Phonas vs Noodle Gallery
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Phonas
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Phonas turns your NAS into a beautiful photo gallery. Connect via SMB protocol and browse your photos right on your iPhone or iPad — no server-side software required. Works with Everything Works with any device that supports SMB: Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS, Windows, macOS, and more. No extra server software to install. If it supports SMB, it works with Phonas. INSTANT LOADING Extracts embedded thumbnails directly from media files with high-concurrency reads. Loads your photo wall instantly — no waiting for server-side thumbnail generation. NATIVE QUALITY Reads original files without transcoding or compression. Displays every photo in full quality, preserving HDR effects and color details. LOCAL CACHE Caches metadata and thumbnails locally. Browse previously viewed content even when offline. SMART RECOGNITION On-device recognition for faces, pets, scenes, and text. Smart search makes finding your photos effortless. FAST BACKUP Quickly upload your local photo library to a designated NAS directory. Back up 1,000 photos in just 1 minute over a gigabit LAN. SUPPORTED FORMATS JPEG, HEIC/HIF, PNG, RAW (ARW, CR2, DNG, NEF, ORF, PEF, RW2), MP4, MOV PRICING Basic features are free forever. Unlock advanced features with a one-time purchase — no subscription.
Noodle Gallery
This app automatically backs up your photos and videos to your own server, offering powerful AI-driven search and organized sharing options. It provides full control over your data and privacy, with no ads or cloud storage.
- Automatic photo and video backup
- AI-powered smart search
- Create shared spaces with permissions
- Face recognition for photo grouping
- Map view of photo locations
- Organize with albums and tags
- Deduplication of uploads
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• Automatic Backup Photos and videos from your phone back up automatically to your Gallery server. Works in the background, resumes on interruption, and never duplicates. • Powerful Search Find any photo instantly. Search by location, date, people, camera, tags, or even what's in the image using AI-powered smart search. • Shared Spaces Share photos with family, friends, or co-workers. Create spaces with different members, each with their own permissions. Activity log shows who added what. • Face Recognition Gallery automatically groups photos by person. Name the people you know and find all their photos instantly. • Map View See where your photos were taken on an interactive world map. • Albums & Tags Organise your library your way with albums, tags, favourites, and ratings. • Deduplication Never worry about duplicate uploads. Gallery detects and handles them automatically (photos and videos). • External Libraries Connect existing photo collections from network drives or disks without importing. • Full Control Every feature runs on your own server. No data leaves your network unless you explicitly share it. REQUIRES A GALLERY SERVER Gallery is a self-hosted solution. You need to run the Gallery server on your own hardware. Setup takes about 5 minutes using Docker. Learn more and get started at https://opennoodle.de OPEN SOURCE Gallery is free and open source, forked from Immich with additional features focused on shared spaces and privacy. Source code is available on GitHub. PRIVACY BY DESIGN • No analytics or tracking • No ads, ever • No cloud storage - your server, your data • End-to-end control over who sees what
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Noodle Gallery at none against Phonas's 1. Noodle Gallery also leads on update cadence (weekly vs every 2 weeks) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 18.0). On price, ads and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Phonas sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Noodle Gallery asks for nothing beyond the download.
Phonas ships an update every 2 weeks, Noodle Gallery weekly. The most recent releases landed on August 11, 2026 and September 11, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Phonas | Noodle Gallery |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | — | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better |
| Number of ratings | — | 2 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks | Weekly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | — | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 55 MB | 82 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | 红卫 邓 | David Pierre Marais |
In-app purchases
Phonas
- Unlock Full Features$6.99
Noodle Gallery
No in-app purchases





