Your Android phone can store a lot of data and your private data as well. The most common data which you may like to keep private is your “personal” photos. If you have any photos in your phone that you may not like anyone seeing, then it is better to hide or password protect them.
You never know when you may have to give your phone to someone else or show someone family photos and accidentally end up showing your “Private” photos. To save yourself from such embarrassments, it is better to hide or password protect all your private photos today.
In this tutorial, we are going to show you how you can hide your Photos on Android or Password protect them if hiding them is not enough for you.
Method #1: Create a Hidden Folder
Android by default comes with the ability to hide folders. However, it requires you to use a file explorer to control the Android’s system from the backstage. If you don’t have a built-in File explorer, then you can also use a third-party file explorer. You can also connect your phone to a PC and follow the below mentioned steps from the PC and it will work.
In this tutorial, we are going to use the ES File Explorer to hide folders. It is quite simple to use and offers some really robust features while having a high rating on Google Play Store.
Open the file explorer and you will see all your android folders. Here, we need to create a new “hidden” folder in which you will add all your private photos (may be other data as well).
To create a Hidden folder, tap on new at the bottom of the screen and then tap on “Folder”. You will be prompted to give the folder a name. To hide the new folder, you need to add a “.” (without quotes) before the name of the folder and it will be marked as hidden for android system. So your new created folder should look something like this “.Hidden files”.
Once the folder is created, you can just move all your photos and data which you would like to hide to this new folder using the same file explorer and Android system will not be able to read this data.
This folder can only be accessed through the File manager and you can hide it in the file manager as well. Just tap on the main menu on the upper left corner and from there tap on “Settings” at the bottom.
In Settings, tap on “Display settings” and from there uncheck the “Show hidden files” option and they will be hidden in file manager as well. You will have to check the option again in order to open the hidden files.
Method #2: Hide your photos in a folder
You can also use a file manager to hide photos in a specific folder. To do this, open the specific folder and tap on “New” located the bottom of the screen. When prompted, tap on “File” and name the file “.nomedia” and save it.
.nomedia works as a simple command that will hide all “Media” (pictures and videos) in the specified folder. You will still be able to see data using the file manager, but it will be hidden in the main interface of your android phone. If you would like to see the data again, delete the “.nomedia” file you just created.
These two methods will hide the files, which can be more than enough in many situations. However, anyone with some tech knowledge will be able to see your hidden data using the file manager.
Method #3: Password protect Photos
If your Photos are very important and you can’t risk the hide feature, then you can also password protect it using third-party tools.
In this tutorial, we are going to use the app Vaulty. It is a simple to use app and you can easily hide and password protect pictures. Download the app and launch it. You will prompted to add a master password or PIN that will be used to access files.
Once a password is set, you can tap on “Hide Photos and Videos” to open all your media files. Here just tap on each file which you would like to hide and when you are done, just tap on “Pad lock” button and the selected files will be hidden and locked.
To access the file, you (or anyone else) will have to first open the application and then provide the required password. When you will be inside, you will see all your hidden files again, click on each file which you would like to restore and then again tap on “opened padlock” icon to restore all the data.
If you know about any other interesting way to hide photos on an Android Phone, let us know in the comments.