Most people who go looking for a photo vault do not want to hide their gallery. They want to hide four photos. The gap between those two things is why so many vault apps get uninstalled in the first week.
What Android already gives you
Before installing anything, it is worth knowing what is already on the phone. Two of these are genuinely useful and one is not what people think it is.
Google Photos Locked Folder
Google Photos has a Locked Folder that takes selected items out of the main grid and puts them behind your device authentication. Other apps do not see them. If you already use Google Photos and you only need a handful of pictures out of sight, start here, because it is free and there is nothing new to trust.
The catch is that it is tied to Google Photos. Check the current behaviour on your own phone before you rely on it, particularly around whether the items are included in your backup, because that has changed over time and it is exactly the detail that hurts when the phone dies.
Samsung Secure Folder
On Samsung devices, Secure Folder creates a separate encrypted workspace backed by Knox. It is thorough, and it is heavier than most people need. You get a second copy of apps inside it, and moving files in and out is deliberate work. If you are on a Samsung and you want a genuinely separated second phone-within-a-phone, it is the strongest option on the device.
It is also Samsung only, which is most of why anyone reads a page like this.
A .nomedia file, which is not privacy
The old trick is to make a folder and drop an empty .nomedia file in it, which tells the media scanner to skip it. Your gallery stops showing the photos.
Nothing is encrypted. Nothing is protected. Any file manager displays the folder in about four seconds, and “show hidden files” is a single toggle. It is fine for keeping screenshots out of your camera roll. It is not privacy, and it is worth saying so plainly because a lot of blog posts still present it as one.
Why “hide the gallery” is the wrong shape
A vault that swallows everything creates a problem it did not have to. Now you have two places photos live, you have to remember which is which, and sharing anything means a round trip through an export screen. People stop using it, and then one day they uninstall it and find out where the files were actually stored.
The version that survives is narrower. Pick the specific photos. Leave the other four thousand exactly where they are.
How selective hiding works in Secure Folder
Secure Folder never scans your gallery. It cannot, and that is on purpose: the app does not request all-files access, and it does not hold the media permissions that would let it read your photos in bulk.
Instead, when you add something, Android’s own photo picker opens. You tick the items you want. Android hands the app those items and nothing else. This is the same picker other apps use when you attach a photo, and it is the reason the permissions list is as short as it is.
What happens next depends on the file type, and the difference matters:
- Photos and videos are moved. The file is encrypted into your vault folder, then Android shows you its own confirmation dialog to delete the original. Once you confirm, it is out of your gallery.
- Audio and documents are copied. They come in through the document picker, which grants read access only, so the app cannot delete the original. The app tells you this before you import rather than after.
That second point gets glossed over by a lot of apps. If a document is sensitive, you still have to delete the original yourself.
What encrypted actually means here
Files are encrypted with AES-256 before they are written to storage. The key is random, generated on the device, and sealed with a recovery PIN you choose using PBKDF2 at 200,000 iterations. The PIN is not stored anywhere, on the phone or elsewhere, because there is no server involved at any point.
The honest consequence: if you forget the PIN and you have not exported the files, nobody can get them back. Not us. There is no reset link because there is nothing to reset against.
The other honest consequence: a four-digit PIN is ten thousand possibilities. The iteration count is what makes each guess slow for someone holding your vault folder, but longer is genuinely better and costs you nothing.
The gallery is only half of it
Hiding the photos does not help if the gallery app itself is open on a phone someone else is holding. The same app locks individual apps behind your fingerprint, face or PIN, so you can lock the gallery, WhatsApp, or anything else you choose. There is a separate guide to locking WhatsApp if that is the specific thing you came for.
Common questions
Can I hide just one photo?
Yes. The picker is per item, so one photo is a normal thing to do. It caps at fifty items per selection, so very large imports happen in batches.
Does the app need permission to see all my photos?
No. It uses Android’s system photo picker, which grants access only to the items you tick. Secure Folder does not request all-files access or the bulk media permissions.
Will the hidden photos still appear in Google Photos?
If a photo was already backed up to Google Photos before you hid it, the cloud copy stays in your Google account until you remove it there. Hiding a file on the phone does not reach into a backup you already made.
Can I get a photo back into my normal gallery?
Yes. Open it in the vault and restore it. Photos go back to Pictures, videos to Movies, audio to Music, and everything else to Downloads, each in a SecureFolder subfolder.
Get Secure Folder free on Google Play, or read what happens if you ever reinstall the app.