3 Ways on How to Hide Photos and Videos on Android Gallery

For thus tutorial I will be showing you how to easily hide your private photos or videos inside your android phone. We will be using 3 ways to hide these files inside your File Manager or Gallery apps.

The processes that we are going to do are the following:

• Renaming the video or photo filename
• Changing the video or photo file extension to hide it
• Pasting your file inside a new folder and hide the folder
• Finding your hidden video or photo files

For this post, I will be using my TECNO android phone and but the same steps can be applied for other phone brands. And without further ado, let's start.

Here are the steps on now how to hide photos and videos on android phone gallery app

Hiding video and photos by renaming

1. Find and tap File Manager folder in your phone.

2. Inside File Manager tap on the video or photo folder. For this post, I will be hiding a video file.

3. Now inside, long-press the video that you want to hide to select it.

4. Below it, additional options will appear. Press the 3 dots for More options. In the menu that will appear tap on Rename.

5. Remove all your video or image filename and rename it with anything that you want. Make sure to start your new filename with a dot. Example on the image below, I named my video as .video and when done tap OK.

6. Just press OK again to confirm the renaming of your file.

7. Your video is now hidden. Don't worry I also prepared a tutorial below to make it appear again.

Hiding video or photo inside a New Folder in Internal Storage directory of android

1. Again, go to File Manager.

2. Tap on All Files folder.

3. Inside All Files, tap on Internal Storage.

4. Inside your Internal Storage directory, tap on additional options (3 dots).

5. In the menu that will appear, press Create folder.

6. Name your new folder with any name that you want.

7. When done your newly created folder should now be inside the Internal Storage directory. Press Back to go back to File Manager.

8. Inside File Manager again, tap on video or photo folder. We are now going to move the file that you want to be hidden inside the new folder that we just created.

9. Again, for this tutorial I will be hiding a video file. Long-press the file that you want to hide to select it. And below press MOVE.

10. Select Internal Storage (because that's the directory that we used to create a new folder awhile ago.)

11. Inside Internal Storage, go and find your new folder and press on it.

12. When inside, press Paste to paste your file inside your new folder.

13. And you just pasted your file to be hidden inside your new folder. Press Back to go back to Internal Storage directory again.

14. Inside Internal Storage, long-press your folder.

15. It will be selected again. In the additional option (below) tap More and in the menu that will appear, tap on Rename.

16. Rename your folder again to any name that you want. Just make sure you put a dot infront of your filename. Example for this tutorial is .123howxyz and when done click OK.

17. When done, your folder is now hidden inside the Internal Storage directory.

Changing the video or photo file extension to hide it

This process is not really going to hide your video or photo but it will make those files untouchable. Untoucheable means, if someone else will going to tap your video file it won't play or for your images they won't be viewed. This is because we are going to modify the extension of the file. And personally this is the most safest way to make your videos or photos 100% private.

The two given tutorials above, even though they are hidden, they can be easily shown also. Google is just a click away for them to know. But for this last tutorial, you are the only one who will know what is the kind of file extension you selected for your private files. Though they can see these files, but they can't execute it because that's not the real kind of file it is. To know more about what I mean about this one, continue doing the tutorial below.

1. Again, access your File Manager folder.

2. Tap on the folder file that you want to hide. For this last tutorial, I will hide a video again.

3. Long-press the video file to select it. Below it click on More (3 dots).

4. In the menu that will appear, tap on Rename.

5. Rename your file with a new filename and file extension this time. Example if you do not want to make it obvious that you just renamed it, rename your file like it is representing its file extension. If you want to name it as an APK file, then try renaming it as youtube-apk_v1.apk or if you want to it to act as a zip file then rename at like docu-files.zip. You can rename your private files anything you want with any extensions you want also.  When done, tap OK.

6. Just tap OK again to confirm renaming your file.

7. And your video file is now gone inside your video folder directory. Important note: Do not forget the filename or file extension of your file to easily find it later.

Finding your hidden video or photo files

1. Again access your Internal Storage.

2. Inside your Internal Storage, tap on more options (3 dots).

3. In the menu that will appear, press Show.

4. From Hide files, change it to Show hidden files.

5. And the folder or the video/image file that you hide using the first 2 tutorials above will now be shown. And that's very easy. They are still hidden but anyone can see it now. But the 3rd tutorial which I recommended is more way secured to use for your private videos and photos. See the tutorial below to find it.

Finding your renamed video or photo files on your android

1. This tutorial is for you to find where is the location of file that you renamed using the third tutorial above. Again, go to File Manager.

2. Inside File Manager, use the search files to find your renamed private video or image file.

3. For this tutorial, I renamed my video as youtube-apk_v1.apk so I type youtube and it instantly appeared on the search result. Although you can easily see this kind file inside your APK file folder or Download folder, still, when someone sees it they won't care or won't actually knew that it is video or image file. And even though they decided to execute it, it won't do so because it is not an actual APK file. This means, that your private video is still safe and private. Unless the guest user of your android phone decided to rename the extension back to .mp4 (the real file extension of your video), then, that's the time that he or she will be able to watch your video.

Done! I do hope you learned a lot on this tutorial. This is just easy to do and you do not need any apps to install to be able to do this.

Important notes:

• Do not forget to rename your file extension back to its original one to be able to view it again.
• If you renamed your video.mp4 to video.apk or video.zip or video.rar or whatsoever, if you want to make it viewable again, rename it again to video.mp4. The same procedure applies for your image.jpg or image.jpeg, etc.
• And if you are going to hide hundreds of photos, then, you can't rename it one by one because that would take ages. You need to copy all your images to a folder first. Then, the folder is the one that you will hide or to make it more safer zip your folder that contains your hundred images and then when done zipping, rename your multiple-images.zip to multiple-images.apk. You need to zip the folder first because you can't add extension to a normal folder in your android phone.

And that's it for me here. If you have question, do not hesitate to leave a comment below. Thanks!