Responsive Gallery Grid

by Jules Colle

Description

Transforms the native WordPress gallery to a responsive gallery, respecting image proportions. Includes SimpleLightbox, but also compatible with most third party lightbox plugins.

View Demo
Documentation
Shortcode generator

Installation

Upload the plugin contents to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress Admin
That’s it! Your default WordPress Galleries should now all look titled and responsive!

Finetuning

If you want to finetune the options per gallery you can add some parameters to the gallery shortcode (from text editor).

Documentation available at https://responsive-gallery-grid.bdwm.be/shortcode-parameters/

You Can also change the default options for all galleries under Settings > RGG Gallery

Screenshots

Responsive Gallery Grid in action. By default the images will pop out on mouse-over.
The gallery shortcode can be extended with some options, from the text editor.
From the WYSIWYG view the gallery looks like an ordinary WordPress gallery, so you can easily add and remove pictures the way you are used to.
You can pimp eacht individual gallery to your needs by updating the gallery shortcode paramaters. (Check out the documentation)

Faq

How do I add a lightbox to the gallery?

Since version 2.2.1 the plugin includes a copy of SimpleLightbox. A lightweight responsive lightbox, which you can activate from the RGG Gallery page in your wordpress dashboard.
If you don’t like the lightbox, or you think it’s too lightweight, you can keep it disabled and install a third party lightbox plugin. Most lightboxes that work with the native WP gallery will work.

The images to the left and right of the grid are cut of when I mouse over them. How do I solve this?

This will happen if one of the grid containers have the CSS property overflow:hidden. If possible, you will
need to change this to overflow:visible. If not, you can
wrap the gallery inside a div, and assign some margins to it. If that’s no option either, you should just disable scaling, or use negative scaling
by setting the scale property to a value between 0.5 and 1 in the schortcode.

How can I further configure and modify the gallery to my needs?

Please take a look here: https://responsive-gallery-grid.bdwm.be/shortcode-parameters/

Need anything else? Please start a support thread?

Will there be added more options?

Sure. Please start a support thread for any of your requests.

Reviews

A Beautiful Gallery

By Josh Journey (ljosh) on May 6, 2025

This is one of the best gallery plugins created for WordPress, displaying images in a visually striking way regardless to their aspect ratio. Far more exciting than Masonry and other modern displays. I love the ability to hover over images and see them get bigger making for a fun browsing experience. Works well with a lightbox of our choice. The bottom gallery row is very well spaced out making it even more beautiful. It comes with many display options and works with media offloading.
This plugin comes highly recommended. 😊⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

A shame

By Julien G. on November 22, 2024

I was looking for the source of the problem of non-admin users being blocked, a problem that's been going on for months, and it turns out that it's your plugin!

I'm amazed that it took you so long to realize this and propose a corrective update.

Clean, elegant, timeless look+feel. Interactions+Immersion could improve a bit

By abitofmind on August 23, 2021

Clean, elegant and timeless look & feel - The grid is elegant. - The bubble effect onHover is great. - It’s minimal, and hence timeless and good. - This look & feel will age well, my intuition tells me. Interaction & Responsiveness - Lightbox is really minimal, UI elements subtle. -> Content is king! - Next/prev via swipe or tapping arrow-buttons or arrow-keys on keyboard devices. - Close via “X” or ESC-key or tapping background - Zoom control really nice - Double click/tap zooms in to fit-viewport, works perfect on Mobile and Desktop. - Pinching on touch devices zooms image perfectly smooth to your liking, background zoom factor remains unaffected. Perfection! - Pinching via Trackpad (on MacBook Pro with macOS 11 Big Sur) zooms image and page in the background. Not completely perfect, but when pinching back to normal zoom level, the effect is gone again. Immersion factor & interactions could get more perfection I have created a support ticket entitled "Feature proposals for perfect interactions + immersion factor customizable" in the public support section of the plugin at WordPress.org. Linking is not allowed in reviews. Look it up there if interested, summary here: - Initial zoom factor -- With safe margin -> this is the default, as it is now -- Fit -> The image touches two sides of the viewport -- Fill -> The image touches all sides of the viewport - More styling options of the prev/next/close icon-buttons for ensured visibility with fullscreen imagery - Support swipeClose – Swipe gesture on touch devices to close gallery - Image transition FX -- None, just linear moving (requires pre-fetching of 1 detail image in each direction): A fast “flick-through mode”. -- Fade out/in: The current effect. Possible downside: You shortly focus on the gallery in the background, then again focus on the image which meanwhile faded in. Can be an experience you want or not. We could already mitigate that if we can set Lightbox bg-color to a degree where the background is fully or merely invisible. -- I don’t not need any other FX, as I like the minimalism of Responsible Gallery Grid. But it is thinkable to may extend that over time.

Simply Perfect!

By mikhmich (mikeei) on December 12, 2020

Works with the native WP Gallery. Optimal set of features. Simple. Fast. Got the premium version with no thinking.

Perfect Plugin

By rizn on October 13, 2020

Its exactly what i was looking for! No need for large gallery-plugins, which are not working or not like expected. This plugin uses the wp-gallery and makes it looking perfect on desktop and mobile! THANX

Great plugin and support

By BiT024 on April 30, 2020

Great working plugin with even greater personal support. Highly recommended and exactly what I was looking for. When having an issue with compatibility with a different plugin the developer helped me out in a fast and friendly way, resolving the issue together with the developer of the other plugin. Top notch plugin and customer service!

Excellent Gallery Plugin!

By crowerks on September 13, 2019

Exactly what I was looking for: an easy to use, customizable gallery plugin that integrates easily (within classic block) to the native wordpress gallery shortcode. Excellent!

really, really simple to set up. fast loading. great output on all devices.

By James Revillini (jrevillini) on August 2, 2019

don't eff around. get this one.

perfect with foundation 6

By zuccodo on May 5, 2019

i used with foundation6 and data lity: all perfect

very nice

By Dan Andrei (kondrei@gmail.com) on March 13, 2019

nice and simple galley image

Changelog

2.3.18 (2024-11-22)

fixed bug that locked out non-admin users and caused conflicts with ajax requests
Tested with WP version 6.7

2.3.17 (2024-06-04)

PRO: Fix plugin update checker

2.3.16 (2024-06-04)

Tested with WP version 6.5
Show captions in builtin lightbox
Add permissions check to rgg_admin_init function

2.3.15 (2024-05-04)

Escape input field values in settings

2.3.14 (2024-03-08)

Add nonce to prevent unauthorized users to reset RGG options.

2.3.13 (2024-03-04)

Tested with WP version 6.4

2.3.12 (2024-03-04)

Tested with WP version 6.4

2.3.11 (2024-03-04)

Add extra sanitization of settings to prevent XSS

2.3.10 (2023-01-17)

Make sure changes made in 2.3.9 stay compatible with older PHP versions.

2.3.9 (2023-01-16)

Sanitize shortcode parameters (Thanks to Animesh from Automattic for reporting this security issue to me.)

2.3.8 (2022-12-28)

Fix PHP Warning: Attempt to read property “ID” on null

2.3.7 (2022-12-23)

Fix bug: Remove href attribute when link=”none”. Thanks for reporting @cahajla
Worked a bit on the development environment. Preparing to release some more updates in the near future.

2.3.6 (Dec 10, 2020)

Disabled Swipebox because it’s not compatible with jQuery 3.5.1 included with WP 5.6. Swipebox now automatically falls back to SimpleLightbox. (Thanks to Christopher Jones for the detailed report)
Include slick library in project instead of loading it from CDN

2.3.5 (Sep 25, 2020)

Make even more compatible with Real Media Gallery plugin (thanks to the guys who make RML)

2.3.4 (Apr 9, 2020)

Remove print_r statement

2.3.3 (Apr 29, 2020)

Make compatibel with Real Media Library plugin (https://bit.ly/3d9QSUb) – Big thanks to @mguenter for the patch and @bit024 for reporting
Add the image alt text as aria-label (can’t use alt attribute because the images are CSS background-images)

2.3.2 (Apr 11, 2020)

Tested with WP 5.4 (no other changes)

2.3.1 (Apr 19, 2019)

Fixed small bug after resizing window + some code re-organization.

2.3 (Apr 19, 2019)

Added alternative to lightbox: Show image above gallery. This will create a synchronized slider above the gallery. On clicking an image in the gallery, the corresponding image becomes the active slide.

2.2.2 (Apr 16, 2019)

added additional lightbox: simplelightbox (https://simplelightbox.com/). I recommend using simplelightbox as swipebox seems to be no longer maintained by its developer.

2.2.1 (Jun 7, 2018)

Fixed bug that was breaking gallery after update 2.2

2.2 (Jun 6, 2018)

Added Swipebox as a built-in lighthbox. Plugin still works fine with Responsve Lightbox. But Responsve Lightbox is getting a bit heavy and recently added it’s own gallery solution, which looks confusing if you want to use it together with RGG. So I decided to include a lightweight lightbox.
ignore caption in and out times if caption_effect is none (Pro only)

2.1.5 (Apr 04, 2018)

Use Scale parameter for zoom effect (Pro only)
Add “last row behavior” option to settings screen (Pro only)

2.1.4 (Mar 15, 2018)

Completed documentation: https://responsive-gallery-grid.bdwm.be/shortcode-parameters/
Some design changes in admin interface
Improved compatibility with the plugins responsive-lightbox and wp-gallery-custom-links
Fix bug: Responsive Lightbox loading when rel=””

2.1.3 (Feb 13, 2018)

Added Zoom and Fade effects (Pro Only)

2.1.2 (Jan 28, 2018)

add link parameter, so pictures in gallery can be linked to attachment page, media file (default) and None.
Make compatible with responsive-lightbox with zero configuration (no more need to “force lightbox”)
implement last-row behavior (last row same height as previous, justified, align center, align right) (Pro Only)
make captions work when no animation is selected (Pro Only)

2.1.1 (Jan 18, 2018)

get rid of ridiculously high z-indexes for images, as they were overlapping modal windows in some cases.
fix PHP warning problem with pligins and themes, that call post_gallery hook without the optional 3th paramater $instance.

2.1 (Jan 07, 2018)

Big changes. Completely rewritten. (December 31, 2017)
Merged RGG Pro and RGG Free.
Make ready for release.

1.8-beta-1 (November 16, 2016)

prevent jumping images (beta 1)

1.7 (June 28, 2016)

updated jquery.imagesloaded plugin to 4.1.0
added additional caption styles and effects

1.6.2 (June 27, 2016)

Added CSS line img { height:auto; } to fix problem with aspect ratio’s (https://wordpress.org/support/topic/onpageload-wrong-aspect-ratio?replies=4)

1.6.1 (June 26, 2016)

Fix problem with media library not loading. (some commented-out html code related to the update-nag got sent together with the json response)

1.6 (June 26, 2016)

Applied changes also appied in RGG 2.0.2 (free)

1.1 (March 16, 2015)

Test update

1.0 (March 16, 2015)

First release