Hello this is my first post on Lemmy, I have been disgruntled with Xiaomi's stock gallery app and wish to switch to an alternative that will not steal my data.
Simple Gallery Pro is a no frills Gallery app, you should try it. It is a paid app on the Play Store but available for free on F-Droid. I've heard that the developer is pushing the Pro version by removing many old features from the normal version, so the developer may remove more features to be put behind a paywall. Just beware of that.
I had it installed on my dad's phone and it seems to work fine. He probably doesn't have much more than 1000 photos though, so it's a non-issue for me.