Keeping Your Memories Private: Where to Keep Photos Hidden on Apple Devices

In an era where our iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Apple Vision Pros are constantly capturing life’s moments, the need to manage photo visibility and privacy becomes paramount. Apple’s Photos app offers a built-in feature to hide your sensitive or personal photos and videos, tucking them away in a Hidden album. This ensures they remain out of sight from your main library, shared albums, and even the Photos widget. For enhanced privacy, especially from iOS 14 onwards, you can even disable the Hidden album entirely. And for devices running iOS 16, iPadOS 16.1, macOS Ventura and later, this album gets an extra layer of security, locked by default and requiring authentication to access. Ensuring your Apple devices are updated with the latest software is crucial to utilize these features effectively. If you’re leveraging iCloud Photos, hiding a photo on one device seamlessly hides it across all your synced Apple ecosystem.

Keeping your photos private on your Apple devices is straightforward. Here’s how to utilize the Hidden album across different Apple platforms to maintain your photo privacy.

Hiding Photos on Your iPhone or iPad

For iPhone and iPad users, the process is intuitive and quick:

1. Launch the Photos app on your device.
2. Navigate through your library and select the photo or video you wish to conceal. A tap and hold on the selected media will bring up options.
3. From the options, tap Hide. Confirm your action when prompted to move the selected item to the Hidden album.

Dropdown menu highlighting the Hide feature feature for a photo.

This action immediately removes the photo or video from your main photo library and places it securely within the Hidden album.

Revealing Hidden Photos on iPhone or iPad

Should you need to access or unhide your photos later, follow these steps:

1. Open the Photos app. On iPads, you might first need to tap the sidebar icon usually located in the top-left corner to display albums.
2. Scroll down the albums list until you find Utilities. Under Utilities, tap on Hidden.
3. Tap View Album. For security, you’ll be prompted to use Face ID or Touch ID to unlock and access the Hidden album.
4. Once inside, tap and hold on the photo or video you want to make visible again. From the options that appear, tap Unhide.

This will move the selected photo or video back into your main library, making it visible in your regular photo stream.

Locating the Hidden Album

The Hidden album is easily found within the Photos app:

1. Open the Photos app.
2. Scroll down to the Utilities section. Here, you will find the Hidden album. On iPads, remember to tap the sidebar button if albums aren’t immediately visible.

Hidden album highlighted under Utilities.

By default, the Hidden album is visible in the Utilities section. If you wish to further enhance privacy by making the Hidden album itself invisible:

1. Go to Settings app.
2. Scroll down and tap Photos.
3. Under the Photos settings, find the option Show Hidden Album and toggle it off.

Turning this off will completely remove the Hidden album from view in the Photos app, ensuring those private photos are even less discoverable.

Hiding Photos on Your Mac

For Mac users, managing photo privacy is just as simple:

1. Open the Photos app on your Mac.
2. Control-click (or right-click) on the photo or video you intend to hide. From the context menu, select Hide Photo. Alternatively, once a photo is selected, you can go to the menu bar, click Image, and choose Hide Photo. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Command-L.
3. A confirmation dialog will appear. Click Hide Photo to confirm and move the item to the Hidden album.

Unhiding Photos on Mac

To unhide photos on your Mac:

1. Open the Photos app.
2. In the menu bar at the top of your screen, click View. From the dropdown menu, select Show Hidden Photo Album.
3. In the sidebar on the left, under Photos, you will now see Hidden. Select it.
4. Click View Album. You might be prompted to use Touch ID or enter your login password to unlock the Hidden album for security.
5. Select the photo or video you wish to unhide.
6. Control-click on the selected media, and from the context menu, choose Unhide Photo. Similar to hiding, you can also go to Image in the menu bar and select Unhide Photo, or use the Command-L shortcut.

Accessing the Hidden Album on Mac

Finding the Hidden album on macOS is straightforward:

1. Open the Photos app.
2. In the menu bar, click on View.
3. Select Show Hidden Photo Album.

Hidden album highlighted in MacOS Photos app.

On Macs, the Hidden album is initially turned off. By selecting “Show Hidden Photo Album” from the View menu, you make it visible in the sidebar, allowing you to access and manage your hidden photos.

Hiding Photos on Your Apple Vision Pro

For Apple Vision Pro users, the steps are also designed to be intuitive within the visionOS environment:

1. Open the Photos app in visionOS.
2. Select and hold the photo or video you wish to hide. A menu will appear. Tap Hide.
3. Confirm your decision by tapping Hide again when prompted.

Unhiding Photos on Vision Pro

To unhide photos on your Apple Vision Pro:

1. Open the Photos app.
2. Look for the sidebar and tap Collections.
3. Scroll down within the Collections to the Utilities section and tap Hidden.
4. Tap and hold the photo or video you want to unhide. In the menu that appears, tap Unhide.

Finding the Hidden Album on Vision Pro

Locating the Hidden album in visionOS is similar to iOS and iPadOS:

1. Open the Photos app.
2. Tap the Collections tab in the sidebar.
3. Scroll down to the Utilities section. The Hidden album will be listed here.

To turn off the visibility of the Hidden album on Apple Vision Pro:

1. Navigate to Settings within visionOS.
2. Tap Apps, then select Photos.
3. Scroll down and toggle off Show Hidden Album.

This action will hide the Hidden album from the Photos app interface on your Apple Vision Pro, adding an extra layer of privacy to your concealed photos and videos.

By utilizing these straightforward steps across your Apple devices, you can effectively manage your photo privacy, keeping sensitive memories secure and out of sight within the Hidden album. Whether it’s on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Vision Pro, Apple provides consistent and user-friendly tools to control Where To Keep Photos you want to remain private.