How-to

Replace Photos app with Gallery on Android Lollipop

Those who have got the Android 5.0 (Lollipop) on their devices, may have noticed that, you don’t have a Gallery app, as you had in your Kikat OS. Google has replaced the default gallery app with their official Photos app.

This Photos app allows you to sign in and backup your all device photos with Google Cloud. All your photos are uploaded to Google photos, which are visible at your Google Plus account’s photos directory. Comes loaded with features like Auto Awesome and lot of filters to apply manually. Its available for Android as well as iOS.

But the annoying thing here is that, all the devices photos/pictures are listed here together. No categories depending upon their Folder name, nor stored location like that in previous gallery app.

You can still get the old Gallery app (from Android Kitkat) and install it on your Lollipop device, but after installation, it hides your Google Photos app, unless you sign in to your Google photos account from mobile, via Google plus.

And if you want an alternative gallery app, you can try Quickpic. Its free and has been used by many.

Download:

Gallery APK.

About the author

Deepak

Professionally, he is a web-designer/Front end developer. A technology enthusiast, tech guru. Spends every minute of his day with computers or mobiles.

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  • Thanks man. This Gallery apk helped me a lot. After the Lollilop update photos app kept on crashing whenever i opened it. This has solved my problems. Cheers!

  • Hope I can ask a question on this old thread. I am sick of the default photo app on lolipop and installed QuickPic from Google Play. Upon going through settings and trying to set it as default it gets me to the app setting to remove default settings which this step needs done before you can move on through the rest of the settings in QP, however, there are no defaults set so nothing to uncheck. The QP app isn’t realizing this and won’t move forward in the settings to set itself as default. How can I get this to happen? As it stands anytime I want to insert a photo from anther app etc it opens the default android photos instead of QuickPic. I cannot find any reference to this anywhere on the web unless I am searching wrong. Then I came across this old thread. Hope I can get some help, lol. Thank you to anyone who can point me in the right direction.

    • Hi Debb, thanks for asking and you are anytime invited to ask it here or on our Facebook page.
      I’m not sure this will work or not, but worth a try, Go to your Default Photo (Google Photos) App’s App Info –> Click on ‘CLEAR DEFAULT’.
      And now try using QuickPic.
      I’ll try to share a new article for Android Alternatives for Google Photos on Lollipop and above.

      • Deepak, I do not have Google Photos, I have the native “photos” that is packaged with my Android 5.0 tablet. I went into my apps management area and photos is not even in the list. Your app opens Documents when I click on the Clear button to go remove the tablets default settings. However, even, in documents there is no default preset … but your app is not seeing that there is no default set on that. I am very confused now as to why I have nothing showing as far as a gallery type app and have no access to any settings. My images do go into something I can open called Photos but it doesn’t show up on google play either. How do I get your app to set itself as default when nothing else is showing itself as a default. Lol, my apologies but I am totally lost, and I am not what you would call a novice with dealing with settings etc. Any ideas?

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