Your camera roll holds more than holiday snaps: ID scans, medical letters, private moments. iPhone gives you a few ways to tuck photos out of sight, and they work well for keeping things off your main grid. Whether they keep photos private is another matter. Here are the three main options, how to use each one, and what they really protect.
Quick answer: open the photo in Photos, tap the More button (•••) and choose Hide. It moves to the Hidden album, which is locked with Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode. For a separate key, decoy vaults and photos that are gone from your library, use an encrypted vault such as Sigilock.
Option 1: the Hidden album in Photos
How to hide a photo
- Open the Photos app and find the photo or video.
- Open it, or tap Select and choose several at once.
- Tap the More button (•••), choose Hide, and confirm.
Where hidden photos go
Hidden items leave your library, Memories and widgets, and land in the Hidden album. In recent versions of iOS, scroll down in Photos to Utilities and tap Hidden; on older versions it sits under Albums. Since iOS 16 the album is locked with Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode.
You can also stop the album from appearing at all: in Settings, open the Photos settings (under Apps on newer versions) and turn off Show Hidden Album.
Where it falls short
- Your passcode opens it. Anyone who knows your iPhone passcode, such as a partner, a family member or someone who saw you type it, can open the Hidden album.
- It syncs. With iCloud Photos on, hidden photos are on every device signed in to your Apple ID.
- It’s obvious. There’s one Hidden album, and everyone knows where to look. No decoy, and no record of who tried to open it.
Option 2: lock the app, or use a locked note
Recent versions of iOS let you require Face ID for an app: touch and hold its icon and choose Require Face ID. You can also add a photo to a note in the Notes app and lock that note from its More menu. Both keep a casual glance out, but both fall back to your passcode, and locked notes get clumsy beyond a handful of pictures.
Option 3: an encrypted vault with its own key
A vault app keeps photos in a separate, encrypted space that your passcode can’t open. With Sigilock, the key is a sigil: a pattern you draw on a 5×5 grid. Every sigil opens its own vault, so you can keep a decoy for the moments someone insists.
- Install Sigilock and draw your sigil. The strength meter tells you when it’s hard to guess.
- Write down your 12-word recovery phrase. It’s the only way back in if you forget your sigil, and nobody, Sigilock included, can reset it.
- In Settings, turn on Remove originals after import. Then tap Add and pick your photos and videos; once they’re encrypted, Sigilock asks to delete the originals from Photos.
- Open Photos, go to Recently Deleted and delete them there too, otherwise iOS keeps them for up to 30 days.
- Optional: draw a second sigil for a decoy vault, and turn on the hidden trail so nobody can see your pattern over your shoulder.
From then on, use the camera inside Sigilock for anything private: those photos and videos never reach your camera roll at all.
Side by side
| Feature | Hidden album | App lock | Sigilock |
|---|---|---|---|
| Needs more than your passcode | |||
| Photos leave your library and iCloud Photos | |||
| Decoy vaults | |||
| Duress mode | |||
| Logs failed attempts | |||
| Camera that skips the camera roll | |||
| Also on Android | |||
| Price | Free | Free | 7 days free |
A few more privacy tips
- Check Shared Albums and any Shared Library: photos you put there stay visible to the people you share with.
- Turn off photo widgets and Featured Photos if you’d rather not have pictures resurfacing on their own.
- Keep your recovery phrase somewhere offline and safe, never in a screenshot in your camera roll.