73
Gallery Lightbox
Simple visual magic that might vanish during your next WordPress update.
HealthyGrowing
73/100
It offers simple lightbox effects but suffers from compatibility issues and unreliable support.
Active installs
~15,000
our estimate · wp.org shows 10k+
Rating
4.7★
106 ratings
Trend · vs a year ago
+61%
Growing fast
23 → 37 installs/day
What to watch out for
- MINORreviews unevenly distributed over time
Downloads over time
real new installs per day · release spikes shown separately from the trend2025-04-302025-08-082025-11-162026-02-232026-06-03
organicrelease spikerelease tailorganic trend · 14d rolling median
Growing fast · +61% in the last year
23/day a year ago→37/day today
Reviews
what people actually sayGallery Lightbox is praised for its simplicity and visual appeal, but users report compatibility, support, and performance issues.
What people like
- +Simple and straightforward to use, works out of the box×4
- +Visually appealing with good photo quality and effects×3
- +Smooth scrolling through photos
- +Works with the default WordPress gallery feature
Common complaints
- −Incompatible with WP tiled galleries
- −Support does not respond to queries
- −Loads full-size images for thumbnails, causing slowness
- −Scroll wheel randomly resizes images and forces page reloads
- −Cannot disable lightbox for images that link to other pages, overriding internal links
- −Breaks after WordPress core updates, causing conflicts
Review trustReviews look organic
- 4.69★Verified rating — holds steady vs the raw 4.70★
- 18%One-shot reviewers — most reviewers are active community members
Reviews per month · 5★ vs lower
2023-08-192025-01-102026-06-04
5★ reviews1–4★ reviews
All-time ratings · 106 total
Latest reviews · 90 analyzed
- 2026-04-30★★★★★Very Good!danraizphoto
- 2025-07-22★★★★★Simple and easyTapio Heiskanen
- 2025-02-08★★★★★Merciacrolepia
- 2025-01-27★★★★★This is plugin works perfectly. Thanks.pfl34
- 2024-05-04★★★★★Doesn't work with WP tiled galleriestuicreations1-shot
- 2024-04-30★★★★★there's no point to comparing – Gallery Lightbox much beatterrksgdynia
- 2024-01-08★★★★★Outstanding out of the boxcocoamelody
- 2024-01-01★★★★★Good but some issuessynthezoid
- 2023-09-26★★★★★Amazing!remyawm1-shot
- 2023-07-31★★★★★대단한 라이드박스kimsangsoo1-shot
Releases
recent versions from WordPress.org SVNAlternatives to Gallery Lightbox
Top Media plugins, ranked by score.For developers & the curious
the raw signals behind the grade — none of this is on the friendly summary aboveDownload signals
Baselines are computed on organic days only — release spikes and their tails are excluded, so they're not inflated by the auto-update wave.
38
Baseline · median of last 7 organic days
34
Prior 7-day baseline
26
Floor · 25th percentile over 14 days
34
Latest day · 2026-06-03(organic)
+11.8%
Week-over-week organic trend
Review signals
Concentration and drive-by metrics drive the review-burst and fake-review flags. 30–40% solo reviewers is normal; we only flag the extremes.
20%
Max month share · biggest single 30-day window
2.14
Distribution CV · <0.6 even, >1.5 bursty
86%
5★ share in analyzed sample
18%
Solo reviewers · only this one wp.org activity
—
Volume velocity · last 6mo vs prior 6mo
4.70 → 4.69★
Sample avg · raw → solo-filtered