Making sure you have the best gallery app available for your Android device used to be as easy as just installing QuickPic. But late last year, Android’s top photo-viewing app was sold to a company who is notorious for permission spamming, so QuickPic quickly lost everyone’s approval.
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Thankfully, you don’t have to resort back to your stock photo gallery app as there are many old and new alternatives out there that can fill QuickPic’s once-impressive shoes. All of them are vying for the top spot, but we’ll sort them all out with an in-depth comparison below.
Aperture
Aperture was created specifically to fill the void left by QuickPic, and as a result of that newness, it’s still in its beta phases of development at the moment. Nonetheless, the app is quite powerful and stable as it stands, and it’s got quite a big user base already.
Aperture’s main interface utilizes Android’s new Material Design language, complete with transition animations and subtle drop shadows. Beyond that, the photo-viewing experience is fairly standard, with folders that can be hidden on the main screen, a thumbnail grid within folders, and a full screen image viewer.
If the salmon-colored interface isn’t quite for you, a free theme picker lets you choose your own primary and secondary colors. In fact, there are plenty of customization options available here, which is amazing when you consider that Aperture is the smallest app in this list with an APK size of only 2.1 megabytes.
Aperture Quick Facts:
- Total App Size: 2.1 MB
- Tagging Support: No
- Themes: Full theme support
- Folder Hiding: Yes (long-press existing folders to hide)
- GIF Support: Playback and zoom
- Photo Sphere Support: No
- Material Design: Yes
- Price to Unlock All Features: Free
- Unique Feature: Colored navigation bar (optional)
- Why Choose Aperture: Lightweight and fast
CyanogenMod Gallery
Hands down, CyanogenMod is the most popular Android custom ROM out there. For a good reason, too—its developers always manage to preserve the simplicity of stock Android while adding nice tweaks and useful features. The same can be said about the Gallery app on CyanogenMod, which has since been made available to all Android devices via sideloading.
The CyanogenMod Gallery app behaves exactly as you would expect when it comes to viewing photos—you’ll find your camera roll and any local image folders right on the main screen. You’ll be greeted by a grid of thumbnails upon opening a folder, and when you select a single image, handy controls give you quick access to Android’s share menu and a basic photo editor.
Beyond the basics, CyanogenMod Gallery doesn’t have much customization to offer, because simplicity and speed are the main draws here. It’s mostly a visually-updated version of the classic AOSP Gallery app, so you get some minor sorting options and an extremely intuitive interface.
CyanogenMod Gallery Quick Facts:
- Total App Size: 5.3 MB
- Tagging Support: No
- Themes: No
- Folder Hiding: No
- GIF Support: Playback only
- Photo Sphere Support: No
- Material Design: No
- Price to Unlock All Features: Free
- Unique Feature: Based on standard AOSP Gallery
- Why Choose CM Gallery: Simplicity and familiarity
Focus
Say what you want about developer Francisco Franco‘s personality, but the fact of the matter is he always puts out quality apps. As soon as QuickPic was sold off, he rushed in to bring his talents to the gallery app segment, and the product of this recent work is called Focus.
Focus uses full Material Design styling throughout its main interface, so you get nice transition animations in between screens. A set of 11 preset tags are available to help organize your library, though you’ll need the pro version for custom tags.
Beyond the basics, Focus packs a whole slew of additional features—but the majority of these require unlocking the pro version with an in-app purchase of $3.40. For instance, folder hiding, theming, and password-protected photos require the pro version, but all of the basics are included for free.
Focus Quick Facts:
- Total App Size: 9.9 MB
- Tagging Support: Preset tags are free, custom tags require pro version
- Themes: Full theme support, but pro version required
- Folder Hiding: Pro version only
- GIF Support: Playback only
- Photo Sphere Support: No
- Material Design: Yes
- Price to Unlock All Features: $3.40
- Unique Feature: Privacy mode (pro version only)
- Why Choose Focus: Preset tags and Material Design
F-Stop
F-Stop derives its name from a key concept in photography, so as you might expect, it’s a great gallery app for the avid picture-takers out there. If you have lots of locally-stored photos and you’ve struggled to keep them organized, this app might be your best bet.
F-Stop’s main interface features some burgeoning Material Design elements, including handy filter and sort icons embedded in the main action bar. When viewing an image, you can quickly share or delete the file, and the three-dot overflow menu has many useful options. On top of that, F-Stop is the only app in this list that lets you view Photo Sphere shots created with the Google Camera app.
If you prefer your gallery app to be packed to the brim with features, F-Stop is clearly the way to go. The app offers so many settings that they have to be bundled into various submenus, and you can add your own custom tags to make photos easier to find. Another unique addition is a “Smart Folder” feature, which lets you add qualifiers such as a date range to automatically populate a single folder with certain types of pictures.
F-Stop Quick Facts:
- Total App Size: 6.2 MB
- Tagging Support: Full custom tagging
- Themes: Full manual theming, but preset themes require pro version
- Folder Hiding: Yes
- GIF Support: Playback and zoom
- Photo Sphere Support: Yes
- Material Design: Partial
- Price to Unlock All Features: $3.99
- Unique Feature: Smart folders
- Why Choose F-Stop: Robust set of features
Piktures
Well before this whole QuickPic fiasco, an app called Piktures rose to prominence as one of the best gallery apps for Android. This continues to hold true today, as developer DIUNE has only had more time to add features and polish the Piktures interface.
Piktures has perhaps the most visually-stunning interface of all apps in this list. A cover image adorns each folder entry in the side navigation panel, and this same photo has blur and parallax effects applied as it’s shown at the top of the grid view.
You can access filters by swiping in from the right edge of the screen, which is handy for sorting photos by location, for instance. But one of the most unique features is an ability to view locally-stored photos on your big screen through an optional Chromecast feature.
Piktures Quick Facts:
- Total App Size: 8.4 MB
- Tagging Support: No
- Themes: No
- Folder Hiding: Yes
- GIF Support: Playback only
- Photo Sphere Support: No
- Material Design: Partial
- Price to Unlock All Features: Free
- Unique Feature: Chromecast support
- Why Choose Piktures: Gorgeous album views
Which of these apps will you be using in lieu of QuickPic from now on? Let us know in the comment section below, or drop us a line on Android Hacks’ Facebook or Twitter, or Gadget Hacks’ Facebook, Google+, or Twitter.
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