Supported browsers & devices

The gallery runs right in your browser — on your phone just as well as on your computer.

Which browsers work

• On a phone: Safari on iPhone and iPad, Chrome on Android. Firefox, Edge and Samsung Internet are common too and work fine.
• On a computer: Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge.

As a lower bound: the versions of the last few years. To be honest, it can’t be pinned down more precisely — Photogala keeps no hard list of minimum versions, so there is no number to point at. If you update your browser now and then, you’re on the safe side.

JavaScript has to be enabled. If it’s switched off, all you get is a note that the app requires JavaScript.

There is no warning for outdated browsers

Caution

If your browser is too old you get no error message. Something simply doesn’t work: the page stays blank, the loader hangs, or a single button doesn’t respond. That’s exactly why it’s worth checking your browser version before hunting for other causes.

When something looks off, this order usually helps:

1. Update your browser.
2. Reload the page.
3. Try a different up-to-date browser.
4. Temporarily switch off content and ad blockers.

Example

On the grandparents’ old tablet the gallery just stays white – no error, no hint, only a blank page. That is exactly what an outdated browser looks like. You update it, reload, and the gallery appears. On your brother’s laptop it fails somewhere else: on the password screen it says “The captcha could not be loaded. Check your connection or disable content blockers.” – his ad blocker is in the way. Switched off for this one site and reloaded, it works.

Installing: not needed, but possible

You don’t need an app — you simply open the link to the event. You can still install the gallery: use your browser’s menu to put it on your home screen or in your applications. It then starts in its own window without an address bar.

There is no button for it inside Photogala — the route always goes through the browser menu. How to do it is described in Installing the app.

Note

If the event runs under the organizer’s own domain, the browser may not offer installation at all. That’s intentional, not a fault.

Camera access

Two features want the camera — and they behave differently:

• QR scanner: here Photogala accesses the camera live, so your browser asks for permission. If you decline or there is no camera, you’ll see: “Camera not available. Please check permissions or use a device with a camera.” You can grant permission later at any time in your browser’s site settings.
• Taking a photo and the selfie search (Find me → Take Selfie): here your device’s camera app opens. The browser asks nothing, and Photogala only receives the finished picture. If nothing happens, the system has blocked the camera — use Choose Photo from your gallery instead.

Selfie search: “Take Selfie” opens the device camera app, “Choose Photo” reads your stored images. The browser asks nothing in either case.

Content and ad blockers

Strict blockers and privacy extensions can knock out individual parts of the page. You notice it most clearly on the password screen, where it then says: “The captcha could not be loaded. Check your connection or disable content blockers.” Switch the blocker off for this site briefly and reload.

The password screen: this is exactly where an over-eager blocker reports “The captcha could not be loaded”. The camera icon inside the field starts the QR scanner – that is when the browser asks for the camera.

Related pages

• Installing the app
• Scanning & using the QR code
• My upload keeps failing
• Poor connection