How to Hide Photos on Android Phones
If you want to know how to hide photos on Android, this article is for you. Check out these methods to keep your secret photos safe.
Author:Daniel BarrettMay 21, 20229652 Shares321723 Views
How to Hide Photos on Android Phones– If you have an Androidphone, there are several ways to keep photos private. But different methods protect your pictures more than others. For example, some move images out of your stream so that when you hand your phone to a friend or relative, those photos don’t display. The most secure apps, though, ensure images remain available only within the app and require authentication whenever the app is accessed.
Check out these methods to keep your secret photos safe.
All the photos you take with your smartphone end up in your device’s photo gallery. So a curious set of eyes could easily see images you don’t want them to view.
Perhaps you’ve got snaps of confidential information, gift ideas for a loved one, or endless memes you want to remove from your main photo reel. Whatever the reason, it’s easy to hide photos from the gallery.
If you want to know how to hide photos on Android, keep reading!
Hide Pictures Using Google Photos’s Archive Feature
The Archive provides a quick way to move photos out of your main photostream. However, anyone who has access to your phone can easily access archived images, and archived images will still display in albums and search results. Therefore, consider the Google Photos archive a quick and easy way to move photos out of view, not a secure way to protect images you want to keep private.
If a person has access to your phone, they also have access to any archived images in Google Photos!
To hide your photos with this method:
- First, open Google Photos on Android.
- Next, tap to select one or more images.
- Next, tap the three-vertical-dot Menu in the upper-right corner.
- Now, tap Move to Archive. This chosen group photos with all other Archived images.
- To access pictures in Archive, tap the Library at the bottom right, then tap Archive.
Use Native Tools to Hide Photos
Two mainstream phone manufacturers, Samsung and LG, have built-in privacy tools that can help you hide photos.
Samsung
If you have a Samsung phone running Android Nougat 7.0 or above, you can use Samsung’s Secure Folder feature. It lets you keep private files, images, and even apps in a separate password-protected area.
To set up a Secure Folder for the first time, go to Settings > Lock screen and security > Secure Folder. Next, you will need to sign in with your Samsung account.
After signing in, your device will prompt you to choose your preferred lock method. Once complete, the Secure Folder will be accessible from your app drawer.
Open the app and tap Add Files to hide photos in the Secure Folder.
LG
The process to hide pictures on Android if you have an LG device is slightly different.
This time, start by heading to Settings > Fingerprints and Security > Content Lock. The phone will ask you to secure the feature using a PIN, password, or fingerprint scan.
Now go to your phone’s default gallery app. Select all the photos you want to hide and tap Menu> More > Lock. You can also lock entire folders of pictures if you wish.
The photos/folders will vanish from the Library when you’ve tapped Lock. To view them, navigate to Menu> Show Locked Files. Enter your security credentials, and the photos will reappear.
Use Open Source Third-Party Apps to Hide Photos
Many privacy-focused professionals prefer open-source applications over private, proprietary applications since open source code can be reviewed. This allows programmers to review code to determine that a program isn’t doing anything nefarious with your photos.
Here is a third-party app that can hide photos on Android devices.
Simple Gallery Pro: Photo Manager & Editor
Simple Gallery Pro is an open-source app intended to work on most Android devices and provide an alternative to default Google apps. In addition, the app offers the ability to hide photos. You may protect hidden items or, if you like, access the app with a pattern, PIN, or fingerprint. Simple Mobile Tools also offers several other apps, such as Camera and Simple File Manager Pro apps, that serve as open-source alternatives to various proprietary Android apps.
CameraV
CameraV provides a camera that takes pictures, as you would expect, and the app can save the images securely within the app. In addition, you can configure a passcode that must be entered to access the app and photos.
This app is one of several apps overseen by the Guardian Project, which creates apps to serve mobile journalism and advocacy efforts. The app gives journalists (and others) a secure way to document sensitive activities in potentially hostile places, such as human rights violations. Because of this, CameraV includes a panic option, which deletes all app contents immediately. Once deleted, you won’t have access to your photos, but the person who takes your phone won’t get them either.
Daniel Barrett
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