How to hide photos on iPhone

Hiding a photo on iPhone takes three taps. Knowing what hiding does and doesn’t do takes a little longer, and it decides whether hiding is enough for you.

Hide a photo in three taps

1. Open Photos and touch and hold the photo or video.
2. Tap Hide.
3. Confirm that you want to hide it.

Apple says hidden items move to the Hidden album, so they no longer appear in your Library, in other albums or in the Photos widget on your Home Screen.

Find, lock and unhide hidden photos

To see what you’ve hidden, open Photos, scroll down to Utilities and tap Hidden. Tap View Album, then use Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode. To put a photo back, touch and hold it and tap Unhide.

Since iOS 16 the Hidden album has been locked by default. The current iPhone User Guide says Hidden and Recently Deleted both open with Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode.

Two settings in Settings > Apps > Photos control this:

• Show Hidden Album. Turn it off and the album disappears from Photos. Apple says hidden photos then aren’t visible anywhere in the Photos app. This option has been around since iOS 14, and on iPhone the album is visible by default.
• Use Face ID (or Use Touch ID, or Use Passcode). Leave this on. Apple says that turning it off also unlocks the Hidden album.

What hiding doesn’t do

Hiding is a tidy way to keep photos out of sight. It has three limits worth knowing before you rely on it.

Your passcode opens it. The Hidden album uses the same Face ID, Touch ID or passcode as your phone. Anyone who knows your passcode, or can get you to unlock the phone, can open it.

It still syncs. If you use iCloud Photos, Apple says a photo you hide on one device is hidden on your other devices too. In other words, it’s still in your iCloud library and on every device signed in to it. Under iCloud’s default standard data protection, Apple holds the encryption keys for iCloud Photos. With Advanced Data Protection on, Photos becomes end-⁠to-⁠end encrypted, but Apple says some metadata, including whether an item is marked hidden, stays under standard protection.

Apps may be able to ask for it. In Apple’s developer documentation, hidden is a setting on each photo. An app’s request leaves hidden photos out by default, but the app can ask to include them. Apple doesn’t say whether the Hidden album’s lock changes this. The safest approach is to limit which apps can read your library (see below).

Clear Recently Deleted too

People often hide one copy of a photo and delete the duplicates, or delete a photo after copying it somewhere else. Deleted photos don’t disappear straight away:

• Apple keeps them in Recently Deleted for 30 days before removing them from your iPhone, iCloud and your other devices.
• You can delete them permanently from Recently Deleted at any time in those 30 days.
• With iCloud Photos, deleting a photo on one device deletes it on every device signed in to the same Apple Account.
• In an iCloud Shared Photo Library, only the person who added a photo can permanently delete or recover it from Recently Deleted.

Recently Deleted is locked by default, like Hidden. To clear it, open Recently Deleted in Photos, unlock it and delete the items.

Stop chat photos landing in your library

Photos can arrive in your library without you doing anything. Apple says photos and videos shared with you in Messages are saved to your photo library automatically. If you’d rather decide for yourself what goes into Photos, go to Settings > Apps > Messages > Shared with You and turn off Photos. Then photos people send you in Messages are no longer added to your library automatically, and there’s less to hide after the fact.

Check which apps can see your photos

Hidden photos are only as private as your app permissions. Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Photos to see which apps asked for access and change it for each one.

Apple describes three levels for some apps: full access, access to only the photos you select, or the ability to only add photos. Since iOS 14, an app with limited access can only fetch the photos you picked. That applies to every app that uses Apple’s photo framework, even apps that were never updated for it. The system photo picker runs outside the app, and the app gets only what you select.

Since iOS 17, your iPhone also reminds you from time to time when an app has full access to your library. When that reminder appears, it’s a good moment to switch the app to selected photos.

When hiding is enough, and when it isn’t

Hiding is enough when the risk is someone scrolling through your camera roll: a friend looking at holiday photos, a child playing a game on your phone, or memories and widgets showing something at the wrong moment. With Show Hidden Album turned off, those photos stay out of the way.

It isn’t enough when:

• Someone knows your passcode. You need a lock that is separate from the phone’s, such as a locked note with its own password or a vault app with its own PIN or pattern.
• You share an Apple Account or iCloud library. Hidden photos still go everywhere the library goes.
• You don’t want the photo in iCloud at all. Hiding doesn’t remove it from iCloud Photos.

If you move photos into a vault app instead, delete the originals from Photos afterwards and then clear them from Recently Deleted, or they’ll still be on the phone for 30 days.