I’ve always preferred Samsung Gallery over Google Photos. But with the news of OneDrive integration ending on September 30, it seemed like Samsung Gallery was about to be left without a backup solution. That was a dealbreaker for me, and I was ready to ditch it for that exact reason.
But then Samsung dropped a surprise Google account integration into the Gallery app, and it was enough to make me rethink the whole decision.
Samsung Gallery’s OneDrive integration is going away
Gallery’s losing its backup buddy
Automatic cloud backup is non-negotiable for me in a gallery app. For years, Samsung Gallery let me back up my photos and videos straight to OneDrive, so I never had to think about storage or worry about losing everything if I lost my phone.
But with the news of Samsung Gallery’s OneDrive integration ending on September 30, I had to look for an alternative. To be fair, you can still back up photos and videos to OneDrive, just not through Samsung Gallery. You’d need to open the OneDrive app on your Galaxy phone and enable camera backup there instead. So, if you’re already paying for Microsoft 365, OneDrive is technically still on the table.
The problem is that it’s not as seamless as before. You’re now relying on OneDrive to back up photos and videos separately, which means once you delete something from local storage, you can’t view it inside Samsung Gallery anymore. So yes, even though OneDrive is still an option, I wasn’t prepared to stick with it.
Samsung Gallery can now backup directly to Google Photos
Switching apps isn’t necessary
Just as I was getting ready to commit to Google Photos, Samsung dropped the news I didn’t see coming. Samsung Gallery can now sync directly to a Google account, which meant switching apps wasn’t really necessary for me after all.
Setting it up is also straightforward. All you have to do is open the Gallery settings menu, tap Sync photos and videos, and link your Google account from there. You can then specify which albums to sync, whether you want syncing to happen on mobile data or while roaming.
This feature is currently rolling out, so if you don’t see it, you can try two things. First, head to Gallery settings > About Gallery to check for pending updates. This feature is available on Samsung Gallery version 15.9.01.7 and later. Next, head to Settings > Apps > Gallery Cloud Sync > App details in store and check for pending updates. If a newer version is available, install it, and you should see the Google account backup option after that. If not, you can either wait for the update to arrive or sideload the APK directly.
Once you’ve backed up your photos and videos through Samsung Gallery, they’ll show up in Google Photos. Those will count towards your Google account storage, so make sure you have enough free storage there. Google gives 15GB of free storage to get you started, but if you need more, you can pay $1.99/month for 100GB, $2.99 for 200GB, and $9.99/month for 2TB.
After that, the sync works pretty much as you’d expect. Deleting a photo from Google Photos automatically removes it from Samsung Gallery, and vice versa. If you move a photo to your Private Album, it’s automatically deleted from Google Photos. If you move it to Secure Folder, though, you need to delete it manually from the cloud.
Moving existing data from OneDrive to my Google account wasn’t seamless
I wish there was an easy way
Setting up Google account sync in Samsung Gallery is easy enough, but the real challenge is moving all the existing photos and videos from OneDrive to Google Photos. There’s no one-click option that takes care of this.
This wasn’t a problem for photos and videos that were already available locally on my Galaxy phone. But for those I had backed up months ago, I had to download them manually and upload all of them into Google Photos. This was tedious, but thankfully, I only had 50GB of photos backed up, so it didn’t take long.
Using Google Photos still has a few advantages
Samsung Gallery being able to sync directly to a Google account sounds like great news if you’re already deep into Google’s ecosystem. But there are a couple of catches.
The first is that the photos and videos you back up through Samsung Gallery are really only there in the cloud for viewing and sharing. Google Photos doesn’t use them for features like Memories, Live Albums, or Search. That last one can be a dealbreaker for a lot of people, because Search is genuinely one of the best things Google Photos does.
If you want all of that, you can use Google Photos for backups directly, which isn’t really a bad deal either. Google Photos has gotten a lot better over the years, and it comes with a few things Gallery just doesn’t offer, like the storage saver quality option, more advanced search, AI-powered editing tools, and easier shared albums.