The CyanogenMod had teased a new app in a previous Google+ post complete with a picture of the app icon, and Monday evening they finally let the cat out of the bag. The teased app turned out to be a custom CM-developed gallery app, which is now available as a beta.

If you want to get the beta, you need to join the Google+ community, follow the Google Play testing link, agree to become a tester, then download the app from the link that shows up after you click "become a tester." The CyanogenMod team describes the new app as follows in its Google+ post:
Introducing: GalleryNext

We think we can all agree the AOSP Gallery shipping with CM currently is severely lacking. We sought to address that.

GalleryNext is our answer and today we made the beta application available on the Play Store.

Features:
# View all your pictures in one centralized location
# Cloud services integration with Flickr, Picasa (G+), Facebook, and Dropbox
# Moments support (automatic grouping and classification of media based on metadata)
# Video playback support
# Gif support
# Deduplication in 'All' view
# more

Todo
# Implement KitKat's immersive mode UI
# Editor support
# Fix all the things
# You tell us

A thank you to all those who participated in our bit of market research back in September (http://goo.gl/DP03dl) and those that will be helping iron out issues in this beta.

Report all issues/requests to the community group list in step 1! Please do not email us issues or file JIRA tickets at this time.
Click to expand...
Before I describe my brief hands-on experience, I would like to remind you that this is a beta release, so there are bound to be some issues, and that turned out to be the case in the time I played around with the app. First I'll mention some general observations:
  • There is no shortage of eye candy and animations throughout the UI, which was fine on my LG G2 with its Snapdragon 800 processor, but others in the Google+ comment thread mentioned that they caused performance issues on their devices. Personally, I enjoyed the UI, but then I enjoy eye candy more than most apparently.
  • You probably won't be able to add Dropbox photos to your GalleryNext app yet, since there is a limited number of access tokens available, and they've apparently all been used up. In that same comment thread, CyanogenMod developer Abhisek Devkota said they're working to address this particular issue. When you see an update available for your app in the Play Store, chances are that Dropbox integration will be back.
Without further ado, here is the screenshot gallery which fittingly describes my experience: