• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

How to eliminate default "gallery" app?

A

alabamatoy

Newbie
The latest update of my S5 brings a version of Gallery which wants access to my contacts, calendar and location, NONE of which have any bearing on my viewing of photos. How do I uninstall gallery, or force the default image viewer app to be something else, like pikture?

I can imagine no reason that Gallery should need to access any of my contacts, or my location (I absolutely do not want geo-tagged photos!) or my calendar. But Gallery wont run unless I allow these permissions, and without gallery I cannot view any images.

Google, this SUX!!!

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
alabamatoy said:
Google, this SUX!!!
Click to expand...
You have an S5, so the "Gallery" app will be a Samsung app rather than a Google one. So I'm afraid all complaints should be addressed to Korea rather than California.

Actually Google want everyone to use Google Photos, so stopped developing the AOSP Gallery app a long time ago.

Using an alternative app shouldn't be a problem - I have more than one image viewer on my phone and can use any of them. The one exception is when you take a photo and then want to hit the thumbnail in the camera interface to see what it looked like. I don't have an S5, but most manufacturers in my experience hard-code the link between their camera app and their gallery app, so even if you don't use it for ordinary image viewing you may find that you have to use the Samsung app in that case (unless you also use a 3rd-party Camera app, which would allow you to use a different image viewer for reviewing photos... ).
 
Last edited:
How does this suck? Surely it asks for your contacts in an attempt to smartly arrange the photos or something.

Let's be honest here. Regardless of whether it's Google or Samsung who created the app, they already have access to your contacts, and a lot more. So why would they need the Gallery app to 'sneakily' mine your contact data?
 
Shocker_33 said:
How does this suck? Surely it asks for your contacts in an attempt to smartly arrange the photos or something.

Let's be honest here. Regardless of whether it's Google or Samsung who created the app, they already have access to your contacts, and a lot more. So why would they need the Gallery app to 'sneakily' mine your contact data?
Click to expand...
Actually I'm sympathetic to the OP. I dislike the idea of an app having access to more data than it strictly needs to do the job, and if I don't want it to geo-tag photos or link pictures to contacts then that's my choice - a choice that Samsung remove if they choose to stop the app running unless you allow that. So at best this is poor software design, but to me there's also at least a streak of complacency and arrogance in it (assuming that it's their choice rather than yours, and that you'll want what they think you should).

And actually while I sync most contacts with Google (there are a few who I do not) I do not sync them with Samsung or with the manufacturer of any of my other devices (although I have a Samsung tablet I've never created a Samsung account, don't use their app store, etc. Same with others, I'm not interested in manufacturer-specific ecosystems, which by definition are attempts to lock the user in). Of course I don't know whether Samsung would mine your contacts via the Gallery app - quite likely it's just to allow linking in some way that they think brings value. But if the user prefers not to give them that access, or thinks that the feature has no value to them, then that should be up to the user.
 
Shocker_33 said:
How does this suck? Surely it asks for your contacts in an attempt to smartly arrange the photos or something.

Let's be honest here. Regardless of whether it's Google or Samsung who created the app, they already have access to your contacts, and a lot more. So why would they need the Gallery app to 'sneakily' mine your contact data?
Click to expand...
I don't disagree with you. But if what you say is true it seems funny that they would ask for permissions when they already have the data with them.
 
Hadron said:
Actually I'm sympathetic to the OP. I dislike the idea of an app having access to more data than it strictly needs to do the job, and if I don't want it to geo-tag photos or link pictures to contacts then that's my choice - a choice that Samsung remove if they choose to stop the app running unless you allow that. So at best this is poor software design, but to me there's also at least a streak of complacency and arrogance in it (assuming that it's their choice rather than yours, and that you'll want what they think you should).

And actually while I sync most contacts with Google (there are a few who I do not) I do not sync them with Samsung or with the manufacturer of any of my other devices (although I have a Samsung tablet I've never created a Samsung account, don't use their app store, etc. Same with others, I'm not interested in manufacturer-specific ecosystems, which by definition are attempts to lock the user in). Of course I don't know whether Samsung would mine your contacts via the Gallery app - quite likely it's just to allow linking in some way that they think brings value. But if the user prefers not to give them that access, or thinks that the feature has no value to them, then that should be up to the user.
Click to expand...
True! The app doesn't need that data until we ask the app to geo-tag the photos. The app could have simply for that permission later ONLY when needed instead of asking it before.
 
Thanks to all for insight and suggestions, and especially for suggesting I redirect my wrath from Google to Samsung!

My real problem here is that the Gallery app is somehow tied to any attempt to view an image, for example when someone sends me a multimedia SMS, I try to view the image, and Gallery pops up demanding access to calendar, contacts and location, and if I dont grant that access, it wont run and I cannot see the image. PITA. (I have subsequently discovered that I can save the image, then view it with another tool like piktures or ES File explorer, further PITA) And attempts to disconnect this association through App Management have not worked - I cannot seem to pry this association away.
 
alabamatoy said:
Thanks to all for insight and suggestions, and especially for suggesting I redirect my wrath from Google to Samsung!

My real problem here is that the Gallery app is somehow tied to any attempt to view an image, for example when someone sends me a multimedia SMS, I try to view the image, and Gallery pops up demanding access to calendar, contacts and location, and if I dont grant that access, it wont run and I cannot see the image. PITA. (I have subsequently discovered that I can save the image, then view it with another tool like piktures or ES File explorer, further PITA) And attempts to disconnect this association through App Management have not worked - I cannot seem to pry this association away.
Click to expand...
For that go-to settings>applications>gallery (it's app info)>set as default here and select the "clear defaults" option.
 
alabamatoy said:
My real problem here is that the Gallery app is somehow tied to any attempt to view an image, for example when someone sends me a multimedia SMS, I try to view the image, and Gallery pops up demanding access to calendar, contacts and location, and if I dont grant that access, it wont run and I cannot see the image. PITA. (I have subsequently discovered that I can save the image, then view it with another tool like piktures or ES File explorer, further PITA) And attempts to disconnect this association through App Management have not worked - I cannot seem to pry this association away.
Click to expand...
I'll guess that this is because you are using Samsung's message app and they've coded it to only work with their own Gallery app. My own phone's built-in message app does let me choose which image viewer to use, but if yours doesn't and you can't change it by using "clear defaults" for the Gallery I'll bet that's the reason.

If so I'm afraid the work-around would be to use a third-party message app. I can confirm that Textra (the app I actually use for SMS) allows me to view images from MMS in-app, or to view them in a gallery app of my choice, and I would expect any third party app to do that.
 
Last edited:
Hadron said:
I'm afraid the work-around would be to use a third-party message app. I can confirm that Textra (the app I actually use for SMS) allows me to view images from MMS in-app, or to view them in a gallery app of my choice, and I would expect any third party app to do that.
Click to expand...

This solved the issue for me. Textra seems to be a more useful app, thanks for sharing that!
 
alabamatoy said:
Thanks to all for insight and suggestions, and especially for suggesting I redirect my wrath from Google to Samsung!

My real problem here is that the Gallery app is somehow tied to any attempt to view an image, for example when someone sends me a multimedia SMS, I try to view the image, and Gallery pops up demanding access to calendar, contacts and location, and if I dont grant that access, it wont run and I cannot see the image. PITA. (I have subsequently discovered that I can save the image, then view it with another tool like piktures or ES File explorer, further PITA) And attempts to disconnect this association through App Management have not worked - I cannot seem to pry this association away.
Click to expand...

Off topic but you might want to get rid of ES File Explorer. If you are concerned about security, they are owned by a company that puts adware on your phone.
 
Last edited:
tube517 said:
Off topic but you might want to get rid of ES File Explorer. If you are concerned about security, they are owned by Cheetah Mobile and it puts adware on your phone as well as selling your data.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I had kinda come to that conclusion on my own and uninstalled the app. It used to be useful, but now its so full of ads you can't tell app from ad.
 
alabamatoy said:
Thanks, I had kinda come to that conclusion on my own and uninstalled the app. It used to be useful, but now its so full of ads you can't tell app from ad.
Click to expand...

My mistake. ES wasn't bought by Cheetah but they do similar things and put adware on your phone
 
THE MANDATORY 'GALLERY' ACCESS TO CONTACTS & CALENDAR :

STILL NO WORKAROUND ?

Ooooohh.... last post here almost three yrs back ...
Anyway ..

BEST FILE EXPLORER I've found is

" File Explorer+ "

- - the " + " (PLUS) character is very important , since there are nummerous file explorer apps with similar names.
For one thing - among *many* - that I'm excited about , this "File Explorer+" ALLOWS YOU TO SHARE YOUR APPS
just like that. Use Bluetooth, e-mail or what you like.

- - - My Problem :

Just like the thread-starter, I've run into this problem:
The original Samsung 'Camera' app have these special Modes: like 'Selective Focus' , '360 photo' et.c. ,
BUT - sadly turns out impossible to benefit from, simply because
the result(s) *have to* be viewed in this Samsung 'Gallery' app.

Gah !

Still no workaround ?
( I've been thinking of the possibility to EMPTY ALL CONTACTS as well as DELETING EVERYTHING IN THE CALENDAR ---- and THEN - in some *very cumbersome* way -
Un-Allowing the 'Gallery' apps access, and re-entering all the contacts, and all the events in the calendar. I have no idea how that would work out , though ).

Comments ?
Yours truly :
// Samsung-fan-for-👎ever
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom