Samsung’s Gallery app can now back up photos and videos to your Google account and show them on your other Galaxy devices. It works only on phones and tablets running One UI 9, and it takes the place of the Microsoft OneDrive sync that Samsung dropped in September.
You turn it on from the cloud icon in Gallery, from the “Get started” card that appears in the app, or in Gallery settings under “Sync photos and videos”. Each device must be signed in to your Samsung account and your Google account. After that, a shot taken on a phone can be opened in the tablet’s Gallery, and the full-size original can be pulled down to a device on request.
The catch is storage. Sync counts against the space in your Google account, which Gmail, Drive and Google Photos already share. A new account includes 15GB free, and anything beyond that needs a paid Google One plan. A person whose Google storage is nearly full may find the feature stops being useful quickly.
It is also narrower than it sounds. Gallery shows only what was synced after you switched the feature on. Pictures already sitting in Google Photos stay there and do not appear in Gallery automatically, so this is a way to move media between Galaxy devices, not a window onto your whole Google Photos library, going by Samsung’s description of the feature.
Once an item is synced, a “Free up space” button can remove the original from the device and leave a thumbnail behind. Anyone using that should be sure the upload really finished first, since the local copy is what gets deleted.
Samsung says support will reach more Galaxy models in phases, and One UI 9 is still rolling out, so many owners will not see the option yet. Samsung began rolling the Google option out quietly in September, and it is now being announced as broadly available, with a pop-up in Gallery pointing people to it.
