Hide a photo
- Open Photos
Find the photo or video you want to hide.
- Touch and hold it
Press and hold the photo until the menu appears, then tap Hide.
- Confirm
Confirm that you want to hide it. The photo moves to the Hidden album immediately.
Once hidden, Apple's documentation is clear about the effect: the photo stops appearing anywhere else in Photos, including your Library, your other albums, and the Photos widget on your Home Screen. To bring it back, open the Hidden album, touch and hold the photo, and tap Unhide.
Where the Hidden album lives
Open Photos and scroll down to Utilities; the Hidden album sits there. On the newest iOS, tap Collections first, then scroll to Utilities. On iPad, you may need to open the sidebar with the button in the upper-left corner. The Photos app has been rearranged more than once in recent years, but the album itself has kept its name and its neighborhood: look for Hidden, under Utilities.
When you tap it, you will not see your photos. You will see a lock and a View Album button, which is the point of the next section.
How the lock works
Since iOS 16, the Hidden album is locked by default. Opening it requires Face ID or Touch ID, so a friend flipping through your camera roll cannot wander into it, and neither can anyone you hand your unlocked phone to. There is nothing to set up; the lock is on from the start.
One honest caveat: as with everything Face ID guards on an iPhone, the device passcode is the fallback. If Face ID fails or someone taps past it, the phone offers the passcode instead. The Hidden album is exactly as private as your passcode, no more. If people around you know your passcode, the lock is a formality to them.
Make the Hidden album invisible
By default the Hidden album is visible in Photos: anyone scrolling to Utilities can see that a Hidden album exists, even if they cannot open it. If you would rather not advertise it:
- Open Settings
Tap Apps, then tap Photos. On older versions of iOS, Photos sits directly in the main Settings list.
- Turn off Show Hidden Album
Scroll down and switch Show Hidden Album off.
The album now does not appear in the Photos app at all. Your photos stay hidden and stay locked; flipping the toggle back on brings the album back with everything in it.
Know what this toggle is and is not. It is cosmetic: the switch itself is not protected by Face ID, so anyone holding your unlocked phone could turn it back on. The real protection is the album lock. The toggle just keeps the album from announcing its own existence.
Lock the whole Photos app
On iOS 18 and later there is a bigger hammer: locking the entire Photos app. Touch and hold the Photos icon on your Home Screen, then tap Require Face ID. From then on, opening Photos at all takes Face ID, Touch ID, or your passcode, and Apple documents that content from locked apps stops appearing in other places on the phone, such as search and notifications.
This is the closest thing iPhone has to putting a password on your photos, because there is no per-photo password. Two details worth knowing: apps that come with the iPhone can be locked but not hidden away entirely (hiding an app into the locked, hidden folder is reserved for App Store apps), and a handful of built-ins cannot be locked at all. Photos is not on that list, so it locks fine.
What happens across your devices
If you use iCloud Photos, hiding syncs: a photo you hide on your iPhone is hidden on your iPad and Mac too, automatically. On a Mac the Hidden album is actually invisible by default; it only appears in the sidebar after you choose View > Show Hidden Photo Album.
The flip side of syncing is worth a beat of thought. Your hidden photos exist on every device signed in to your iCloud Photos, each protected by that device's own authentication. A shared family iPad signed in to your account carries your Hidden album with it, behind whatever passcode that iPad uses and whichever faces it trusts.
What hiding does not do
- It does not delete anything. Hidden photos stay in your library and keep using storage. Hiding is filing, not shredding.
- It does not stop someone who knows your passcode. The passcode opens the Hidden album, the Photos app lock, and the Settings toggle alike.
- It does not recall photos you already shared. Anything you have texted, posted, or added to a shared album is on other people's screens and stays there. Hiding your copy changes nothing about theirs.
- It does not hide photos from you at your unlocked phone. If you hand someone your phone with Photos open and the Hidden album unlocked, the lock has already been passed.
- It is not a vault. It is a locked drawer inside your photo library, which for most real situations, the nosy friend, the phone handed around a dinner table, is exactly enough. Just be clear about which situation you are in.
The photos you share are the other half
Everything above protects photos on your phone. The other half of photo privacy is the photos you share, and no Hidden album can follow them: the group chat keeps its copy, the shared album keeps its copy, and a feed shows them to whoever the platform decides. People end up hiding photos on their own phone while the same photos sit on a server deciding who sees them next.
boopr is built for that half. It is a free, invite-only photo app with no ads and no algorithm, where the only people who ever see what you share are friends you added yourself, and if one of them screenshots it, you find out. It is on the App Store and Google Play. Hide the photos that are only for you; for the ones that are for your friends, use a feed that treats them that way.
Want in? boopr is free and invite-only. Request an invite and see what a feed with no strangers feels like.
Common questions
Where is the Hidden album on iPhone? Photos, scrolled down to Utilities. Tap Collections first on the newest iOS; open the sidebar first on iPad.
Does the Hidden album lock automatically? Yes, since iOS 16. It opens with Face ID or Touch ID, with your passcode as the fallback.
How do you make the Hidden album invisible? Settings, then Apps, then Photos, then turn off Show Hidden Album. The toggle hides the album from view; the Face ID lock is what actually protects it.
Can you put a password on individual photos? No. The built-in options are the Hidden album's lock and, on iOS 18 or later, requiring Face ID to open the Photos app at all.
Do hidden photos still sync to iCloud? Yes. Hidden on one device means hidden on all of them, and the photos remain stored in iCloud.
Does hiding a photo free up space? No. The photo stays in your library at full size; it is just filed out of sight.
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