a couple of gallery alternatives from this list to find the perfect pick for you. If you want to hide private photos and videos, download a gallery app with a vault built-in.
