The stock Android gallery app these days is very functional and will satisfy most users. However, if you want added protection, privacy, editing features, cloud sync, or more, you may want to look for something else.
Fortunately for you, there are plenty of third-party gallery apps for Android that provide enhanced functionality, privacy protection, editing features and much more.
There are hundreds of such apps on Google Play though, so choosing one can be quite challenging.
If you don’t have time to go through dozens of gallery apps, we would like to introduce you to what we think are the 15 best free gallery apps on Android!
The list below is in no particular order, so read through the end to select which one is best for your own requirements.
1. Google Photos
First up, we have Google Photos, which is arguably one of the best gallery and photo storage app for Android. Developed by Google, it’s well optimized, has plenty of useful features, and is going to be maintained and updated for a long time.
Google Photos actually backs your photos to the cloud, so you don’t have to think about local smartphone storage.
Not only that, but Google provides free storage for photos up to 16 megapixels in size and videos up to 1080p.
If you need more storage, then you may purchase a Google One plan. Google One starts at $1.99 per month for 100 GB of cloud storage.
Once uploaded to the cloud, you may access your gallery from anywhere once you sign in to your Google account.
Google Photos also makes heavy use of machine learning to group content together, as well as tag attractions and people in them. The latter feature makes searching for photos in your gallery really easy.
Photos has photo editing tools too, allowing for some freedom in polishing your creations. Sharing photos is made very easy as well via email or phone number.
2. Photo Gallery & Album
If Google Photos’ AI features don’t particularly impress you, then you may give Photo Gallery & Album a shot instead. Photo Gallery & Album features a more traditional gallery experience with some added features.
The highlight of Photo Gallery & Album is its ability to encrypt and password-protect images. If there are any images that you’d like to keep away from curious eyes, then you may just place them in a hidden folder and lock it with a password.
Photo Gallery & Album has a few simple editing features as well, allowing you to adjust colors, rotate, crop, flip photos, and more. This isn’t an editing app and thus doesn’t have super-powerful editing functionality, but it’s still fairly nice.
3. Simple Gallery – Photo and Video Manager & Editor
Simple Gallery – Photo and Video Manager & Editor is a wonderful option if you want an ad-free experience. This gallery app is completely free of ads, so it delivers a seamless user interface and no distractions.
Simple Gallery has plenty of interesting features as well. It lets you recover recently deleted photos and videos, and you may also lock your private photos and videos away behind a password or your fingerprint.
Simple Gallery has a highly customizable UI as well, which is a pretty unique feature. You also get access to a fairly functional photo editor.
One thing to note with this app – it’s no longer maintained, according to the app description, although it had been updated in early September 2020 as of this post’s writing. Instead, the developer suggests Simple Gallery Pro – a paid version of the app (it is only 0.50).
Here’s what you should do – give the free version a shot, and if you like it, you may purchase the Pro app. It doesn’t even cost a dollar, so it might be a steal for the money.
4. Photo Album Vault & Photo Editor
Photo Album Vault & Photo Editor features a simple and intuitive user interface. Though it’s not customizable like in Simple Gallery, it will delight those who want something simple and convenient out of the box.
In terms of features, Photo Album Vault & Photo Editor has all the essential things you’d want. Photo Album Vault & Photo Editor lets you encrypt and hide sensitive content, and it also features fairly decent search and sorting functionality.
Photo Album Vault & Photo Editor stores all deleted photos in a separate trash folder too, so you may retrieve accidentally deleted files.
Photo Album Vault & Photo Editor also has photo editing functionality, allowing you to add text, stickers, and make doodles. You may make photo collages as well, which is pretty neat.
5. Picture Gallery, Photo Manager, Album
Like Google Photos, Picture Gallery, Photo Manager, Album can automatically categorize photos, which is very nice for searching.
Google Photos will probably be much better at detecting places and people on photos, but if you don’t like Photos, this app might be an excellent alternative.
Apart from categorization, Picture Gallery, Photo Manager, Album offers standard gallery features. You are getting access to some simple photo editing functionality, a trash folder, convenient sharing, a neat interface, and a dark mode.
6. Photo Album, Image Gallery & Editor
Photo Album, Image Gallery & Editor offers a stylish user interface with themes and customizable colors. If you want to adapt your gallery app to your taste, then Photo Album, Image Gallery & Editor is a good option.
Additionally, Photo Album, Image Gallery & Editor seems to be fairly well-optimized and takes only seconds to launch and open your content.
Photo Album, Image Gallery & Editor also allows you to hide away private photos & videos, edit images, access your camera directly from the app, share photos, sort & organize files, and more.
One thing to note with this app – as of this post’s writing, it had been last updated in May 2020. It should continue working just fine as new Android versions roll out, but it would be nice if it received updates more frequently.
7. Photo Gallery HD & Editor
Photo Gallery HD & Editor seems to be more frequently updated than Photo Album, Image Gallery & Editor while having more or less the same functionality.
Like previous apps, Photo Gallery HD & Editor allows you to protect sensitive photos and videos by a password. To keep things easy, you may organize your photos by album, and moving photos from an SD card to internal storage is super-easy too.
The photo editing functionality of Photo Gallery HD & Editor is quite good as well. You may adjust colors, apply filters, draw doodles, crop, rotate, and flip photos, which is pretty basic but still nice.
8. A+ Gallery – Photos & Videos
A+ Gallery – Photos & Videos is a great choice if you are keeping some of your photos in the cloud. This app works seamlessly with Dropbox, Amazon Cloud Drive, and Facebook. With that, A+ Gallery can sync photos and videos between devices no matter where you are.
Aside from the cloud functionality, A+ Gallery offers traditional gallery features too. It allows you to hide your photos in a password-protected folder, manage photo albums, read and store files on SD cards, and more.
Notably, A+ Gallery doesn’t have any photo editing features. If you don’t need to edit files or already have an app for that, then A+ Gallery might be a good option for you.
9. Amazon Photos
Amazon Photos is an excellent choice for Amazon Prime users. All Prime users get access to unlimited full-resolution photo storage, which is fairly nice.
The video storage is only limited to 5 GB though, which is very little given how large high-resolution video files may be.
You may purchase additional storage though – 100 GB for $1.99 per month and 1 TB for $6.99 per month. The pricing for 100 GB is the same as for Google One, so the primary differentiator between the two services will be whose features you like more.
Speaking of features, Amazon Photos can group and sort photos automatically. With that, searching for photos is a breeze with Photos. However, search is limited to Prime users, unfortunately.
Lastly, since your files are stored in the cloud, Amazon Photos lets you access photos and videos from anywhere as long as you are logged in to your Amazon account.
10. Piktures
Perhaps the most interesting feature of Piktures is that it allows you to share your photos and videos directly with other Piktures users in your vicinity via Wi-Fi Direct. Wi-Fi Direct requires no mobile data for file sharing!
What’s also interesting about Piktures is that it can read files from USB drives as long as the drive is formatted FAT32.
Piktures provides you with access to cloud files stored on Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox as well, so you can access your files from anywhere.
The app also has an integrated QR scanner, and each scanned QR code is stored in a dedicated folder for your to retrieve.
Private photo protection and editing features are present in Piktures as well.
11. Gallery Vault
The Gallery Vault app is specifically designed to help you protect your photos and videos. Compared to previous apps, it has more advanced security features, and it doesn’t rely on cloud storage to secure your photos.
Apart from hiding your photos and videos in out-of-view locations, Gallery Vault supports the hiding icon feature as well. So you can hide the app itself!
Every hidden file is encrypted too, so even if somebody knows of the existence of hidden files on your device, they shouldn’t be able to access them.
Gallery Vault supports fingerprint and passcode unlocks as well, and it lets you set up a fake passcode and show fake content on the screen.
12. Gallery Go By Google
Gallery Go is an offline gallery option from Google. If you want a Google-supported gallery app without cloud functionality, Gallery Go might be an ideal choice for you.
Apart from the cloud functionality, Gallery Go is very similar to Google Photos. It again has face and place detection capabilities, allowing you to easily sort and search through your files. The app categorizes photos by people, and it can also identify animals, natural scenes, documents, and selfies.
Gallery Go has photo editing tools too to help you enhance your photos.
The interface of Gallery Go is great as well – just like in pretty much any other Google app. The app also has a dark theme to reduce strain on your eyes.
13. Gallery – Hide Pictures and Videos
The highlight of the Gallery – Hide Pictures and Videos app is its ability to identify similar or duplicate photos. This feature allows you to delete duplicate files and save storage space on your device. Gallery also lets you recover recently deleted photos and videos.
This app can read files in pretty much any format too. The built-in photo editor also allows you to enhance photos, while the private photo vault will keep your files secure.
14. Gallery Ad Free
If you want a 100% ad-free experience, then the Gallery Ad Free app is a decent choice. It features all the essential features you’d want in a gallery app – like file protection, photo effects, and file organization – while ensuring a smooth user experience.
Gallery Ad Free is very lightweight as well and seems not to drain the battery as much as other apps do.
With that said, keep in mind that this app hasn’t been updated since November 2019. It still works on modern Android devices, but going forward, you might start seeing issues.
15. LOCKED Secret Album
Finally, we have the LOCKED Secret Album, which is another app intended to keep your sensitive photos and videos protected.
The most remarkable feature of this app is the “calculator mode”, which disguises the app as a calculator. The package name of LOCKED Secret Album also masks the true purpose of the app, which is very thoughtful of the developer!
There is also a Fake Vault feature that lets you set up a decoy password and a fake fault to deceive intruders. The Intruder Selfie feature takes a selfie every time someone attempts to access your photos as well.
Leave a Reply