How to Hide Photos on Your Phone

Hide photos on Android

Do you ever lend your Android phone to someone and hope that they don't look through your image gallery? Maybe they will find pictures sent from your significant other. Or how about those pictures of you flexing or posing in front of the mirror? That would be embarrassing! Here are the two main ways to hide your pictures from exploring eyes:

First option: Manual file management

If you don't have a stock file manager on your phone, you can get one from the Android Market, such as Astro File Manager, File Expert, or OI File Manager. Any of those will work. You can also mount your SD card on your computer and follow these steps from there (in fact that way might be a lot faster).

Step 1: Open the file manager (or SD card) and add a new folder that starts with a period (.) followed by a name, like .mystuff

Screenshot by Nicole Cozma

Step 2: Move your photos into this folder. They will no longer show in the default Gallery app nor any other picture viewer, just the file manager. You will need to remember where you put them, and you should note that they will not be protected by a password, as they would be if you'd used a photo-hiding app.

Second option: Apps that lock down and hide your pictures

There are a lot of options in this category. Two of the most popular apps are Vaulty and Gallery Lock Lite.

PrivateZone: To hide photos with this app, just open it and then press and hold on individual pictures until the menu pops up. You can also go through the regular Gallery on the phone and press the share button on pictures to send them into Private Space of this app, protected by a password or Pin code. You can also lock apps and hide videos in this app. The number of photos and videos that can be hidden is unlimited, and the app is free!

Screenshot by Nicole Cozma

Gallery Lock Lite: This is a more comprehensive hiding tool. You can set a passcode to unlock access to your photos, which you are prompted to do upon first opening the app. Additionally, you can hide the Gallery Lock Lite app from the app drawer and open it by calling 3333 from the dialer. The amount of photos you can hide is limited in the free version, but the app maker offers a Pro version for just one buck.

Screenshot by Nicole Cozma

Hide Photos on iPhone & iPad with the iOS Hidden Album

Everyone likely has a few photos sitting on their iPhone they’d rather nobody else see, whether it’s embarrassing selfies, poorly filtered or edited pics, a picture of a receipt or personal paperwork, or anything else in the realm of private photos. Those pictures can make showing someone another picture on your iPhone (or iPad) an awkward experience, as you’re hoping they don’t start flipping through your Camera Roll to discover that terrible photo of you after winning the pie eating contest. Fortunately the newest versions of iOS include a new way to mitigate that potential awkwardness by hiding select photos.

The hide photos feature must be enabled individually for each picture, as it’s set on a per-image basis. At the moment there is no bulk hide function like there is with the ability to bulk remove a bunch of photos all at once, so you may want to get in the habit of regularly hiding the pictures you don’t want to show up in your general photos app views.

Note this feature is available only to iOS 8 and newer, and though we’re going to focus on the iPhone here, it works the same on the iPad and iPod touch too.

Hiding a Photo in iOS

1.       Open Photos and go to Camera Roll or Albums as usual

2.       Tap on the picture you wish to hide, this will open it as usual

3.       Tap and hold on the photo itself to bring up an action menu, choose “Hide”

4.       Confirm that you want to hide the picture by tapping “Hide Photo”

Now that a picture or many are hidden, they’ll become invisible to the Collections, Years views, and instead are placed in a separate “Hidden” album.

Accessing Your Hidden Photos in iOS

Open the Photos app and tap on “Albums” view

Locate in the list of Albums the folder called “Hidden” (note the thumbnail is not automatically generated for that folder, offering additional privacy)

Find your hidden photos in the Hidden Album

This is where all of your hidden photos will be stored.

Hidden photos in iOS Albums

Note that while a picture is hidden, it can still be shared or sent through messages as usual, as long as you access it from this hidden album.

Unhiding a Picture in iOS

From the Hidden photo album, tap on the picture you want to unhide

Tap and hold on the picture and choose “Unhide” from the submenu that pops up

Unhide photos in iOS

This sends the picture back to the general Camera Roll and it becomes accessible to all albums and collections views again.

Is the Photo Really Hidden on the iPhone?

It’s important to understand how the hide photo function works: the photo(s) are hidden from the camera roll, Moments, Collections, and Year view, but are still visible in a photo album not-so-discretely called “Hidden”. In other words, while this is very effective at hiding photos from casual iPhone use and from flipping through your pictures in iOS, anyone who knows to look for the ‘Hidden’ album can still view the hidden images.

This is a decent way of handling your truly private pictures, but if you’re concerned about someone discovering the Hidden photos album, consider using the send-to-self trick to avoid offering photo album and camera roll access, or maybe just message them the pictures instead.