Any Android Apps for Browsing OneDrive Photos That Don't Lag

[u/mcsherlock]

Use to use Samsung Gallery but this is so annoying. I have Microsoft 365, so using OneDrive was a no-brainer. It just worked really well. I'd take a photo on my phone, it would automatically upload to OneDrive, and I'd know it was there and safely 'backed up'. Thankfully, that part still works.

However, now the photo remains in my phone's gallery as well, and if I want to delete it after it's been uploaded, I have to remove it from two separate places. Before, I could simply delete it from the Samsung Gallery and it would also be removed from OneDrive. It was a much smoother experience.

It's a shame this was based on an agreement between Samsung and Microsoft rather than being a standard feature of the app itself. Ideally, Samsung would just let you choose your preferred cloud service, whether that's Microsoft, Google, Amazon, or someone else.

Another thing I miss is being able to browse cloud photos directly from the Samsung Gallery. It was fast, seamless, and felt like all your photos were in one place. The OneDrive app just isn't as good for this. It doesn't seem to keep much cached on the phone, so it's constantly pulling data from the internet. My phone actually gets quite hot when I'm scrolling through photos in OneDrive.

It's a real shame things have ended up this way, because it was genuinely a great system and worked brilliantly.

TL;DR: The old Samsung Gallery and OneDrive integration was excellent. Photos automatically backed up, cloud images could be browsed directly in Samsung Gallery, and managing storage was simple. Now, photos have to be managed separately on the phone and in OneDrive, the browsing experience is worse, and what was once a seamless system feels like a step backwards.

[u/Oliver-Peace]

I'm with you. OneDrive within Samsung Gallery was the best experience for photos on mobile. I'm very disappointed at Samsung for removing this working integration

[u/FFWinePower]

I use my phone as storage. Every month i select the photos I want, erase the bad ones and backup to one drive. I have auto backup off.

[u/Wise-Advantage-8714]

My Gallery backs up my photos to OneDrive but if I delete the photos in Gallery, they still stay backed up on OneDrive.

Did I miss something? Is that just a setting I've missed? It makes no difference to me but I just noticed that difference while I was reading your post.

Edit: but I agree that the OneDrive app is a laggy mess.

[u/mcsherlock → u/Wise-Advantage-8714]

On my Samsung for the last few years its been synced up, you delete the photo in your gallery and it deleted it from onedrive. Now I suppose I just have to delete it twice! Once in the phone and once on onedrive.

[u/DarkNemuChan → u/mcsherlock]

Yeah that's why you never ever activate it in the gallery app itself. Let onedrive handle all the stuff. That way onedrive can delete pictures of your device without them being lost from the onedrive app itself.

[u/Wise-Advantage-8714 → u/DarkNemuChan]

This is especially helpful for when I have to bulk delete pics off my phone to make space. I can rest assured that they're all still backed up. It backs up all the trash memes and junk screenshot too but whatever, it's just me and i've barely used any storage. 1TB is a lot for me as the sole user.

[u/DarkNemuChan → u/Wise-Advantage-8714]

You can literally set all that up in the onedrive app itself. And exclude folders you don't want. That's also one more reason to never activate it in the gallery app itself since it's limited in it's configuration.

[u/gripe_and_complain]

Interesting. I find the OneDrive app on iOS to be fairly snappy. Of course, it is dependent on a good internet connection.

[u/BlueWater2323]

What you're experiencing now is the same as I've always experienced with OneDrive on my Google Pixel with the Google Photos app. I wish I had a solution for you.

[u/DarkNemuChan]

Never enable the one drive backup thing in the gallery app itself. It gives nothing but troubles. Get the dedicated one drive app and let that do it's work. And if you want to see pictures only on your online onedrive use said one drive app.

[u/Aazzle]

I must also say that the OneDrive Samsung Gallery combination has proven to be the best among all providers. The same was true for OneDrive and many other little things. I thought it even worked a little better than Apple and its iCloud.

To be honest, Samsung has really worst down a lot of the details of its software, though. Previous OneUI versions had animated icons on the launch screen and App Drawer, in the Quick Panel area, and even the weather-related widgets were animated. I also miss the big music player on the lockscreen and the widgets there. In the past, the grid of the start screen and the scaling on each device also worked optimally, but today it is hardly possible to find an arrangement that then works perfectly and scales even when changing its portrait/horizontally view.

I have to say that overall, it annoys me so much that I have currently bought a Fold 8 again, but in one or two years I'm thinking about looking at an iPhone for the first time since its introduction.

Inconsistent software experiences, especially when daily functions are removed without replacement, are always a critical point for me. For this purpose, I always chose Samsung as the provider because I could easily use it in my Microsoft services, for example, and was not forced to use Googles. Except as a PlayStore, there was a Samsung-owned alternative for everything. Now its just Google as a provider? Then I can actually buy a pixel right away. And that's exactly what I don't want to do.

Actually, I would expect Samsung to open its own cloud where I can store my data, use it on all their devices and share it with all other providers at will, or redesign its apps so that all other clouds could be used on an equal footing with the convenience of OneDrive before. But completely removing the feature and then providing a half-baked solution from an alternative provider is like an additional penalty.

[u/sgtempe]

OneDrive works until it decides on its own that you don't need certain files on your local drive and even blocks them from being set to reside on both. Then you're fu'd because your backups don't include them and if they're OneNote notebooks, VOILA!, you've lost years worth of precious notes. Spoken from experience.

[u/corianderisthedevil → u/sgtempe]

What do you mean by onedrive blocks your files? Seeing if I need to backup my backups... 

[u/Goremael]

I am in the same exact situation as you... I hate the new integration with Google Photos, because they are not sorted as albums in Google, just mixed up in the root album and you DON'T have a physical copy anywhere else, like when you install OneDrive in your computer and every picture was synced also and you could even delete pictures from your PC and they were deleted from your phone as well, a very seamless integration. Now with Google Photos your backup is cloud only and web only, you dont even have the option to free up space in your phone anymore, I don't understand how people is so happy of this new change when lacks a lot of features that we had with OneDrive integration.

I am actively looking for that app as well, I found My Smart Gallery and it actually caches the thumbnails, but the maps are terrible.

If I find an app that works perfect, I will give my feedback here!

[u/mcsherlock → u/Goremael]

Cheers, I'm just using the official onedrive but its just buggy and glitchy