Samsung Gallery can now back up your photos straight to your Google account

The feature arrives a few months after Samsung dropped OneDrive sync from Gallery.

Image by Mat Smith for Engadget

Samsung device owners are used to being nudged toward OneDrive whenever they want to back up their camera roll, but that option quietly disappeared in September when Samsung stripped Microsoft OneDrive support out of its Gallery app. The company appears to have been working on a replacement all along: Gallery can now sync directly with a Google account.

Until now, backing up photos and videos to Google storage on a Samsung phone meant living in Google Photos, either instead of the preinstalled Gallery app or alongside it. With this change, owners who prefer Samsung’s own gallery software no longer have to install a second app to keep a cloud copy. For the time being, the capability is limited to a handful of Galaxy handsets running One UI 9, Samsung’s newest take on Android, though the company says a wider rollout will follow in stages. Turning it on is straightforward: tap the cloud icon inside Gallery, or head to Gallery settings and flip on Sync photos and videos.

Samsung

Because media is tied to the Google account rather than the handset, the library follows you across Galaxy devices. Sign in with the same account on another phone or tablet, enable sync there as well, and previews of the backed-up photos and videos show up in Gallery on that device too; selecting them downloads the full-resolution originals. There is also the reverse case, clearing space locally once everything is safely uploaded. Samsung has paired the feature with a Free up space setting inside the Sync photos and videos menu, which removes the original files from the device while leaving thumbnails behind in Gallery.

Keep in mind that these backups count against Google account storage. Every account starts with 5GB free, expandable to 15GB by verifying a phone number, and since that pool is shared with Gmail, Photos, and Drive, heavier users will need Google One: $2 a month for 100GB or $3 for 200GB.

Source link