Samsung Gallery App: Organise, Search and Back Up Photos

Samsung has killed off OneDrive integration in the Gallery app, with One UI 9 rolling out this autumn (2026).

Chances are you’ve got thousands of photos saved on your Galaxy phone after using it for a year or more. Samsung’s Gallery app has a lot of handy features to help organise those photos, many of which most Galaxy owners will probably never use. It can organise photos into collections automatically, search based on the contents of images and retain photos you’ve deleted for a month. From One UI 9, photos will sync to Google instead of OneDrive.

Where everything lives in Gallery

The following table will help you find your way around more quickly. Please note that menu names may vary slightly depending on the version of One UI.

The table is based on the navigation paths found on Samsung.com’s support site and the user guide for the Galaxy S26 series. Verified on a Galaxy S25 Ultra with One UI 9, as of November 2026.

Albums, auto albums and collections

The Samsung S26 user guide explains there are four types of albums you can create by tapping the Create icon on the Albums tab: a plain Album holds whatever you add, an Auto album keeps collecting new photos of the people or pets you pick, a Group gathers related albums together, and a Shared album is one you share with others.

Collections are built for you. The same guide says the Gallery app also automatically sorts your photos and videos into five different collections, as shown in the table above. You can personalise which collections appear and the order they’re shown in using Edit collections. Collections are handy for quickly finding photos of a particular person using People, or separating images of receipts and scanned documents using Documents so they don’t clutter up your holiday photos!

Auto albums are the better choice for a child or a pet you photograph every week, since the album fills itself. Plain albums suit a trip or a project, where you choose the best frames rather than every frame. Our guide to Gallery albums and collages goes through the different types of albums and explains how to use the collage maker.

Search by what's in the photo

According to Samsung’s Galaxy S25 (running One UI 7) launch materials, Gallery now supports natural language search, allowing users to enter a sentence or phrase describing the photo they’re trying to find. On One UI 8.5, SamMobile says you'll even see matching photos as you type, and searching for "sunset" can take you to videos at the point where you can see a sunset.

According to Samsung’s UK website’s support section, you can also search using keywords or even dates (and even via voice search). Short, descriptive searches relating to what’s visible in the photo (e.g. a location and object) work best, and you can tack on a month if you can remember approximately when you took it.

To copy text from a photo, open it and choose the Extract text option. According to Samsung’s Galaxy S26 user guide, this feature also works in the Camera app.

Trash and recovering deleted photos

Photos and videos you delete are moved to the Recycle bin (Trash on One UI 9 according to the Galaxy S26 user guide) and will stay there for 30 days before being permanently deleted according to Samsung (UK).

As of One UI 6, the Recycle bin/Trash is also shared with the My Files app and cannot be disabled according to Samsung.

1. 1

   Open the bin

   Launch the Gallery app and navigate to the Trash (or Recycle bin if you have an older version of the app) folder by tapping on the Menu option located at the bottom of the screen.

2. 2

   Select what you want back

   Tap on Select (or Edit) and select the photos/videos you wish to restore.

3. 3

   Restore it

   Tap on Restore to move the selected files back to Gallery.

Deleting an image from the Gallery app deletes it from Google as well if you’re using Google sync (according to Samsung’s own support website for One UI 9 in Singapore). So do check your bin before emptying it, because emptying the bin in Gallery will delete the original photo from your Google storage as well. If the photos have already left the bin, our guide to recovering deleted photos checks Google Photos, OneDrive and Smart Switch backups in turn.

Back up Gallery photos after the OneDrive change

Microsoft and the Samsung Cloud team announced that starting from 30 September 2026, photos uploaded/synced to OneDrive using the Gallery app’s OneDrive sync feature (which ran for about five years) will remain intact but users won’t be able to sync/upload new photos to OneDrive using the Gallery app. For OneDrive photo backup/sync, you can use the Camera backup feature available in the OneDrive app. Our Samsung Cloud photos guide explains where older Samsung Cloud and OneDrive photos ended up and how to download them.

As of now, the Gallery app allows syncing photos with Google Photos (requires One UI 9.0 or above; doesn’t support SD cards; requires a personal Google account; syncs photos in original quality; only the Camera album is selected by default and you can choose one or more albums under Albums to sync; utilises 15GB free storage offered by Google).

1. 1

   Check your software

   First off, make sure you’re running Samsung’s One UI 9 software (Samsung says the feature will roll out to older versions down the line). Head to Settings > Software update.

2. 2

   Turn on sync

   Next, open the Gallery app and tap Menu > Settings > Sync photos and videos > Sync with Google.

3. 3

   Pick the albums

   You can keep the default Camera album enabled and add more folders via Albums to sync.

4. 4

   Watch your storage

   Note that photos and videos you upload in their original quality will take up space in your Google Account, but according to Google’s help pages, so will images backed up with Storage saver.

Samsung Cloud can’t sync photos. Samsung’s list of what’s backed up to Samsung Cloud (via the company’s support site for Australia) doesn’t mention Gallery. Gallery doesn’t have an option to sync photos to the cloud natively (at least not until One UI 9 rolls out to your phone), so your best bet is to use either Google Photos’ backup feature or OneDrive’s Camera backup option. Keep in mind that photos you sync to Google Photos from Gallery won’t show up in Memories or be searchable in Google Photos, according to Google. To transfer all of your library to your computer, our PC transfer guide compares cable vs. wireless. See the Mac guide for OpenMTP and Smart Switch.

Keep private photos private

You can also hide an album from Gallery’s main screen, though anyone can unhide it on your unlocked phone. On One UI 9, go to the Albums tab and tap More options (the three dots icon), and you’ll find Hide albums next to Select essential albums and Delete duplicates. Depending on your phone, you may need to tap View all instead. Samsung’s version of these instructions for Australia does.

A newer option on some Galaxy phones (including the S26 series) is a Private album, which was new in One UI 8.5 and is also mentioned in the Tips app for One UI 9 on a Galaxy S25 Ultra. This works in a similar way to hiding an album, except it’s locked away within Gallery and can only be viewed with your screen lock. Select your photos, tap More and choose Move to Private album. You can then find it from Menu in Gallery (next to Trash). A more secure option is to move photos to Samsung’s Secure Folder. This is a locked area on your phone where you can store apps and files away from the rest of your phone. Photos moved here don’t show up in your main Gallery app. Instead, you have to open Secure Folder and use the Gallery app inside it to view them. Select your photos and tap More, then Move to Secure Folder. Our guide to hiding photos on a Samsung describes the three ways and tells you how to stop your hidden pictures from being backed up to the cloud.

Samsung Gallery and Google Photos together

Many Galaxy owners keep both apps on their phones, especially now that they overlap each other’s functions more than before. Gallery editing on the phone includes Photo Assist in Galaxy AI phones, and our photo editor guide has a great rundown of Gallery’s editing features. Google Photos can be used on iPhones as well as on any computer through a web browser, which could be useful for families that don’t all use the same type of phone.

If you sync Gallery to Google with One UI 9, be mindful of which app you’re deleting things from, since deletions sync both ways. According to Google’s help page, photos deleted to the trash in Google Photos will also be trashed in Gallery. For the full list of Gallery and camera changes in the update, see One UI 9 camera and Gallery changes.