How to Hide Pictures on an iPhone

Jul 2, 2021

1 minute

Whether you have embarrassing pictures, pictures with permanent financial or private information in them, or other private photos, hiding your photos on your iPhone is a breeze. It's an easy process that helps you protect your right to privacy.

You can hide the photos of your choice in under a minute, with no extra, time-consuming steps. In this guide, I not only show you step-by-step how to hide your pictures, but I will also show you how to make sure they aren't showing in your photo albums using the hidden album. Alternatively, you can also have them showing in your albums if you prefer. Because iPadOS is so similar to iOS, you can also do these steps on your iPad or other iOS products like your iPod.

Note: These steps were done on an iPhone with 14.6 (currently the latest version of iOS). If you do not have this version of iOS, the steps may look slightly different. However, they should only be slightly varied. Not all previous versions of iOS had the hidden album setting talked about in step six. This feature came out with iOS 14, so you must have iOS 14 or later to use that feature.

iPhone 11 (256GB + Green)

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First and foremost, go to your homescreen on your iPhone and open the Photos app.

Once you are in the Photos app, look for the photos you are hoping to find. Once you find the photo, select it.

How to select several photos or albums

If you are looking to hide several photos or an entire album, don't worry! You can definitely hide an entire album or several photos in the Photos app. Here's how:

How to hide several photos

You can also select several photos to be hidden at the same time! This is a time saver if you have a lot of photos your hope to hide.

While in the "all photos" library in the Photos app, click "select" in the upper right-hand corner.
Select all of the photos you want to hide.

How to hide an entire album

While in the Photos app, click the "albums" option on the lower right-hand corner.
Select the album you wish to hide.
Click "select" in the upper right-hand corner.
Click "select all" in the upper left-hand corner.

Continue to the next steps!

Select the share button in the lower left-hand corner of the screen. This selection will bring up the hide option we are looking for.

Scroll down a bit until you see the "hide" option and select it.

Here you are asked to confirm that you do want to hide the photo(s). The notification will let you know that you can access the hidden photo(s) in the hidden album, which you can also choose to hide if you want. The only way to access the photo(s) is via the hidden album, but I will get into that in the next step!

You've hidden your photo(s)! Now, you need to make sure that you know how to access the photo(s), know how to hide them in the albums section of your Photo Library, and know how to unhide them if you want to have access to them later.

How to hide your hidden album

Because your hidden photo(s) are meant to be accessed through the hidden album in your Photo Library, you will still be able to see the photo(s) in the albums section of the Photo Library on your iPhone. This may or may not be ideal for you, since you are trying to hide them. Here is how to hide the hidden album from view:

Open the Settings app.
Scroll down and click on the Photos app settings.
You will see a "hidden album" option. Make sure this feature is off. If not, turn it off. If you enable that feature, it will show the hidden album in your albums in the Photos app. If not, you will not be able to see the hidden album.

How to unhide the hidden album

If you want to access your hidden photo(s), and you have turned this feature off so that the hidden album does not appear, you will need to turn this feature on temporarily to view the picture(s). Make sure that when you are done viewing the photo(s), you turn this feature back off.