What you need to know
- Samsung’s OneDrive Gallery integration is ending soon, but Google Photos appears ready to take its place.
- A new Gallery Cloud Sync service has appeared on the Galaxy Store with support for backing up to Google Photos.
- Samsung hasn’t announced the Google Photos integration yet, but it could start rolling out within weeks.
Samsung has started laying the groundwork for what appears to be the replacement for its outgoing OneDrive integration, and unsurprisingly, it’s Google Photos.
Earlier this year, Samsung announced that users would no longer be able to use OneDrive to back up photos and videos directly through the Samsung Gallery app. Until now, Galaxy users have been able to automatically sync their Gallery photos and videos with OneDrive without needing to use another app or service.
However, that partnership is coming to an end later this month. And now, Samsung appears to be preparing its replacement with none other than Google Photos.
X user Sandeep Adap has spotted a new Samsung service called “Gallery Cloud Sync” on the Galaxy Store, which appears to be designed to take over from the existing Gallery OneDrive Sync integration. The app listing says Gallery Cloud Sync will safely back up your memories, including photos and videos, to “Google Cloud” so you can access them across your devices.
The mention of Google Cloud might sound slightly confusing, but it appears Samsung is actually referring to Google Photos here.
User That Josh Guy on X was able to preview the upcoming functionality, which isn’t live just yet, and found that Samsung Gallery will offer an option to sync directly with Google. The Gallery settings will reportedly show your available Google storage, let you choose which albums to sync, and offer controls to sync over Wi-Fi or while roaming.
This could be a big change if you currently rely on OneDrive for Samsung Gallery backups, since you’ll likely need to switch to Google Photos. That said, the overall experience should remain pretty similar, with the sync controls still built directly into the Gallery app.
The OneDrive sync option has already started disappearing from Samsung Gallery for some users and is expected to be discontinued completely later this month. Thankfully, Samsung’s upcoming Google Photos integration looks like it could be an even more natural replacement.
Samsung hasn’t officially announced Galaxy Cloud Sync or started rolling out the Google Photos integration just yet. But with OneDrive support ending soon, we expect the new option to become available sometime later this month or in early October.