How to hide photos on iPhone (and what “hidden” really protects)

The Photos app has a dedicated Hidden album. A photo moved there disappears from your Library, from Memories, from widgets and from the regular albums.

1. 1Open the Photos app and tap Select (top right).
2. 2Tap every photo or video you want to hide.
3. 3Tap the More button (the three dots). On older iOS versions the option sits inside the Share sheet instead.
4. 4Choose Hide, then confirm.

To find the photos again, open Photos, scroll down to Utilities (called Albums on older versions) and open Hidden. To bring a photo back, open it inside Hidden, tap the More button and choose Unhide.

Since iOS 16, the Hidden album (and Recently Deleted) can require Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode before it opens. It is usually on by default, but check:

1. 1Open Settings, then Apps, then Photos (on iOS 16 and 17 it is simply Settings → Photos).
2. 2Turn on Use Face ID (or Use Touch ID / Use Passcode, depending on your iPhone).

While you are there, you can also turn off Show Hidden Album. The album then no longer appears under Utilities at all, which is useful if you do not want anyone to see that hidden photos exist. Turn the switch back on whenever you need to open it.

The Notes app can lock individual notes, and a note can hold photos. The advantage is that Notes lets you choose a separate password instead of your iPhone passcode.

1. 1Create a new note in Notes and add the photos with the camera or attachment button.
2. 2Tap the More button in the note and choose Lock.
3. 3Pick whether to use your iPhone passcode or a custom Notes password. A custom password is stronger here, because it is different from the code people around you may have seen you type.

After you add a photo to a note, remember to delete the original from Photos — otherwise the copy you meant to protect is still sitting in your Library.

These methods are a good first layer, but it helps to know where they stop:

• Anyone who knows your iPhone passcode can open the Hidden album, because the passcode is always accepted as a fallback for Face ID.
• Hidden photos still sync through iCloud Photos to your other devices. They stay hidden there too, but they are not removed from the cloud.
• Deleting a photo is not instant. It moves to Recently Deleted and stays for up to 30 days unless you empty that album yourself.
• Copies may live elsewhere: in a chat app's media folder, a shared album, a Shared Library, or a third-party cloud backup such as Google Photos.

A useful habit after hiding something sensitive: check Recently Deleted, the chat where the photo came from, and any backup app you use, and remove the extra copies there as well.

If your main concern is someone who might know or guess your phone's passcode — a friend, a child, a colleague borrowing the phone — the built-in options leave a gap. That is the case Lockboxy was built for.

• It has its own passcode, separate from your iPhone passcode.
• Photos and videos are encrypted with AES-256 on the device before they are stored. There is no account and no server holding your content.
• You can hide photos from your library or straight from the Share Sheet in Photos or a chat app, and the in-app camera saves captures directly into the vault, so they never pass through the Photos app.
• After importing from your library you can optionally remove the originals; iOS shows its own confirmation before anything is deleted.

One honest caveat: because the encryption key comes from your passcode, forgetting it means the content cannot be recovered — not by you, and not by us. If you use Lockboxy for important photos, keep an encrypted backup and set up a Recovery Key.

• Hide the photo (Hidden album or locked note).
• Confirm Use Face ID is on in Photos settings; consider turning off Show Hidden Album.
• Empty Recently Deleted for anything you removed — see how to delete photos permanently on iPhone.
• Clean up copies in chats and other backup apps.
• For content that must stay private even from people who know your passcode, use a separate encrypted vault.