Privacy-focused Android gallery for photos and videos, with real device MediaStore integration, smart local → cloud storage tiering, and sync to OneDrive or Google Drive — without locking you into a proprietary cloud.
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Real screenshots — gallery, albums, maps, tags, and smart storage with your own cloud.
Gallery
Albums
Year albums
Storage tiering
Sync & retention
Photo viewer
Photo details
Tools
Maps
Maps zoom
Short walkthrough of My Smart Gallery. Watch on YouTube · Google Play.
Indexes Android MediaStore — not a closed sandbox. One catalog for photos and videos.
A photo-first gallery with albums, tags, favorites, and an OpenStreetMap view.
Sync to OneDrive or Google Drive — same experience, no proprietary gallery cloud.
Smart tiering: local → synced → cloud-only, with thumbnails kept on device.
Catalog backup is separate from photo sync — built for a lost or replaced phone.
Your media stays in the OneDrive or Google Drive folder you choose — not ours.
Cloud folders, Google Drive limits, Samsung Gallery migration, sync modes, and tiering.
Yes on OneDrive: after a full sync, that cloud folder becomes an album on your device, and photos you added there can be imported. Albums map to real folders under your gallery directory — including nested albums.
On Google Drive, folder structure still maps to albums, but photos you upload yourself in the Drive website or Drive app are usually not imported — see the Google Drive FAQ below.
Upload pushes new local shots, album moves, and deletes to the cloud without scanning your entire cloud library — best for daily backup. Full sync is bidirectional: it imports unknown cloud media, reconciles tags, favorites, and deletes across devices, and handles deeper cleanup after changes on another phone. Run either from the Cloud tab (or header refresh); both can be scheduled.
No. Sync covers photos and videos only. Documents, PDFs, audio, archives, and other non-media files in your local root or cloud gallery folder are ignored — they stay where they are and are not imported, uploaded, or managed by the app.
Yes. Local and synced files move on disk; cloud-only items update album metadata and relocate in the cloud on the next sync. Creating, nesting, renaming, or deleting albums needs a one-time folder access grant so the app can manage directories safely.
Yes. Media already organized in folders under your cloud gallery directory is assigned to matching albums automatically, including nested folders.
On Google Drive, only files the app is allowed to see under its Drive access can be imported — manually uploaded files in Drive often cannot; see the FAQ below.
Google Drive uses the drive.file OAuth scope: the app can only see files
it created (or that you explicitly opened with it). Photos you add yourself in the
Drive website or Drive app stay invisible to the API — even in the correct gallery
folder — so another sync will not import them.
Uploads from the app (and re-import of those files) still work. OneDrive can list the folder’s real children, so external uploads there can be imported. A broader Drive scope could fix this later, but it needs Google verification and is not available today.
My Smart Gallery manages one local gallery root (chosen via Android’s
folder access), including its subfolders. It does not support several independent
top-level trees (/DCIM, /Download, /Movies,
/Pictures) as peer source folders that all sync into a single OneDrive
gallery the way Samsung Gallery did — and that is not on the mid-term roadmap.
Samsung Camera keeps writing to /DCIM/Camera, so the practical setup is:
/DCIM and grant folder access, so new camera shots and cloud→device
restores both work. (Android only allows cloud restores into primary image
directories such as DCIM and Pictures.)
Pictures/Samsung Gallery/DCIM (your existing Samsung cloud library),
or at a new dedicated folder if you prefer a clean parallel migration.
Samsung Gallery/DCIM into it in batches, then run a
Full sync from My Smart Gallery.
/Download, /Movies, or peer
/Pictures trees stays outside the managed root unless you move or
copy the photos and videos you care about into albums under that root (My Smart
Gallery syncs photo and video types only).
Keep regular backups of cloud and device media during migration — you remain responsible for your data.
Yes. After tiering, thumbnails stay on device while originals live in your cloud. Download HD restores full quality (single or bulk); a configurable grace period (default 7 days, max 14) applies before re-tiering. Cloud-only videos need Download HD to play. Items imported as cloud-only may lack GPS until you download HD or use Retrieve GPS from cloud.
Yes. Catalog backup is separate from photo sync. Periodic snapshots (default every 7 days, plus Backup now) store library metadata, favorites, tags, albums, and portable settings in your cloud folder. On a new phone, reconnect the same provider; the setup wizard can detect a backup and offer restore. Optional thumbnail backup is available in settings so the gallery looks familiar sooner.
Large libraries are an active focus. The gallery is built for smooth paging and a fast scrubber over big collections; we continue to benchmark around tens of thousands of photos and videos. Reach out if you need guidance for a specific device or library size.
Yes. To reduce the risk of data loss from misconfiguration, bugs, or unexpected issues, we strongly encourage regular backups of both your cloud and device media. You remain responsible for your data.