Smartphones aren't just the devices on which we take most of our pictures these days—they're what we use to view them too.

The default gallery app doesn't always make this an ideal experience, and not everyone wants to upload their pics to Google Photos. Fortunately, the Play Store is well stocked with options. Here are four of the sleekest alternative gallery apps for Android.

A+ Gallery pitches itself as the ideal combination of Android and iOS, with the app offering an iOS-inspired interface that borrows plenty of design and usability cues from iPhones. That's not to say the experience will feel unfamiliar to Android users. Even if you've never used an Apple product, A+ Gallery won't take long to learn.

There is a tabbed bar across the top with three options, Photos, Sync, and Albums. The first lists images by date. The last lets you browse them by folder. The sync features works with Facebook and Dropbox.

One cool feature A+ has is the ability to browse photos based on color. The icon in the top right lets you select one and watch as all of the images on-screen filter out except for those that most closely match your selection. It's not 100 percent accurate, but it's amusing, and it can help you track down photos that are easier to recall visually than by time or place.

Download: A+ Gallery (Free, in-app purchases available)

In typical Google fashion, Photos is not the only gallery app that the company has released. There is also the little-known Gallery Go app.

Branded as a "smart, light, and fast photo and video gallery," the app has far fewer features than its big brother, and thus runs much more smoothly on low-power entry-level devices.

Some of the app's key features include:

  • Automatic organization: Each night, Gallery Go will sort your photos into various pre-defined categories, making it much easier to find them at a later date.
  • Auto-enhance: With a single tap you can make all your photos shine.
  • Support for folders: You can create and manage folders if you want to take manual responsibility for keeping your pictures organized.
  • Support for SD cards: You can transfer your pics to and from your SD card in one click (your phone needs to have an SD card slot for this to work, obviously).
  • Offline functionality: Features such as the auto-organization will work offline, saving you precious data when you are out and about.

Download: Gallery Go (Free)

3. 1Gallery

The 1Gallery app has been popular for a few years thanks to one standout feature that you will struggle to find elsewhere: AES encryption on your photos. For the privacy-conscious user, this is the perfect secure gallery app for your phone. You can unlock the encryption with a password, PIN code, or fingerprint.

It also means you can use 1Gallery to store photos of other important documents, such as your driver's license or passport (though we'd still never recommend keeping copies of these on your device long-term).

Other key features include support for less common file types (such as RAW and SVG), a photo editor (with crop, rotate, resize, and various filters), a tool to trim your videos, and complete metadata information (such as resolution and EXIF values).

Download: 1Gallery (Free, in-app purchases available)

F-Stop Gallery is one of the oldest gallery apps in the Play Store. It still remains immensely popular thanks to its lightweight design, easy-to-use feature set, and pleasing aesthetics.

It has a feature list that far surpasses many of its competitors, including:

  • Advanced search: You can use the search bar to find photos based on metadata, tags, camera model, and more.
  • Support for tags: You can add tags to your pictures for easy management. Better yet, the tags are saved in the XML format, meaning programs like Lightroom can easily read them.
  • Nested folders: While many gallery apps do offer folders, far fewer offer nested folders. If you're the type of person who takes thousands of photos every year, this feature will prevent your list of folders from spiraling out of control.
  • Smart albums: You can automatically create albums based on certain parameters. For example, you could make an album for all photos tagged with "food" that you have rated either four or five stars.
  • Drag-and-drop: It is easy to sort your images into an on-screen order that makes sense thanks to the support for drag-and-drop organization.

Download: F-Stop Gallery (Free)

PhotoMap Gallery is a slightly more unusual Android gallery app. Instead of displaying all your pictures in the standard grid format, it sorts them by location then places them on a zoomable world map.

The premise behind the app is to help keep memories of your trips alive. Once you have started to populate various locations with images, you can virtually jump from place to place on the map to see images from all the locales you have visited.

PhotoMap Gallery includes some other features that aid the process of memory creation.

For example, there is a diary feature that lets you jot down your thoughts to accompany your photos, there's a geo-tracker that will sort out photos from your everyday life from photos taken on vacation, and there's even an augmented reality view so you can stroll around the streets and see the places where the snaps were taken.

Download: PhotoMap Gallery (Free, in-app purchases available)

We end with Memoria Photo Gallery. The design and layout of the app is what you'd expect; there's a tabbed menu at the top of the screen for accessing photos, albums, and favorites, and there's support for gestures and basic photo editing.

(Note: If you need to do advanced photo editing, none of the apps in this list are suitable. Instead, choose one of the best dedicated photo editing apps for Android).

Other features in Memoria Photo Gallery include a password-protected photo vault, the ability to hide albums from the main screen, and easy-to-use filters so you can find the old photos you are looking for in a flash.

Download: Memoria Photo Gallery (Free)

What About Manufacturer Apps?

All the major Android manufacturers make their own gallery apps that function differently from Google's and come with their own sets of perks.

Regardless of whether you love or hate them, each is exclusively available on its manufacturer's devices only. That means you can't take the software with you if you switch to a different brand later on.

As such, we recommend using one of these third-party solutions, or taking another look at services like OneDrive and Google Photos, which you can also use to back up your images.