4 Best Apps to Hide Pictures and Videos on Android
Most of us love sharing selfless, nature snaps, and family photos with our friends. It’s those embarrassing, not-meant-for-public-viewing media that we want to keep private. Fortunately, some excellent Android apps are available to hide pictures and videos from prying eyes. These applications offer various features such as decoy app, stealth mode, PIN protection, and military-grade encryption technology to ensure your “treasured” media isn't accessible to just anybody.
Most of the apps in this list also protect applications and text messages. All are free, but can be upgraded to premium in case you want to avail additional features. Some free applications boast about features that are only available in a premium version, so read each app description carefully before subscribing to a paid app. Let’s find out how these applications can protect media and keep them hidden from intruders.
1. Vault
This virtual safe can protect your pictures, videos and even apps. You can also keep SMS, call logs, and contacts away from prying eyes, thanks to its special “private contact” feature that hides all your important stuff.
Most important, Vault’s password-protection feature ensures all pictures and movies are kept hidden and locked in a private place. You can view your photos and videos only after entering the correct pass code. The premium version has a nifty feature where the app takes advantage of your device’s front-facing camera to take snaps of an intruder attempting to view hidden photographs. This feature can only be activated on devices running Android 2.3 or higher.
There are plenty more features in the Premium version, including a decoy vault feature, cloud storage, and stealth mode where you can hide your Vault’s icon on your home screen. But I recommend downloading the free version if photo and video protection is your main objective. Besides media protection, there are bonus features like app lock, which allows you to password-protect an Android application, as well as protection for SMS, call logs, and Facebook messages.
2. Video Locker
A virtual locker for your videos, this free application secures your videos by moving them to a secret location on your device. The hidden media is then encrypted using advanced 128 AES encryption. This ensures total protection as the videos can’t be located even if the intruder steals your SD card. They are locked, kept safely in some unknown location on your phone!
The application uses a secret PIN method to hide media. You just need to type in the pass code to view your hidden videos. Another great aspect of Video Locker is that the app can be made completely invisible and won’t show in the "recent apps" list. It also has a special mode in which it auto-locks itself, if your device goes into sleep mode before you close the app. You can save your videos into folders and lock individual folders.
Video Locker is optimized for tablet PCs and has a very nice user interface. If you forget your PIN, the app will email it to you. The premium version removes all ads and has a special stealth mode that replaces the app with a simple calculator. You should download the free version if you don’t want these features.
3. Hide It Pro
Your snoopy friend will try his best to search for photos and videos on your Android phone, but won’t find any. That’s because all media is kept hidden behind a harmless-looking (and fully functioning) audio player. It’s your secret stash, and nobody will ever discover it unless they long-press on the app. A single tap only reveals virtual volume buttons.
The app lets you put pictures and videos into different folders. You can then sort files or folders by name and multi-select those files that you want to hide. The app also has a slideshow and video player option that allows you to view media without needing to unhide them and take them out of the app. Other features include a lock screen option and an encryption tool to protect and lock applications and files.
Hide It Pro is totally free and one of the best Android apps to hide photos and videos on your device. The application takes the cake for the most cleverly disguised app.
Hide It Pro Video Review by Talk Android
4. Vaulty
Vaulty offers a private gallery that hides media from the main gallery. Once you have transferred your private pictures and videos, simply lock the app using a PIN or a text password. What’s unique about this app is that it uses your phone’s front-facing camera to automatically take pictures of an intruder trying to snoop in your secret gallery. This feature is available in the premium version of Vault, but is totally free to use in Vaulty.
The app also lets you take a backup of your hidden videos and pictures (although to use this offer you have to subscribe to the app’s cloud storage feature). The online backup is actually pretty useful if your phone is lost or broken. You can retrieve media to your new device.
Vaulty is a great private image gallery, with a nice user interface. It offers amazing photo and video management features, including slideshow, photo editing, secret camera, filters, and image renaming.
