3 Methods to Hide Photos on iPhone with Built-in Apps

If you want to prevent people who have access to your phone from seeing some of your photos, you can hide photos on iPhone. The good thing is that you don’t need to download anything because Apple has this feature built-in. In this article, I will show you 3 methods to hide photos on your iPhone or iPad. You can also protect them with a password.

Hide Photos on iPhone in Hidden Album

You probably have noticed the Hidden Album in your Photos app which allows you to add any photos in. However, those with access to your iPhone can still access these hidden photos in Photos app> Albums > Hidden. To better protect your privacy, you can actually hide the Hidden album. You can refer to the steps below to learn how.

Step 1. Launch the Photos app on your iPhone.

Step 2. Tap the “Select” button in the upper right corner and select one or more photos that you want to hide.

Step 3. Tap the Share icon in the lower-left corner and select Hide. You may need to scroll down a bit to see the Hide option.

Step 4. Now if you go to the Photos library, you won’t see the photos you hid because these photos have been moved to the Hidden album. To hide the Hidden album, go to Settings > Photos and uncheck the option for Hidden Album.

If you ever want to view these hidden photos, you need to go to Settings to check the Hidden Album option. Then within the Photos app, you can tap on Albums at the bottom and select Hidden Album to view all your hidden images.

Well, if someone also knows this, he can also find your hidden photos. To hide images on your iPhone at a deeper level, you can use another app on your iPhone. Keep reading to learn how.

Hide Photos on iPhone with Shortcuts App

Since iOS 13, Apple has made the Shortcuts a stock app that comes with your iPhone or iPad, first introduced on iOS 12. It is an automation app with more than 400 actions. I have made a shortcut for you to hide any photos on iPhone or iPad. If you are interested, you can also check my full shortcuts collection.

You can refer to the steps below to see how it works.

Step 1. Get this shortcut, Hide Photos(updated for iOS 16), by opening the link in Safari. If you have a problem adding this shortcut due to an untrusted shortcuts issue, you can refer to this video guide.

Step 2. Open the Shortcuts app and run this Hide Photos shortcut. Alternatively, you can select a few photos that you want to hide from the Photos app and run this shortcut from Share Sheet.

Step 3. When you run this shortcut for the first time, select “Hide Photos” and select the photos that you want to hide. When you want to view hidden photos, you select “Unhide” instead.

Step 4. After that, this shortcut will ask your permission to delete the selected photos from your photo library. Just confirm it and your photos are saved to a private photo album.

Let me explain the logic behind this shortcut. This shortcut will base64 encode images you choose and save them to Files as archive files. With your permission, Shortcuts app will delete the chosen photos in your Photos library, so no one can find the hidden images but you. Even if someone finds these files from the Files app on your iPhone and unzips them, all they see are a few lines of base64 encoded characters.

Whenever needed, you can always run this shortcut to unhide or restore the hidden images to your Photos library. If you want to protect your private photos on iPhone with a passcode, you can use this shortcut or try the next method.

Hide Photos with a Passcode

The Notes app allows you to lock a note with a passcode. With that, you can add photos to a note and lock it with a passcode. After you add the photos that you want to hide to a note, you need to manually delete them from the Photos app, so no one can view them without your passcode.

Step 1. On the Photos app, choose a few images that you want to hide and tap on the Share button as before.

Step 2. From the Share Sheet, choose Add to Note and tap Save. Since these photos have been added to a new note, you can delete the selected photos, which you want to hide. You can also delete them when you finish setting up the passcode.

Step 3. Open the note that you just created in Notes App. Tap the three dots icon in the upper right corner.

Step 4. Select Lock Note and then enter a password to lock the note with photos that you want to hide.

All your selected photos are now hidden in the Notes app and protected with a passcode on your iPhone. To change the passcode, go to Settings > Notes > Password.

Conclusion

That’s all the methods to hide photos on iPhone without third-party apps. They are working great for me. I hope this will help you as well. If you do not like using these methods, there are a few good apps from AppStore to hide and lock photos on your iOS device, like Private Photo Vault or Secret Photo Vault.

In addition, the Secret Calculator Pro is also worth mentioning. It is disguised as a calculator app, but it is an app for hiding pictures. With such a disguise, no one will even try to look for private photos in this app.