The fastest drag & drop photo gallery plugin. Create stunning image galleries, albums, video galleries & lightbox displays in minutes — no coding!
- Installs
- 100,000+
- Rating
- 4.7 (1.6K)
- Updated
- 8 days ago
SimpLy Gallery
Create photo and video galleries with albums, sliders and a lightbox. Includes free Media Library folders to organize your files.
- Active installs
- 40,000+
- #895 of 1,000
- Downloads, all time
- 1.3M
- 1,289,960
- Downloads, 30 days
- 42.6K
- 3.2K in the last 7
- Rating
- 4.8 / 5
- 118 reviews
- Last updated
- 19 days ago
- Oct 12, 2026
- Version
- 3.4.5
- 33 releases
Upkeep and compatibility
| Last updated | October 12, 2026Updated in the last 3 months |
|---|---|
| Tested up to | WordPress 7.1.4Covers WordPress 7.1.4, the current release |
| Needs WordPress | 6.8 or newer |
| Needs PHP | 7.4 or newer |
| First published | October 5, 2019 |
| Support, last two months | 2 of 3 threads resolved (67%) |
Reviews
4.8 / 5 from 118 reviews
| 5 stars | 109 |
|---|---|
| 4 stars | 2 |
| 3 stars | 1 |
| 2 stars | 1 |
| 1 star | 5 |
Downloads, last 30 days
What the author says it does
SimpLy Gallery helps you create responsive photo and video galleries, albums, and sliders in the WordPress block editor, with a built-in lightbox for exploring your content.
Start by organizing your media into folders and tags with SimpLy Media Assistant. Turn a selection into a gallery, publish it on its own page, or reuse it across your site with blocks and shortcodes. When you need a local copy of a collection, download its original files as a ZIP from the WordPress admin.
Bring photos, video, and audio together in the same gallery, whether you are presenting a portfolio, documenting an event, or sharing a collection of tutorials. Group related galleries into albums so visitors can explore them from one starting point.
Ready out of the box
- Mixed media in one gallery: images, HTML5 video, audio, YouTube, Vimeo, and VideoPress.
- Block editor-first editing with 8 included gallery blocks and visual controls.
- Responsive layouts with controls for desktop and smaller screens.
- Lightweight YouTube and Vimeo galleries with one active video embed at a time.
- Static gallery content by default, similar to native WordPress gallery blocks.
- Albums and Album Navigator for grouping saved galleries under one visitor-friendly entry point.
- Page-level lightbox manager for Image blocks, Gallery blocks, linked images, and SimpLy galleries.
The opening of the plugin's own description. The full text, installation notes and changelog are on its WordPress.org page.
Questions the author answers
Is SimpLy Gallery Blocks free?
Yes. The core gallery blocks, mixed media gallery workflow, albums, and lightbox features are available in the free plugin.
Can I organize the WordPress Media Library into folders?
Yes. The free SimpLy Media Assistant includes virtual folders and tags for organizing media. Enable its folder sidebar in the native Media Library or use Media > SimpLy Assistant. Organizing files into folders does not move the originals on your server or change their URLs.
Can I download a media folder as a ZIP file?
Yes. In the free plugin, right-click a SimpLy folder in the Assistant or the Media Library sidebar and choose Download. Create the archive, then use Download ZIP to save its original files. This is an authenticated admin workflow. ZIP availability and supported archive sizes depend on your hosting; checks and adjustable limits are available under ZIP Downloads in the plugin settings.
What media types can I use?
You can create galleries with images, self-hosted MP4 video, MP3 audio, YouTube, Vimeo, and VideoPress content.
Can I create poster images for self-hosted videos?
Yes. For self-hosted video items, open the item menu in the Items Manager and choose Add Poster. You can select an image from the WordPress Media Library or capture a frame from the video. When a frame is used, SimpLy Gallery creates a new WordPress media attachment and uses it as the video poster.
Why is a video poster important?
A poster image gives native HTML5 video a reliable preview before playback. It improves the visitor experience, avoids forcing the browser to load the first video frame as a preview, and can help with compatibility on mobile devices and older browsers.
Latest changelog entry
- Security: Enforced folder ownership and WordPress capabilities when editing, deleting, duplicating, or changing folder contents, with additional permission checks for ZIP access and shared tag removal.
- Added: Ownership indicators for users with limited permissions, highlighting their media files and folder counters in the Assistant and Media Library.
- Improved: Permission-aware selection and drag-and-drop, disabled folder actions with explanations, and clearer feedback for completed, partially completed, or denied media operations. Media picker selection remains unchanged.
Screenshots
Adding a new gallery 
"Masonry" block in edit mode 
Activating and configuring the SimpLy lightbox in the post editor 
SimpLy Media Picker – adding images to the gallery
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Where this page's numbers come from
Read from the WordPress.org plugin API on , when WordPress 7.1.4 was the current release. WordPress.org rounds active installs into buckets. These are the directory's figures, not my verdict, and I haven't tested this plugin.