Top 10 Best Photo Apps for Android in 2025

Google Photos stands as a titan in the realm of photo management on Android, offering a comprehensive suite of tools for virtually everyone. It serves as the default gallery app on many Android devices and provides a seamless experience for backing up, organizing, and accessing your memories across multiple platforms. With an initial offering of 15 GB of free storage per Google Account, users can safely store a significant number of photos and videos.

The app's intelligence is one of its strongest selling points. Its powerful search functionality allows you to find photos based on people, places, things, or even text within the images, without requiring manual tagging. Google Photos also automatically creates delightful animations, collages, movies, and stylized photos, offering new ways to relive your favorite moments. The integrated Google Lens adds another layer of utility, enabling users to identify objects, translate text, and gather information directly from their images.

Beyond storage and organization, Google Photos packs a robust editing suite. Users can apply content-aware filters, adjust lighting, crop, rotate, and perform various enhancements with intuitive controls. Sharing is also a breeze, with smart suggestions for sharing photos with friends who are in them, and the ability to create shared albums where multiple people can contribute. For those looking to free up device space, the app allows for easy removal of already backed-up media. While some recent UI changes have drawn mixed feedback, its core functionality and integration within the Google ecosystem keep it a top choice for millions.

Amazon Photos: Photo & Video presents a compelling alternative for Android users, especially for Amazon Prime members who benefit from unlimited full-resolution photo storage and 5GB for videos. Even non-Prime users get a respectable 5GB of combined photo and video storage, making it a viable option for cloud backup and freeing up device space.

The app emphasizes secure, full-resolution storage, ensuring your memories are preserved in their original quality. Automatic backup can be enabled via Auto-Save, providing peace of mind that your latest snaps are safe in the cloud. A key advantage is its integration with Amazon's ecosystem; photos can be easily displayed on Echo Show devices and Fire TV, turning your screens into dynamic digital photo frames. In the U.S., users can also order prints, custom gifts, and home décor directly through the app.

Sharing features include 'Groups,' allowing private sharing and commenting on selected photos and albums with friends and family. The app also offers a 'Memories' feature, resurfacing photos from past years, sometimes set to music. While the core offering is strong, some users have reported the mobile app has fewer organizational features than its desktop counterpart and occasional annoyances with video storage limit notifications or aggressive prompts to keep the app open for backups. SD card access on Android has also been a point of friction for some.

For Android users prioritizing privacy, Hide Photos, Video and App Loc (Hide It Pro) offers a robust and cleverly disguised solution. Marketed as "Audio Manager" in the app drawer, it functions as a simple volume control interface to the unsuspecting eye. However, a long press on the title reveals its true purpose: a secret vault for your photos, videos, messages, apps, and other files.

This app provides a secure environment to hide sensitive media from your main gallery, accessible only via a secret PIN, password, or pattern. It supports categorization into hidden folders, making organization within the vault straightforward. A standout feature is the free cloud backup option for your hidden files, adding an extra layer of security against data loss. The app also cleverly disappears from the recent apps list, further enhancing its stealth.

Additional security features include an escape PIN/password for situations where you might be forced to open the vault, and a built-in encryption tool for your most critical files. While highly effective, users should be cautious when managing files on an SD card, ensuring they unhide them before moving the card to another device, as the encryption is very strong. Some users have also noted minor bugs like the app occasionally affecting ringer volume.

Phonto - Text on Photos is a wonderfully simple yet powerful app dedicated to one primary task: adding text to your images. If you're looking to create social media posts, memes, or just annotate your photos with stylish typography, Phonto offers an extensive toolkit to do so with ease. Its straightforward interface makes it accessible even for those new to photo editing.

The app boasts a collection of over 200 built-in fonts, and importantly, allows users to install their own fonts, offering virtually limitless typographic possibilities. Text customization is comprehensive: you can change text size, color, add shadows, rotate text, adjust stroke color and width, and even modify text background color. Fine-tuning options like letter spacing and line spacing are also available, giving users precise control over their text's appearance.

While Phonto excels at its core function, some users coming from its iOS counterpart might miss features like border creation. Android users have also requested improvements such as better text box wrapping, direct integration with Google Photos (rather than just Google Drive), and more robust project saving to avoid accidental deletion of older projects when device space is low. Despite these minor points, its focus and effectiveness in text addition make it a favorite for many.

PhotoScan by Google Photos is a nifty utility from Google designed to breathe new life into your old printed photographs. Instead of just taking a picture of a photo (which often results in glare and distortion), PhotoScan guides you through a process to create enhanced, glare-free digital scans using your phone's camera. It's an excellent tool for digitizing cherished memories stuck in physical albums.

The app employs a clever multi-shot process. After an initial capture, it prompts you to move your phone over four designated dots on the image. This allows PhotoScan to combine multiple images, algorithmically remove glare, correct perspective, and automatically crop the photo based on edge detection. The result is typically a straight, rectangular scan that looks significantly better than a simple snapshot.

Scanned photos are automatically saved to your device and can be easily backed up to Google Photos for safekeeping, organization, and further editing or sharing. While the multi-point capture process can feel a bit more involved than a single-tap scan, users generally find the quality of the glare-free results worth the extra few seconds, especially for important photos. Some users, however, wish for more control over color/tone adjustments in the final scan.

Clock Vault-Hide Photos,Videos is another excellent privacy-focused app for Android users who want to keep their personal media away from prying eyes. Its genius lies in its disguise: it appears and functions as a simple clock app. To access the hidden vault, you need to set a specific time on the clock face as your password and press the center button.

This app allows you to securely hide photos, videos, and other files. It supports features like creating albums within the vault for better organization and even lets you set custom album covers. For enhanced secrecy, you can change the app's launcher icon to something innocuous like a weather or music app. A particularly clever feature is the "Fake Password" or Decoy Vault, which opens an alternative vault with a different password, useful if someone insists on seeing what's inside.

Clock Vault also includes a private browser for downloading media directly into the vault without leaving tracks, and an inbuilt video player. Fingerprint unlock is supported for convenience on compatible devices. While the app is generally well-regarded for its robust privacy, users must remember to restore files before uninstalling the app if they are not using the cloud backup feature, as locally stored hidden files can be lost. Some users have also reported an increase in ads with recent updates.

Calculator Lock - Hide Photos offers Android users a discreet way to protect their private photos and videos by masquerading as a fully functional calculator. This disguise helps to keep sensitive media away from anyone who might casually browse your phone. The actual vault is accessed by entering a pre-set PIN into the calculator interface.

The app allows users to hide pictures and videos, which can be imported from the gallery or captured directly within the app. It supports folder organization for better management of hidden files. For additional security and convenience, Calculator Lock provides an option for safe online cloud storage, ensuring that your hidden files are protected against device loss or damage. Users can also change the app's primary color and even its icon to something like a "G-Scanner" to further enhance its stealth.

Features like a personal web explorer for incognito browsing and direct downloading of media into the vault, along with the ability to set up multiple vault passwords for different levels of access, add to its utility. However, like many free apps with privacy features, users have reported that the frequency of advertisements can be quite high, sometimes covering parts of the screen or appearing with every action, which can detract from the user experience.

Cut and Paste Photos aims to provide users with a straightforward way to perform one of the most common creative photo edits: cutting an object or person from one photo and pasting it into another. This can be used for anything from creating fun collages to swapping faces or adding someone into a group photo.

The app promises an easy-to-use interface for these tasks. Key features include the ability to cut photos and paste them precisely, coupled with a background eraser tool designed to be fast and user-friendly. It positions itself as a tool that can replace more complex professional photo editing software for these specific types of manipulations, saving users time and effort. The idea is to make custom photo creation accessible to everyone, regardless of their editing skill level.

While the concept is appealing, the user experience is heavily impacted by a very aggressive advertising model. Many reviews highlight that ads appear with extreme frequency, often interrupting the editing process itself. Furthermore, the subscription cost to remove these ads is noted by users as being exceptionally high (e.g., on a weekly basis). This can make the app frustrating to use for those not willing to pay the premium, despite its potentially useful core functionality.

OPPO Photos is the native gallery application for OPPO smartphones, designed to provide users with a seamless experience for browsing, editing, and managing their photo libraries. It offers standard gallery functionalities such as viewing photos in detail, quick browsing, and organizing by date or location. The app also includes features like automatically generated memories to help users revisit past moments.

For editing, OPPO Photos provides presets and templates to enhance photo composition or apply different effects. Users can also get creative by making animated GIFs, collages, and cutouts. Album creation and password protection for private photos are available for organization and security. Smart grouping aims to keep the photo library tidy automatically, and cloud sync allows for viewing and managing photos across devices.

Despite being a system app for a large user base, recent user feedback indicates significant challenges. A recurring and major issue reported is the app becoming "no longer compatible" with the user's OPPO device, preventing updates or proper functionality. Other complaints include unwanted connections to Google Photos, large app size, and specific features like the AI eraser not working or share functionality breaking after updates. These compatibility and performance issues can make it a frustrating experience for affected users.

Cut Paste Photos by Dexati is an app designed to empower users to create collages and manipulate images by cutting elements from one photo and pasting them onto another, or onto custom backgrounds. It aims to simplify tasks like removing photo backgrounds or unwanted people, and adding individuals into group shots without needing professional software.

The app historically offered tools like an AI Background Eraser for automatic background removal and a Manual Copy feature for precise cutouts. It also included an advanced photo editor for refining edges, options to paste onto various backgrounds, create photo collages, and apply effects like Color Pop, Photo Clone, and Text In Photo. The idea was to provide a comprehensive suite for creative photo compositions.

However, recent user reviews paint a picture of an app that has undergone significant changes, much to the dismay of its long-term users. A primary complaint is the alleged removal or severe degradation of the manual cut feature, with the app now heavily pushing an AI background remover that many find less effective. The introduction of aggressive advertising and a perceived shift towards a subscription model for previously free or better-functioning features has led to widespread dissatisfaction, with many users feeling the app has lost its core utility and value.