How to Hide Photos on Android – 4 Effective Ways to Protect Privacy

An estimated 1.2 trillion photos were taken in the year 2018. That’s a pretty huge number. So huge that it’s quite abstract for our mind to even imagine it.

To comprehend, if we convert 1.2 trillion into seconds —  it’s more than 30,000 years of memory we captured just in 2018. Thanks to the little palm-sized beast in our pocket that made it possible — the smartphone. 

But it’s not just clicking the photos, we also use our smartphones as a device to store our data. While we want to keep these memories handy, there are some personal and confidential photos we might want to keep private — away from anyone accessing or trying to break-in our smartphone. So, if you are wondering how can you hide photos on Android devices and protect your privacy, here are the four simple and effective ways. 

How to Hide Photos on Android

1. Use Digital Private Vault

Digital Private Vault is a trusted gallery vault app that locks and hides your photos, videos and notes. This is by far the simplest and most efficient way to hide your photos on your phone. All you need to do is download the app from the Play Store for free, set-up your pin and import the media you want to hide. All the photos, videos and notes are hidden and stored behind a PIN. Check these steps. 

• Download Digital Private Vault from the Play Store.
• When you launch the app for the first time you’ll need to set-up a PIN and a recovery email. 
• Once done, you are all set to import, hide and lock your photo or videos in the app. 
• The app also allows you to create private notes to store your sensitive data such as passwords, bank account details and other confidential information. Everything is securely hidden and locked behind a pin.

Now, what makes Digital Private Vault better than other photo hiding options on the list is that it comes with a bunch of advanced features such as — fake icon, decoy password and individual folder lock for better security as well as utility features like wireless syncing for fast wireless transfer between the app and desktop. It makes the process of hiding and organizing the photos seamlessly easy so that you can keep all your sensitive and confidential photos on your phone with peace of mind. 

2. Use Google Photos Archive

Google Photos Archive option provides an easy solution if you want to quickly hide the photos from the photo album. However, it will be still accessible in the search results and in the archive folder. Use this method not as to hide your sensitive photos but to quickly move them from the main album. Here’re the steps. 

• Open Google Photos app on your Android. 
• Tap on the hamburger menu icon on the top-left side of the screen.
• Select Archive.
• Click on the add photos icon to add on the top-left of the screen beside the vertical three dots.
• Select the photos you want to archive and tap on Done.
• Selected photos will be moved from the main album to the archive album.

3. Use Native Hiding Features – Samsung and LG

Stock Android OS doesn’t come with a photo hiding feature but some device manufacturers provide it for better privacy. Samsung and LG are some of the manufacturers that provide such features. If your device is from one of these manufacturers you can follow these steps to activate the photo hiding feature.

Hide Photos on Samsung Android Phone

Samsung devices running on Android OS below Nogat comes with a feature called Private Mode. Toggling on this feature will allow you to lock and hide photos in the Gallery app. Here’s how you can do that.

• Open the Settings, scroll down to Privacy and safety and open Private Mode.
• Select how you want to access the private mode. You’ll need to select an alternative access method of PIN, Password or Pattern in addition to Fingerprints.
• Once done, you’ll be able to toggle on or off Private Mode in your gallery and hide your media. 

New Samsung devices running on Android Nougat and above comes with a new feature called Secure Folder. This is an advanced version of the Private Mode that provides some better features. Here’s how to turn it on your device. 

• Go to Settings and tap on the Lock screen and security or Biometrics and security.
• Select Secure Folder.
• You’ll need to sign in to your Samsung Account. In case you don’t have one, you’ll need to create it. Once done, click on Continue and proceed.
• Select the lock method from the options — PIN, Password or Pattern in addition to Fingerprint or Iris.
• Confirm the PIN, Password or Pattern again and click on continue. 
• Now you’ll be able to see Secure Folder icon in your app drawer and home screen where you can import and hide your media.

Hide Photos on LG Android Phone

Even LG smartphones come with the feature that allows hiding the photos. Here, check these steps.

• Open Settings, scroll down to Fingerprints & Security and select Content lock.
• Select the type of lock you want to use — Password or PIN. Once done, you can also toggle to use Fingerprints.
• Now open the Gallery app and go to the media folder you want to hide.
• Tap on the three dots on the top right corner and select Lock for the options.
• Once done, select multiple photos that you want to hide and tap on Lock. 
• To access these lock files, open the Gallery app, tap on the three dots and select Show Locked Files. You’ll be prompted to enter the password, PIN or fingerprint and then you can access the hidden photos.

4. Hide Using File Manager on Android

You can also use a file manager to manually create a hidden folder and move your confidential files to it. This method is handy but is not the best option when it comes to seamless organization and viewing. Here check the steps. 

Note: This is an old method to hide photos but currently doesn’t support some devices. 

• Open the file manager on your Android Device.
• Create a folder that starts with a dot (.) followed by a name. For example .nomedia.
• Once done, move the photos you want to hide in this folder and they’ll be hidden from the Gallery or any other photo app. 
• Remember, although your photos are hidden, they are still accessible as they are not locked. 

Since you are here, check Digital Private Vault, a gallery vault app that helps you store and hide your confidential data on your smartphone.

Download Digital Private Vault for FREE on Your iOS and Android Devices.