Lost your Gallery cloud backup when OneDrive sync shut down? Samsung Gallery can now back up photos and videos straight to Google Photos instead. The Samsung Gallery Google Photos sync replaces the OneDrive integration, which officially ended on September 30, 2026. When we covered the end of Gallery’s OneDrive sync, the only workaround was OneDrive’s own Camera Backup. This is the better answer, and it is genuinely new.
There is a real catch, and it sits further down this post. First, what you need and where the setting lives.
What You Need First
- Gallery app version 15.9.01.7 or later. Earlier versions don’t support it.
- A personal Google account. Google Workspace accounts and supervised accounts are not supported.
- Android 13 or later. At least one report also lists this as a device requirement, alongside the Gallery app version floor.
How to Set Up Samsung Gallery Google Photos Sync
- Open the Gallery app on your Galaxy phone.
- Tap the Menu button.
- Open Settings.
- Tap Sync photos and videos.
- Select the Google account you want to back up to.
- Tap Continue to finish setup.
By default, Gallery syncs only your camera roll. The Albums to sync option lets you add other folders, such as Screenshots or Downloads. Separate toggles control whether syncing runs over mobile data and while roaming.
Everything you upload counts against your Google Account storage quota. Gallery does not come with any extra space of its own.
The Catch: This Is Storage, Not Full Google Photos
Samsung’s framing makes this sound like full Google Photos integration. It isn’t. Photos backed up this way do not appear in Google Photos’ Memories, Highlights, Live Albums or Search. It is a storage backup, and nothing more than that.
The gap runs in the other direction too. Photos you backed up from another device or app will not show up in Samsung Gallery. Gallery also has no way to upload one specific photo on demand, which the Google Photos app does offer.
Edits are their own oddity. An edit you make in Gallery syncs across your own Samsung devices normally. In Google Photos, though, it arrives as a brand-new photo rather than a change to the original. Edits made in Google Photos do sync back into Gallery properly.
One behaviour deserves a flag of its own. Deleting a synced photo in either app removes it from both, so a cleanup in Gallery is also a cleanup of your cloud copy.
Taken together, this swaps one vendor’s lock-in for a partial version of another’s. You get a backup destination that no longer runs through Microsoft. You do not get the Google Photos experience. If you want Memories and Search working across your camera roll, install the Google Photos app and let it handle the backup instead. Our guide to blurring sensitive information with the Redact tool covers one thing the full app does well.
Your Old OneDrive Backups Are Safe
Nothing you already uploaded to OneDrive has been removed. Those photos remain in your account and are still reachable through the OneDrive app. Only the OneDrive toggle inside Gallery has gone away.
If the Option Isn’t There Yet
This is a rollout, not a switch flipped for everyone at once. If Sync photos and videos is missing from Gallery’s settings, update the Gallery app from the Galaxy Store and look again. A Workspace or supervised account will also block the setup, so sign in with a personal Google account.
Sources: Android Authority, Android Central, Beebom
