Frequently asked questions

No. Pixel Gallery never uploads your photos or videos. Face grouping, labels, text recognition, captions and semantic search are all computed on your phone. Search and browsing work with the internet switched off.

No. There is no sign-up, no login and no cloud library. Install the app, grant media access, and it starts indexing locally.

The map and places features use the GPS coordinates already embedded in your photos. The app removes Android's fine and coarse location permissions from its manifest, so it cannot read your live position.

The database holding faces, embeddings, locations, labels, recognized text and colors is encrypted with SQLCipher, with the key stored in the Android Keystore. Your photo files themselves stay ordinary files on your storage, exactly where they were.

Analytics storage and ad personalization are switched off by default and only start if you consent in the app. Crash reports help find bugs. The advertising ID permission is removed entirely, and there are no ads.

Google Play for installs, billing and the optional search model; Firebase for consent-gated analytics, crash reports, remote configuration and the Home-View web viewer; Google Maps for map tiles. The full list is on the Privacy first page.

An optional model called SigLIP2 (about 375 MB) is downloaded once through Google Play and then runs on your device. It turns photos, video frames and your text query into vectors and ranks them by similarity, combined with a classic keyword search.

Captions and descriptions use Gemini Nano through Android's AICore on supported devices. On other devices the caption step is skipped and everything else still works.

It depends on library size and phone. Indexing runs in the background, preferably while charging, and each step reports its progress in the Media Processing screen. Semantic indexing is the slowest step, roughly two seconds per photo on a recent flagship.

No. Faces are detected and grouped locally by similarity. You name the groups. Nothing is compared with any external database, and names never leave the phone.

It reads provenance metadata such as Content Credentials (C2PA), XMP and generator fields, and badges media as AI-generated or AI-edited when that data is present. Files whose metadata was stripped are not flagged.

No. Premium is a one-time purchase with lifetime access, billed through Google Play.

Home-View, Flow, MultiView, Compare, Grid Collage and the info-layout editor, plus the RGB histogram and saving custom presets in the photo editor. Everything else, including all on-device AI, is free.

Premium features may offer a limited number of free tries before asking you to upgrade. The app shows how many tries are left.

Install the app with the same Google account you bought Premium with and use Restore purchase in the paywall. Refunds follow Google Play's policies.

A Premium feature that lets a browser on your laptop, tablet or TV open your phone's gallery over your own Wi-Fi. The phone runs a small local server; nothing is uploaded to the internet.

No. Home-View is restricted to the local network by design and stops automatically when Wi-Fi drops, the battery runs low or the session expires. It is not remote access.

Start Home-View in the app, scan the QR code or type the shown address, then approve the device. Trusted devices reconnect without re-pairing until you revoke them.

The viewer bundle is fetched once from Firebase Hosting, cached on the phone and then served locally. Your media never goes through that server.

Android 13 and newer.

The search model needs enough RAM. On devices below the memory threshold the option is not shown. It also requires the app to be installed from Google Play, because the model arrives as a Play asset pack.

The optional semantic search model is about 375 MB. Other models are small and bundled with the app or downloaded on demand by Google Play services.

Yes. The app registers as a viewer and editor for images and videos, and offers a prompt to make it the default.

Nothing. Your photos are ordinary files in your storage. Uninstalling removes only the app's index, settings and collections.

Yes. Settings offers a Delete all data action that clears the index, faces, collections and preferences.

If Android Auto Backup is enabled on your phone, app settings, favorites, collections and descriptions can be included in your Google backup or device-to-device transfer. The encrypted metadata database and its key are excluded.

Select media, a collection, a person or a place and export as ZIP to Downloads, a folder of your choice or any share target.

Open Media Processing to see which step is running. Steps continue while the phone is idle or charging. You can reset a single step from that screen if it never finishes.

Open the person, select the wrong faces and split them into a new person, or merge two people from the People screen. Corrections stay local.

Use the feedback form linked in Settings, or email support directly. The Support page has both.