Our whole personal life is now wound up in the smartphone we carry
along in our pockets. We capture a multitude of photos and videos, which
you may want to keep private. But, it’s possible that your phone can
accidentally fall prey to someone’s hands or you may just pass it over
to a friend unaware of their true intentions. Well, if you are an
Android user, you don’t have to worry, as there are several great apps
to hide photos and videos on Android. Well, we’ve compiled a list of the
10 best photos and video hider apps on Android:
Best Photos and Video Hiding Apps for Android
1. KeepSafe Photo Vault
If you’ve used an Android app to hide your private photos or videos, you’d surely heard of KeepSafe Photo Vault. It’s been around for quite a while and is still one of the better apps to safeguard your media from others. The app has bagged massive updates over the years, making it cleaner and easy-to-use by all.
It provides you the usual PIN, pattern, and fingerprint authentication options, post which it shows you a clutter-free and categorized folder grid.
You can jump into any of these folders to add and protect your private
photos, videos or personal IDs. You can create new folders of your own,
share them with other KeepSafe users and back up all of them to their
private cloud space.
KeepSafe brings along a ton of advanced security features, such as fake login PINs, break-in alerts
(where a selfie of the intruder, along with time and date of
unsuccessful attempts is logged), and disguising the app with a
different front-end via Secret Door. But, all of the features are hidden
behind a paywall and I recommend you get it if you’re really looking to
protect your private media.
Key Features: easy-to-use, colorful and loaded with extra functionality, most of which have to be enabled with a Premium subscription.
Download (Free, in-app purchases start at $0.99)
2. LockMyPix Photo Vault
Among the whole lot, this was my favorite pick for guarding my photos
and videos against the nosy crowd. Called LockMyPix, this aptly-named
app is designed to provide the safest photo vault for protecting
personal all your media files. It is backed by a military-grade AES encryption standard, locking your files behind a PIN or pattern.
It renders an intuitive user experience, enabling you to encrypt your
photos/ videos directly from the homescreen of the app. You can even
instantly click pictures and add them to the vault in a jiffy. The
add-on features allow you to unlock the app using your fingerprint, shake the device to lock the vault and even hide LockMyPix from the app drawer.
The cheery on top being that you cannot screenshot the app when it’s
unlocked, which now also adds to the privacy and security of your
content.
While the free version offers you a host of functionalities, you also
get the option to set up fake login credentials in the Pro variant.
This feature will come in handy when someone is pestering you to unlock
the app but you can give them access to a secondary vault with a fake
PIN. The only drawback of this app is that you cannot backup private photos/ videos to the cloud.
Key Features: ultra-secure photo vault, which uses AES encryption and doesn’t even let you capture screenshots of the contents within.
Download (Free, upgrade to Pro version for $1.99)
3. Hide Pictures & Videos – Vaulty
Vaulty is yet another well-known and reliable photo/ video hiding
apps, which may look a tad bit dated but performs its job perfectly
fine. You can simply jump into the app, select the media files you want
to hide from the gallery and password protect it from the outside world.
The highlight of Vaulty is that it captures “mugshots” of intruders, who try to access your vault but fail to enter the correct password.
You will instantly know who tried to intervene in your private space,
the moment you unlock the app. This feature is available for free to all
users, which is unmistakably a plus.
You also get the functionality to create multiple vaults, with
separate passwords, to store different types of photos or videos in each
one. You’ll, however, have to upgrade to the Premier subscription if you want to backup your files to the cloud or remove ads from the app.
Key Features: extremely simple to use, there’s almost no learning curve. You can create multiple vaults to hide a variety of media files.
Download (Free, upgrade to Vaulty Premier for $9.99/month)
4. Hide Something
With close to 5 million installs in the bag, Hide Something is one of
the most trouble-free apps for hiding photos and videos on your Android
device. You can protect your files from inquisitive users via PIN,
password, or the fingerprint sensor. The process of transferring new photos or videos to the ‘invisible’ folder is as simple as sharing a file with the Hide Something app.
You also get access to a mini collection of beautiful themes, support
for a variety of media file types, an advanced image viewer and fake
login mode to further protect your privacy. Hide Something is also
particular about not being detected, so it doesn’t show up in the ‘recently used’ list.
But, the feature that takes the cake for me is that the app backs-up all your private media files to Google Drive and makes it possible for you to browse them with the desktop browser. This simplifies the process of sifting through and accessing photos or videos for the end user.
Key Features: uber-simple and secure from the get-go, but adds a cherry on the top with the desktop browsing feature.
Download (Free, get premium license for $2.99)
5. Vault
All aforementioned apps are restricted to hiding just your photos/
videos, but the Vault is an all-around app which helps safeguard more
than just media files. It can hide all your phone data, be it SMS, contacts/ call log or even apps, which houses all your private info.
Aptly named Vault, this app brings along all the necessary features
you’d expect to find in a privacy-focused app used for hiding personal
stuff. You have the ability to create fake or multiple vaults, make the
app’s icon disappear from your home screen, or record break-in alerts.
You also get free cloud backup support.
But, my favorite feature of Vault will have to be the incognito browser that has been baked right into the app. You can browse the Internet without leaving any trace of all your expeditions on the web. This functionality can be seen as being similar to Firefox Focus (which was one of our best app picks for 2017), which does not record what you’re surfing on the Internet.
Key Features: an all-in-one privacy app, which enables you to hide almost anything. You also get an in-app incognito browser.
Download (Free, in-app purchases start at $0.99)
6. Private Zone
If you’re looking for an app that does a lot (I mean, a whole lot)
more than simply being able to hide your photos or videos, then Private
Zone should be the perfect pick for you.
This app is definitely useful for guarding your private photos, videos or apps, but has also brought along a variety of features for privacy-obsessed people. Here are a few of the top features of the Private Zone app:
- Free Private VPN service
- Custom Lock screen app
- Phone Anti-theft Features
- Harassment/ Spam Call Intercept
- Boost – RAM Manager
- and other privacy controls.
Though Private Zone is laden with several cool features, it’s at the expense of your peace of mind. The app is filled to the brim with ads, which can get frustrating for users. But, it can be avoided by picking up the premium subscription for the app.
Key Features: packs a whole lot cooler privacy-focused features than you’d expect. It has been designed for privacy fanatics.
Download (Free, in-app purchases start at $0.99)
7. GalleryVault – Hide Pictures And Videos
This is one of the most popular photo and video hiding apps in the
Play Store, with more than 10 million downloads. GalleryVault enables
you to quickly hide and encrypt your photos, videos and any other files
that you do not want others to see. By putting all your private media
in a secure vault, the files are encrypted and nobody will know of its
existence of the same.
GalleryVault has a simple and elegant interface, which provides you access to all of your hidden photos or videos in a jiffy. It supports all popular features, that you’d find in any decked-out privacy protection apps.
This means you get the shake to lock, break-in alerts, fake login,
fingerprint authentication, stealth mode, hiding files in SD cards, and
more.
In addition to protecting your photos and videos, Gallery Vault also supports GIF playback, private browsing within the app, and a video editor
to enable you to piece together a story using your hidden content.
Isn’t that a great feature to have when you’re compiling a birthday
surprise video for your friend?
Key Features: a decked-out privacy protection app, which hides most of your files and is packing a private browser and video editor as well.
Download (Free, upgrade to Pro version for $5.99)
8. Hide Files – Andrognito
Andrognito, which is an abbreviation for Android + Incognito, is one
of the more secure privacy protection apps. It allows you to hide your
photos, videos and other files behind strong layers of military-grade
AES encryption standards, while storing the files in the cloud to free space on your device.
The free version of this app enables you to hide apps in just a single vault, but you can purchase the PRO version to create more private vaults, access your vaults via the cloud backups on multiple devices and gain access to additional features. It will also remove intrusive ads that annoy me almost instantly.
Unlocking the PRO version of the app will get you the fake vault
spoofing, invisible icon, fake force close, and custom theming feature
as well. But, the simplistic interface of this app had me attracted to it in the first place.
Key Features: stunning material design UI, with strong AES end-to-end encryption and cloud backup feature, makes it a definite pick.
Download (Free, in-app purchases start at $0.99)
9. Piktures – Beautiful Gallery
Taking a step away from privacy protection apps, I’d now like to
suggest you a handful of photo gallery apps that provide you the
functionality of hiding photos and videos. Piktures is a sleek-looking
app that makes it easy to access all of your device’s media files, but
we are interested in the ‘Secret Drive’ feature.
You need to swipe from the left to open the hamburger menu and access
the secret drive. The Piktures app lays intense focus on privacy and
makes you step through multiple hoops to enable this feature. Once this
feature is enabled, you can long-press any picture or video and tap the “Secure” option in the menu bar to shift the file to the secret drive.
The app may not provide the users a variety of add-on features, but
you’re free to create multiple vaults to segregate the media you want to
hide from others.
Key Features: a stunning photo gallery app, with a secret drive that acts like a photo and video hiding vault.
Download (Free, upgrade to Premium for $5.99)
10. F-Stop Gallery
If you didn’t already know, F-Stop is one of the most well-known image gallery apps that’s available on the Play Store. It has an intuitive and lightweight user interface, which makes it easier to organize all your photos and videos.
The app brings along a lot of features that will improve your gallery
browsing, sorting, and tagging experience. You can sort images simply
dragging and dropping the files, but we’re here to discuss the privacy
features of F-Stop.
The app has two such features, which enable you to exclude (read: hide) folders with your photos or videos from the gallery
by adding a .nomedia file to the same. And you can also protect single
media files simply by password protecting them. This secure folder is
accessible from the hamburger menu on the left.
Key Features: a full-fledged gallery app, with an image editor, filters, privacy protection and a lot more.
Download (Free, upgrade to Pro version for $4.99)
Best Apps to Hide Photos and Videos on Android
If you’ve been concerned about the privacy of your photos/ videos of
recent, then I’m sure that at least one of our suggestions will help
curb your anxiety. The hiding of private media content in secret vaults
will take the weight of someone getting to them off your shoulders. So,
do any of these privacy protection apps meet your criterion?
- beebom
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