Press Sync. Then what?
New phone. Android already copied my photos over. I open my sync app, point it at my cloud folder, and there it is — the Sync button. And I stop. What is it about to do? Upload everything? Download everything? Overwrite the edits I made last week? My old gallery app never told me. My cloud app never told me. I just pressed it and hoped.
What can go wrong when you press Sync blind
1. The duplicate explosion
My new phone already has all my photos — Android copied them during setup. My cloud has them too. But the filenames don't match (camera renamed them, or the cloud restructured folders), so the sync app doesn't know they're the same files. It uploads a second copy of everything I have, and downloads a second copy of everything in the cloud. 20 GB becomes 40 GB. Now I have to hunt down duplicates by hand, one by one.
2. The emptied folder
If the cloud side is empty — new account, wrong folder picked, a permission glitch — a two-way sync can take that as the truth and empty my phone to match. Years of photos gone in one silent reconcile.
3. The silent overwrite
I edited a photo on my phone last week. The cloud still has the untouched original. A timestamp quirk makes the cloud version look "newer," and my edit is replaced without a prompt. I don't find out until I open the photo.
What SyncGallery does instead
1. Scans both sides
As soon as you press Sync, SyncGallery reads what's on your device and what's in the cloud folder. Nothing is uploaded, downloaded, or deleted yet.
2. Opens Review Pending Operations
A screen appears listing every change SyncGallery wants to make. For each file you see both sides — the device thumbnail and the cloud thumbnail — and a clear action label: Add to cloud, Add to device, Update on device, Update on cloud, Delete on device, Delete on cloud. When the same filename exists on both sides with different content, it's marked as a conflict and you pick the winner: keep device, keep cloud, or keep both.
3. You decide
Tap Execute to run the whole batch. Select files you don't want to sync at all — ever — and tap Ignore; those files are added to your exclusion list and skipped in every future sync. (If you change your mind later, open Files excluded from sync in settings and restore them.) If the whole plan looks wrong, tap Cancel, go back to the rule, adjust the direction or the folder, and scan again. Nothing runs until you choose Execute.
Press Sync. See the plan. Then decide.
After the first sync
Once you've approved the first batch, SyncGallery remembers the folder pairing and runs quietly from then on. You won't see the review screen for every small change — only when a sync crosses a threshold you've set (bulk deletes, large modifications), or when a genuine conflict comes up. That's the next story in this series: Bulk-change thresholds, coming soon.
Try it on your next phone setup
Install SyncGallery and see your first sync plan before anything moves.
Get it on Google PlayFrequently asked questions
Does the review screen appear every time I sync?
No. It opens on the first sync of a new rule, and after that only when a sync would cross a threshold you've set (bulk deletions, large modifications) or when there's a genuine conflict between device and cloud versions of the same file. Routine syncs run in the background.
Can I approve everything at once without going through each file?
Yes. Tap Execute and the whole batch runs. You only need to walk the list if you want to exclude specific files or resolve a conflict differently.
What if I tap Ignore on the wrong file?
Open Files excluded from sync in settings, find the file, and restore it. It will be included in the next sync.
Which cloud services does this work with?
Google Drive and OneDrive. The review step is the same regardless of which provider you use.
Screenshots and action labels in this page reflect the SyncGallery app at the time of writing. The exact wording of review-screen labels may evolve in future versions.