Android App of the Week JustPictures has been my preferred app for managing photo galleries for nearly a year but a recent slew of upgrades - some cosmetic, some more fundamental - have elevated it to a level were it now deserves a strong recommendation.

The app's key attraction is its ability to pull all your photo libraries together no matter where they are stored. To this end, it connects not only with Picasa but also with Tumblr, SmugMug, Facebook, Windows Live SkyDrive, Flickr, Imgur and DeviantArt.

 

Add your accounts (left) and albums from Facebook friends (right)

Up until recently there was an issue with Photobucket’s API but that seems to have been fixed giving a clean sweep of the popular online picture services.

As well as your own Facebook pictures you can also add friends' galleries which is handy for anyone who only really bothers with the ‘book to look at new snaps from family and friends.

 

Corral your pictures

To help you keep track of new content, JustPictures can be set to show an alert in the notifications bar when new albums or images are added to selected accounts. Albums with new content then appear with a star alongside them in the gallery list.

Prying eyes can be kept away from sensitive content thanks to a facility that lets you hide albums - though not accounts. It works by simply pressing and holding any album thumbnail.

 

JustPictures caters for many options and account types

The design of the user interface is clean and functional but still attractive, and you can use the app to run a live wallpaper slideshow of your pictures on your homescreen

There are also a host of small but pleasing touches like the option to choose which image appears as the thumbnail for each account or album, and to either show or hide Exif data.

 

Sort your snaps

Gallery thumbnails can be set to show either two, three or four images across the screen and in the interests of visual diversity you can tilt them all at a slight angle and put a narrow white margin around each image.

To cap it all, recent updates have made JustPictures just about the fastest gallery app I’ve tried - feature helped by an option to set the maximum resolution of full-screen images - and is both free to use and free of adverts. ®

Size 5.7MB
App2SD Yes

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