Hide Sensitive Apps on Your Phone With Private Space and Locked Folders

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to hide apps on your phone. A banking app on a phone your kids borrow. A dating app on a work device. Health apps, journals, or photos you simply do not want on display when someone glances at your screen. The good news is that you do not need a third-party vault app, many of which are ad-riddled, sketchy, or both. Both Android and iPhone now have built-in ways to do this properly.

This guide covers the real options: Android's Private Space, locking individual apps on iPhone, and locked photo folders on both platforms. It also covers what these features do not protect you from, because that matters as much as the setup steps.

How to Hide Apps on Your Phone With Android Private Space

Private Space, available on Android 15 and later (including Android 16 and 17), creates a separate, locked section of your phone with its own app installs, accounts, and data. Think of it as a second phone inside your phone.

To set it up, open Settings, then Security and privacy, then Private Space. You will sign in with a Google account (use a different one from your main account if you want real separation) and set a separate lock, which can be a PIN, pattern, or fingerprint distinct from your main lock screen. Once it is set up, Private Space appears as a locked folder at the bottom of your app drawer. Tap it, authenticate, and you are inside.

Apps installed in Private Space do not appear in your main app list, do not show notifications on your lock screen, and pause entirely when Private Space is locked, which means they stop running in the background. To install an app there, open Private Space, tap the install option, and pick from the Play Store. Note that apps in Private Space are separate installs: if you already have the app on your main profile, you install it again inside Private Space, and the two copies do not share data.

Lock Individual Apps on iPhone

iPhone does not have a Private Space equivalent, but iOS 18 and later let you lock individual apps and hide them from the home screen. Long-press an app icon, choose Require Face ID (or Touch ID, or passcode), and confirm. The app now requires your face, fingerprint, or passcode every time it opens, and its content stops appearing in search results, notification previews, and Siri suggestions.

If you also choose Hide App, the icon disappears from the home screen and moves to a Hidden folder at the bottom of the App Library, which itself requires authentication to open. To unhide, open the App Library, open the Hidden folder, long-press the app, and choose Don't Require Face ID.

One catch: locking an app does not hide it from your purchase history, and anyone with your Apple ID password and device passcode can undo the lock. This is a privacy screen against casual snooping, not a vault against a determined examiner. Pair it with the steps in our guide to audit app permissions for a fuller cleanup.

Lock Your Photos Too, Because Apps Are Only Half the Story

Hidden apps mean little if the photos those apps generate sit in your main gallery. On Android, Google Photos has a Locked Folder: open Photos, go to Library, then Locked Folder, and move items there. Locked items are not backed up to the cloud, do not appear in the main library or in other apps, and cannot be screenshotted. On iPhone, the Hidden album in Photos hides items from the main library, and you can lock it behind Face ID under Settings, then Photos, then Use Face ID for Hidden album.

A warning about the iPhone Hidden album: it is better than nothing, but it is not as strong as Android's Locked Folder, because hidden photos can still appear in some contexts if you are not careful. For genuinely sensitive images, a locked folder on Android or a dedicated encrypted notes app is the safer choice.

What Hiding Apps Does Not Do

Let us be clear about the limits. Hiding an app does not encrypt your phone, does not protect your data if someone has your unlock code, and does not stop your carrier, your employer (on a managed device), or law enforcement with proper access from seeing what is on the device. It protects against the far more common threat: a friend, family member, or colleague picking up your unlocked phone.

Also, skip the third-party vault apps that promise military-grade hiding. Many of them are adware in a trench coat, and several have been caught leaking the very data they claim to protect. The built-in tools are maintained by Google and Apple, they get security updates, and they do not need to monetize your attention. That is the whole argument.

A Sensible Setup in Ten Minutes

Start with the apps that matter most: banking, health, dating, and anything work-related that you would rather keep separate. On Android, put them in Private Space. On iPhone, lock and hide them. Move sensitive photos into a locked folder. Then check the rest of your phone's defenses with our guides to phone theft protection and setting up a password manager, because a hidden app on a phone with a weak lock screen is a locked door on a house with no walls.