Piktures, a free Android gallery app, shows the photos and videos of your OneDrive as albums, next to the ones on your phone. You sign in once with your Microsoft account, and nothing is copied to the phone until you ask for it.
Can an Android gallery app show my OneDrive photos?
Yes. Piktures opens your photos where they are: on the phone, on an SD card, and on the cloud services it connects to, OneDrive among them. It has no cloud of its own and no account to create.
Your OneDrive appears in the Storage tab, under CLOUD. Tap it, and its folders show up as albums in the Albums tab, the same way the phone's folders do. The first time, Piktures reads the whole folder structure, which can take a while; the next times are faster. Piktures keeps the thumbnails it has made in its cache, so albums open quickly.
Piktures is not associated with Microsoft.
How do I add OneDrive to Piktures?
- In the Storage tab, scroll down to ADD A NEW ACCESS and tap Microsoft OneDrive.
- Tap GO TO ONEDRIVE.
- Sign in with your Microsoft account, in Microsoft's own sign-in screen, and allow Piktures.
Your first access is free, whether it is OneDrive, another cloud, or a network drive. A second access needs Premium or Prime. The details are in Microsoft OneDrive and How to add a cloud.
What can I do with OneDrive photos in Piktures?
- Browse and view. Each OneDrive folder is an album, sorted by name or by modification date. The All album sorts by modification date only.
- Copy photos to the phone. Select them, tap the move icon, and pick an album of the phone. From a cloud, Piktures always copies: the originals stay on OneDrive.
- Send photos from the phone to OneDrive. Select them, tap the move icon, choose OneDrive under CLOUD, open a folder and tap Move here or Copy here. After an upload, Piktures can send the phone's copies to Deleted items, where you can still restore them. See Copy and move between drives.
- Back up your phone albums to OneDrive, automatically, with Premium or Prime. Piktures creates a
Pikturesfolder at the destination, sends each album once in full and then only the new photos, and never deletes anything there. See Back up and restore your photos.
With a paid plan, and during your first 3 days, a transfer runs in the background. With the free plan, a Please wait… window shows its progress, with an ad.
Piktures and OneDrive: the facts
| App | Piktures, by Diune, for Android 11 or later |
| Price | Free, with a few Google ads. The one-time No ads purchase removes them |
| Account | A Microsoft account for OneDrive. No Piktures account |
| OneDrive accounts | One per phone |
| Sign-in | Microsoft's own sign-in screen, opened by the app |
| Where your photos show | In the Storage tab under CLOUD, then as albums in the Albums tab |
| What stays where | Photos stay on OneDrive until you copy them to the phone. Phone photos go to OneDrive only when you copy, move or back them up |
| Sort orders | By name or by modification date; All by modification date only |
| Phone to OneDrive | Copy, move, and automatic backup (backup with Premium or Prime) |
| OneDrive to phone | Copy, never move |
| Connection | Browsing OneDrive uses your connection, Wi-Fi or mobile data. Automatic backup runs on Wi-Fi only by default |
| Other clouds | Google Drive, Dropbox, Koofr, Yandex Disk, Nextcloud, WebDAV servers, and SMB network drives. The first access is free |
Questions
Is Piktures free?
Yes. The free Basic plan shows a few ads and allows one remote access, so one OneDrive account. Your first 3 days are without ads. The one-time No ads purchase removes the ads; Premium, a one-time purchase, and Prime, a monthly subscription, also unlock more accesses and automatic backup. See In-app purchases.
Does Piktures upload my phone photos to OneDrive?
Not by itself. Your photos leave the phone only when you share them, or when you copy, move or back them up to a cloud or a drive you connected. No Piktures server receives them. See Our product principles.
Can I add two OneDrive accounts?
No. Piktures holds one OneDrive account. To switch, remove the current access (long-press its tile in the Storage tab, then Remove connection), which also signs you out of Microsoft in Piktures, then add the other account.
Why don't my latest OneDrive files show?
Remove your OneDrive access and add it back. See Refresh issues.
Can I see my OneDrive photos on mobile data?
Yes. Browsing a cloud uses whatever connection the phone has. Only automatic backup has a Wi-Fi only setting, which is the default. See Data usage.