Samsung’s Gallery App Can Do a Lot More Than You Think

The gallery app that comes pre-installed on your Samsung phone is more than just storage for your photos and videos. It comes with all sorts of tools designed to make your gallery experience better that you might not even know about. Here are some worth checking out.

Doodle Perfect Shapes Without a Stylus

Most gallery apps allow you to draw on top of your photos and customize the color and girth of the pen stroke, but unless your phone has a stylus like the Galaxy S25 Ultra, it’s not very likely that the doodles you make using your finger are going to look that great.

That is, unless you use this lesser-known trick that automatically fixes your doodles in real time. With this trick, hand-drawn lines, shapes, and symbols snap into their perfect forms, so you don’t need to have a super-steady hand or download a separate app with drawing assist.

To try this, open an image and tap the edit button (pencil icon) to begin editing.

Next, tap the “Decorations” button (the squarish smiley face).

Draw your desired shape and pause briefly at the end of your stroke. The app will recognize the shape you intended to draw and automatically snap it into a clean version—be it a circle, triangle, arrow, square, star, heart, or even a hexagon.

The savvy among you might recognize that this is basically an imitation of the QuickShape feature found on Procreate. I use this trick primarily to draw arrows on the screenshots my mom sends me of her phone’s interface, asking which button to tap when she needs some technical help. It’s fast, easy, and comes in handy.

Hide Sensitive Albums or Move Them to Secure Folder

If there are certain albums that you want to keep out of sight of prying eyes, you can hide them from the gallery. To do this, tap the three-dot menu at the top.

Select “Hide Albums” from the drop-down menu.

The albums that are available to be hidden will have a toggle switch next to them. Tap to enable the toggle for the album you want to hide.

Keep in mind that hiding an album from view doesn’t mean it’s hidden everywhere; someone can still access your album via the files app. If you want to hide albums or certain images and videos such that they can’t be accessed by anyone else or seen by a third-party app, consider moving them to the Secure Folder app.

To do this, long-press on an album, tap “More,” and select “Move to Secure Folder.”

Finally, enter your password to complete the move. You can also move individual photos or videos the same way.

Quickly Access Favorite Albums From Your Home Screen

If there’s a particular album in your gallery that you access almost constantly, say, Downloads or Screenshots, you can place it on your home screen to make it instantly accessible.

To do this, open the album, tap the three-dot menu, and select “Add to Home Screen.”

Next, tap “Add” on the pop-up to confirm.

If there’s not enough space on any of your home screen pages, a new one will be created.

Take Screenshots During Video Playback Without Buttons

If you’re watching a video in the gallery app and notice a scene you want to take a screenshot of, you don’t need to use the standard method of simultaneously pressing the power button and the volume down button. That can be slow and not always easy to do if you have a thick case installed on your phone.

By the time the screenshot actually gets captured, the video might’ve progressed much further from the scene you wanted to capture.

To instantly capture a screenshot during video playback, tap the “Quick Crop” button at the bottom left. Note that screenshots taken using this button won’t be saved in the Screenshots album, but in a separate album named “Video Captures.”

Set a Custom Album Cover to Highlight the Best Photo

I don’t know about you, but I like to keep my gallery organized, and a part of that includes making sure it looks presentable whenever I open it. Just like a physical photo album cover, the right digital album cover sets the tone for what’s inside and allows you to showcase some of your best photos.

By default, an album shows the most recent image that was added to it. This can be convenient, but as a tech writer, my gallery is usually filled with UI screenshots and promotional images from tech companies, which isn’t something I want to look at every single time I open the app.

To change the cover of an album, long-press on it and tap “More” and select “Change Cover Image.”

Next, tap “Select an Image.”

Select an image from the album, crop if necessary, and tap “Apply” to confirm.

Invite Friends and Family to View a Shared Album

Within the gallery app, you can invite people to view and add to a shared album if they also happen to use a Galaxy phone. To do this, start by selecting the items you want to share. Tap “More” and select “Add to Shared Album.”

Tap “Create Shared Album,” and give it a name.

Choose how you want to share this album—via saved contacts or a share link. I usually prefer the latter, so tap “Share Link” and send the link to the recipient(s) like you normally do.

The recipient can tap this link to accept the invite and view your shared images. If the recipient doesn’t have a Galaxy phone, you can use Quick Share instead.

Pinch In or Out to Resize the Screen Layout

A really intuitive way to change the layout of the albums or items displayed within an album is to simply pinch in or out. On the main page, pinching inward all the way shows your albums in a list layout. Pinching outward once shows them in a grid with three albums in a row, and pinching inward once more changes the layout to two albums in a row with much bigger album covers—ideal for senior users.

Within an album, pinching inward all the way gives you a bird’s-eye view of all the shots you’ve taken in a given month, with the photo tiles being very small. The tiles get bigger as you keep pinching outward, and are shown in their original ratio when you pinch out all the way.

Auto Play Videos When Browsing an Album

When scrolling through an album, you can set the gallery app to automatically start playing a short four-second clip (without audio) from the videos saved in that album.

This grabs your attention and makes you more likely to open and view those videos, allowing you to either relive a moment or realize that the video isn’t worth the space it’s occupying on your phone and therefore delete it. And maybe it’s just me, but it also makes your gallery feel a bit alive.

To enable this, go to the Albums tab and tap the hamburger menu (three horizontal lines).

Next, tap “Settings.”

Here, tap the toggle switch beside “Auto Play Motion Photos.”

Add Background Music to Your Videos

You can add an audio track of your choice to your videos to jazz them up, like adding a song you love to your home vlogs or travel montage. To do this, open your desired video, tap the edit button, and then tap the speaker icon.

Here, tap “Add” in the Soundtracks row.

Choose from the listed soundtracks or tap the “+” icon to choose from audio tracks saved on your device.

Once done, you can use the volume slider to adjust the loudness of the video volume and the soundtrack, and simply tap “Save” to confirm the changes.

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I was surprised by how much Samsung’s Gallery app can actually do. If you’ve only used it to view photos, it’s worth digging deeper—you might find a feature you never knew you needed.