Are Google Photos and Gallery Connected?

• Overview of Google Photos
• Are Google Photos and Gallery Connected?
• Do I Need Both Gallery and Google Photos?
• How to Sync Gallery with Google Photos
• How to Unlink Google Photos from Gallery
• Conclusion

Overview of Google Photos

It is important to know what is Google Photos and the differences between it and Gallery before going to the answer to “Are Google Photos and Gallery connected”.

You can use Google Photos, a cloud-based photo and video storage service, to back up your photos and videos, organize them, and share them with others easily. It offers features like editing tools, automatic album creation, AI-powered search, and more. You can access your photos and videos across all devices connected to your Google account because it is cross-platform.

You can see some main differences between Google Photos and the gallery app:

Are Google Photos and Gallery Connected?

Although the Google Photos and the Gallery apps are not directly connected, they can work together to manage photos on your device. Photos and videos stored on your device can be viewed using the Gallery app, regardless of whether they are on an SD card or internal storage, because the Gallery app is a tool for local storage. Google Photos, on the other hand, is a cloud application that syncs with your Google account, allowing you to access your media across multiple devices.

Google Photos can scan your media files on your device and display them alongside your cloud backup, making them appear integrated. However, they are still different systems. Local files can be affected by changes made in Google Photos, such as deleting photos, if the deletion sync feature is enabled. The Gallery app, however, does not sync content with the cloud unless used with another service. When combined, Google Photos provides a service for backup and access across multiple devices, as well as local storage for immediate access.

Do I Need Both Gallery and Google Photos?

Depending on your preferences and photo management style, you may need both the Gallery app and Google Photos. Here’s a quick rundown to help you decide:

 When to Use Both Google Photos and Gallery:

• Google Photos is used for cross-device access and backup, but Gallery is preferred for offline access and local browsing.
• For important photos, backup is required (local copies in Gallery and cloud backup in Google Photos, for example).

When to Choose One to Use:

• If backup and access are important, Google Photos is enough.
• A gallery app may be suitable if you don't need cloud storage or sharing functionality often, and local access is sufficient.

Recommendation: For fast and offline access, use the gallery app. For backup and organization functionality, use Google Photos. If you want to manage your backups yourself or avoid redundant storage, you can turn off backup in Google Photos.

How to Sync Gallery with Google Photos

Now you know the answer to the question “Are Google Photos and Gallery connected” is that they can be connected. If you want to make a connection between them, you can enable the backup feature on the Google Photos app. After enabling it, all your previous photos will be backed up to Google Photos and the new-coming ones will be also saved to the cloud in real-time.

When you download the Google Photos app on your device, you can choose whether to “Back up photos & videos on this device automatically”. If you are willing to do so, switch on the button next to the notice.

If did not enable the backup function and Google Photos was already set up, you can also manually turn on it.

Step 1. Click on your profile picture in the upper-right corner.

Step 2. Choose Google Photos settings in the menu.

Step 3. Go to Backup and turn on the button next to Backup. Then, you can choose to backup photos in Storage saver mode (save photos with a slightly reduced quality) or Original quality. Besides, you can choose whether to use cellular data to backup photos or videos.

How to Unlink Google Photos from Gallery

If you have another cloud storage service to backup your gallery photos and do not need Google Photos, you can also unlink it from your gallery.

Step 1. Go to the Google Photos app and go to its settings.

Step 2. Choose Backup and switch off the button beside it.

(Optional) Step 3. Remove the Google Photos app from your device.

Bonus Tip: Easiest Way to Move Google Photos to Another Cloud

If you plan to move photos and videos from Google Photos to iCloud Photos, OneDrive. Flickr, Dropbox, or other clouds, you can try MultCloud to create an automatic transfer task without troublesome downloading and uploading.

MultCloud is a multiple-cloud management service. You can add multiple cloud storage services and accounts to MultCloud to manage them on one website. MultCloud Cloud Transfer is designed for automatic cloud-to-cloud transfer. You just need to choose the transfer source and destination and it will move the selected photos from Google Photos to another cloud at lightning speed.

Once the task is created, it can run offline which helps save time in monitoring the process. Moreover, there are some features of Cloud Transfer you can add to your task. For example, you can let the task auto-delete the photos and videos in Google Photos after the transfer is complete. Additionally, you can schedule this task to make it start at your convenient time.

Conclusion

Are Google Photos and Gallery connected? It depends on your decision. They are different apps. Google Photos is a cloud-based photo and video saver while the gallery app saves your data locally. However, if you want to connect them, you can sync your gallery with Google Photos so that you can access your photos and videos on both Google Photos and Gallery.