Web Albums HD for iOS

Being a long time Picasa user, a native app for iOS is something I always felt was sorely missing. As a work around I have used my Google+ account through Safari to access my albums, but it’s far from perfect and could only be described as clunky!

Thankfully a company called Pixite has seen the gap and jumper right in with a simple but feature rich App, called Web Albums HD. The App itself resembles the native iOS Photos App with albums appearing in stacks which can be manipulated in the same way.

Setup is simple. Just fill in your Google account details and albums start appearing instantly. There is also an option to sign in to your Facebook account which brings some extra features such as sharing pictures with friends.

Thumbnail imaged load quiet quickly and once you select a picture to view the rest of the image is downloaded. All pretty standard fare and it works as you’d expect an App like this to, but you do need to let all the thumbnails of an album load first or the main pictures will be slow to open.

One of the settings I like best on this App is the ability to choose what size cache the App has available to it. I have somewhere near 9000 photos in my Picasa account and thumbnails for those images alone would take up quiet an amount of space, defeating the purpose of using online storage. By default it is set to 600 photos or 300 MBs so unless you are someone who regularly views a large majority of your photos, you can have your whole collection a click away, taking up a relatively small amount of space and having 600 or more if you choose, available for offline viewing.

 

 

Options to share photos via Twitter, email or over Airplay are all present as is the ability to post comments and view photo meta data. The App costs €2.99 and while it won’t be for everyone, if you have a Picasa account it is pretty much the best way available at present to gain access to your photos from an iOS device.