Privacy is currently the most important factor especially in the modern world as every device is connected to the internet and almost everyone store all kinds of data on their devices including personal and sensitive information like photos, videos and messages, which when the security or the privacy of the device is compromised could be easily accessed by anyone.

So, it is highly important to ensure that all these data remain safe and secure at all times and are not easily accessible by people other than the intended user. While most OEMs like Samsung, Huawei and Xiaomi have built in tools and options to hide photos, messages and other private data, stock Android and other popular OEMs doesn’t have native options for these.

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If you are looking for ways to make sure that your personal and sensitive data are safe and secure and hidden from anyone who might try to access or misuse them, then you can follow the below steps to hide photos, messages and apps in your Android device.

How to hide photos, messages and apps in your Android phone

Hide photos

Using native tools

If you are using a Samsung device, then it is easier for you to hide your photos from the stock Samsung gallery app as it has a built in option to do so.

Just open the stock gallery app, select all the photos and videos you want to hide from your Gallery and then select the more option from the top right corner of the app click on the Move to Private option.

Now go to your settings and then open privacy and safety settings and then enable the private mode option. All the images you have selected will now be hidden from the gallery in normal view and could be viewed once you disable the private mode.

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Using third party apps

If your phone doesn’t have native options to hide photos directly from your gallery then you can try doing that by downloading and installing some third party app which serves that purpose from the Google Play Store.

You can install apps like Vaulty and Hide it pro from the Play store to hide your photos and even videos from your stock gallery app so that no one else except you could view them. These apps even allow options like disguising themselves as a calculator app, hiding from the main app screen and so on for more privacy and security.

By hiding the folders

Some people might not trust third party apps to store their private photos on their cloud or user accounts and they might have trust issues with such apps. If this is your case, then might prefer this method of hiding your photos and videos from other people by moving them into a hidden folder.

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You can do this by downloading and installing a file hider app from the Google Play Store like File Hide Expert or File and Folder Hider and using them to hide your private photos and videos from the Gallery or from anywhere in your device. These apps are also protected by password preventing other people or apps from accessing it.

Hide Messages

While it is true that not a lot of people use text messages as their primary form of communication these days, there are still a significant quantity of people out there who rely on text messaging for their communication needs and it is important to make sure that these messages are private and could not be viewed or accessed by anyone else other than the sender and the receivers of the message.

Unfortunately Android still doesn’t provide a built in or a native option for its users to hide messages using the system apps which makes the third party apps the only way to hide the messages on your device. However, there are pretty good apps out there which will help you to securely hide the text messages on your device and even to password protect them.

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Hide SMS and Call Recorder is one such app which could be used for hiding the text messages on your device and protecting them from other people. The app basically acts as an SMS vault and allows you to mark certain contacts on your phone as secured contacts enabling you to send and receive secure text messages from these specific people.

Hide Apps

Instead of individually hiding images, videos or messages from your Android device, hiding the apps from your phone is a pretty straightforward way to entirely prevent anyone from viewing or accessing the files and messages on your device by directly disabling the way for them to even open the apps that allows them to view such files.

While some OEMs have custom launchers that come preinstalled with the devices with the option to hide apps from the list of installed apps on the device, not all Android phones have this feature. But you can install a custom third party launcher like Nova Launcher from the Google Play Store to hide apps from the app drawer on your device.

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Just download and install the Nova Launcher from the Play Store, open the Nova settings by long pressing on the home screen of the launcher and then open settings. Here, select the App and Widget drawer settings and then scroll down and select the Hide apps option. From here you can just whatever apps you want to hide from your app drawer and these will be removed from the list.

However, if you want to hide the apps completely from your device and not even want any other app on your device to access them, or those to send you any notification or alerts, you can disable the apps from your device. To do that head over to the settings app on your phone, open App settings and select whatever app you want and disable it. You can access this app again by enabling it from the same page.

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There are also other options like securing the apps which you consider to provide access to some of your sensitive data by locking them using a App locker app so that they require a password or a pin every time you need to access them. This way you don’t need to disable the app and will still receive alerts and notifications from it and it will also be secure at the same time.

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Well, after securing and hiding personal and sensitive information from your Android phone like your photos, videos, text messages and even your apps by using both third party and built in options your phone is now more safe and secure from getting exposed to other people than ever before. Comment below if you need some help in doing any of the above mentioned things and feel free to share any thoughts you have on how to secure the sensitive data on your Android device.