What’s the Difference Between Google Photos and Gallery App on Android

Mehvish Mushtaq is a computer engineer by degree. Her love for Android and gadgets led her to develop the first Android app for Kashmir. Known as Dial Kashmir, she won the prestigious Nari Shakti award from the President of India. She has been writing about technology for 6+ years and her favorite categories include how-to guides, explainers, tips and tricks for Android, iOS/iPadOS, social media, and web apps.

Arshmeet has been a tech tinkerer since childhood, but she realized her love for technology and writing about 5 years ago. Since then, she has been honing her skills and helping people figure out how things work, troubleshoot problems, choose the right app and products, and dig deep into the new and old concepts of technology. She is a self-professed Apple Enthusiast who loves debating what’s good and what’s not. It is her passion for finding techniques, hacks, apps, and products that make everyday life simpler.

Purpose

Summary:The Gallery app is for offline viewing of photos whereas Google Photos is for auto backup feature.

The gallery app on Android is an offline tool to view and organize images and videos on your Android phone for offline purposes. There are many different types of gallery apps. While each gallery app offers unique features, the inherent function remains the same. They all differ slightly in the user interface and customization settings.

On the contrary, Google Photos is an online photo-management service offering auto backup and sync functionality for photos and videos. It has the features of a traditional gallery app and also provides image hosting and sync service that makes images available immediately across platforms.

It also happens to be an image-sharing tool to easily share photos with others. Apart from that, you can edit pictures, add cool animations, and even make mini-movies.

Availability

Gallery apps are exclusive to Android devices. What that means is these are provided mostly by phone manufacturers. For instance, you have the OnePlus Gallery, Samsung Gallery, Mi Gallery, etc. And they come pre-installed.

You cannot install Samsung Gallery on a OnePlus phone and similarly for others. However, you can install third-party gallery apps from the Play Store on other Android phones. But not on iPhone.

Moreover, these gallery apps seldom provide a backup option. So even if you install it on multiple phones, its photos will not show up on your second or new phone automatically. You need a gallery app that provides backup functionality in such a case, and Google Photos is excellent at that.

Talking about Google Photos, it has the benefit of being accessible on every platform and we are not saying that only the app is available on all devices but even the photos from all devices can be accessed on other devices. Google Photos hasAndroidandiOSapps and also has aweb version. While a proper Windows or Mac app doesn’t exist, you get a tool for uploading files.

Backup and Storage

The gallery apps on Android use local phone storage only. They don’t have a storage of their own. And that’s also the reason you cannot see photos from gallery apps on other devices.

On the other hand, you can use Google Photos in two ways – offline and online. By default,Google Photos works offlineand shows you camera pictures on the main screen whereas pictures from other apps like WhatsApp, Screenshots, etc., are present in the folders listed under the Library section.

In such a case when the backup is not enabled and it only shows offline photos and videos, it doesn’t use its own storage but its storage is dependent on your phone’s storage. So it can store and show as much data as your phone allows.

But when thebackup is enabledand your photos are stored online in Google’s cloud service, making them accessible across all your devices, thestorage dependson your Google account storage.

Basically, you get up to 15GB of free storage with Google Photos, but that storage isshared across your Google account, which includes Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos. You can further increase the storage using paid plans. Google Photos offers a feature to free up storage on your phone by deleting the photos from your phone and storing them only in the cloud.

Fun Fact: If you have a Pixel 8 or earlier, you receive unlimited storage for photos and videos backed up from your device at no charge.

User Interface and Organization

Gallery apps are designed for device folders or offline viewing of photos and videos. And they provide a perfect interface for viewing and managing such files. In most gallery apps, the first screen will show the recent pictures and videos from all the albums.

You can also view the photos in their folders. And you can organize your folders by creating new folders or moving pictures between different folders.

But when it comes to Google Photos, the first screen usually shows the camera pictures and photos from other devices. Viewing device folders (other albums) is a two-step process, and when you reach there, the aura is dull.

I feel Google Photos can do much better with image organization. It lacks functions that a person might expect in a gallery app while viewing local photos. It just doesn’t feel right for viewing device folders.

Tip:Know how tocopy-paste pictures on Android phones.

Who Can Find My Photos Quickly

Google Photos has the edge over other gallery apps when it comes to search. Machine learning in collaboration with artificial intelligence makes the job of finding photos on Google Photos a piece of cake. The best part, the algorithms use facial recognition and other methods for identifying the contents of a photo to add relevant metatags.

You can search for photos by typing more natural or descriptive terms. For instance, if you are looking for your cat pictures, you can type in — cat or cat pics. Similarly, Google Photos alsorecognizes peopleand places in images. Further, you can use Google Assistant commands to find your pictures as well.

However, the drawback is that this feature only works for photos stored in the Google Photos service and not for offline photos. On the other hand, only some gallery apps like Samsung Gallery also offer natural search. And the best part it works offline.

Sharing and Collaboration

What’s the fun of taking pictures when you cannot share them easily with others? The usual gallery apps do not offer a built-in way to share pictures with others. You need to share pictures from the gallery app to some other app to share them whereas Google Photos offers various the following built-in methods for sharing:

Also Read:Know thedifference between Google Photos and Google Drive.

Who Can See My Photos

Anything that youupload on Google Photos is privateandvisible to youonly, unless you share it with someone manually.

For other gallery apps, the data is stored on your device only. The same happens for the folders that are not backed up on Google Photos — they are stored on your phones. So there is no chance of anyone seeing them at all.

The answer depends on your use case. Google Photos is a gallery app that also bundles backup features and aims to let youfree up some spaceon your phone. Even though the Photos app does its overall job well, it falls short when it comes to device folders.

The gallery apps, on the contrary, lack the extra backup features, but they offer amazing organization and user interface for device folders. I would suggest you use both apps interchangeably to make the best of both options.

FAQs

When you delete a photo from Google Photos, it is removed from your gallery as well. Know how todelete photos from Google Photosbut not from your phone.

It depends. If you have enabled the Backup & sync functionality in Google Photos, then the camera photos are linked. If you remove a picture from your gallery app that hasn’t been backed up to Google Photos, it is wiped away from both apps. But if the photo was synced, then it will get erased only from the gallery app. You can still view it under the Photos tab on Google Photos.

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Last updated on 21 August, 2024

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