You would always heard about hiding files and folders in your PC but what about the smartphone? Have you ever needed to hide your photos, music or video files from your Android gallery? If so, then with the help of this article you’ll learn how to hide photos and other media files from the gallery of your Android smartphone.
You’re unable to lock your Android gallery to protect data or you don’t wanna make your photos or other media visible to your family members or there may be multiple reasons for hiding photos and other media files from Android gallery. So, for any reason if you really wanna hide photos, music files, video files or any other data from Android phone gallery, then this article will help you to do so.
Actually, I’ve compiled two easy methods to hide photos and other media files from Android phone gallery. First method can be performed without using any external app and the second method works with the app. I start from the first method.
Method #1: Hide Photos & Other Media Files From Android Gallery Without Any App
Now, learn how to hide photos and other files from Android phone gallery. I’ve performed simple steps to hide photos, music and other files from gallery of your phone. So, look at these steps:
STEP 1: First of all, create a new folder starting with the DOT (.) in your file manager. For example .hideme or anything you want.
Note: Any folder or file in Android phone starts with DOT, automatically becomes hidden.
STEP 2: However, you’ll not be able to see the .hideme folder because it is hidden. Now you need to make visible hidden folders. So, navigate to Menu button > Settings and check Show Hidden Files.
STEP 3: Now, its time to move all your photos, music files and video files which you wanna hide from Android gallery to .hideme folder.
STEP 4: Finally, again navigate to Options (Menu) button > Settings and uncheck Show Hidden Files. That’ all!
That’s it guys, after moving your photos and other media files to the hidden folder, nobody can see them in your phone gallery. So, all your photos that you moved to .hideme folder will not be visible to phone gallery any more.
If you want to make them visible again, then move these photos to the old location and delete the hidden folder (.hideme in this article). All your photos again will be visible 🙂
Method #2: Hide Photos & Other Data From Phone Gallery Using Android App
There are many Android apps are available on Google Play store to hide and password protect photos, music files and other media files in your phone gallery.
However, there are many apps for hiding photos but a few of them are popular and most effective such as Vaulty, Gallery Lock, Photo Safe, etc. Don’t worry I will tell you about each of them.
Vaulty has a very simple user interface to hide and password protect pictures and videos from phone gallery. So, relax when you hand your phone to your friend, coworker or relative knowing that your private media is safely hidden.
Now let me tell you that how can you hide your photos and other media using Hide Pictures in Vaulty app. Actually, this app provides its own hidden and password protected gallery named Vaulty and you just have to move your photos and other media to vaulty’s hidden gallery to hide them all.
To move photos and other media files to vaulty gallery, you need to select photo thumbnails and tap on share button and then tap on Vaulty icon to move them to vaulty gallery. OR Select photo thumbnails and tap on lock icon to hide your data. That’s it!
As the name suggests, this app also locks the photos and other media files in your phone gallery to protect them from others. So, you can easily hide your photos and videos from the Android gallery.
The app is one of the most popular apps in the world and is one of the top 10 apps sold on Google Market. However, I’ve linked the lite or free version of this app.
Further Reading:
- Best Android Apps to Hide Photos from Your Phone Gallery
- Top 5 Gallery Locker Apps for Your Android Phone
Verdict
BTW I’m able to hide my photos, music and video files from Android gallery using the both methods successfully. So, if your need is just to hide photos not to lock them out, then I recommend you to use first method that performs without using any application. This is because I always force to ignore installing more apps in your device because they slow down the device performance and battery life too.
But if you think that the second method is more sophisticated, then you can use any of the above listed apps to hide and lock photos and other media files from your Android gallery. I hope the article will be proven helpful to you!
That feature is not available in my Android phone. I’m using Motorola phone.
You can use the above mentioned apps for the same. Don’t worry if you’re unable to use first method.