Select one (or more!) of the five following methods to keep your pictures private on any Android phone.

Hide Pictures Using Google Photos’s Archive Feature

Archive provides a quick way to move photos out of your main photo stream. However, anyone who has access to your phone can easily access archived photos, and archived photos will still display in albums and in search results. Consider Google Photos archive as a quick and easy way to move photos out of view, not a secure way to protect images you want to keep private. To hide your photos with this method: To access photos in Archive, tap the Library at the bottom right, then tap Archive.

Additional Options to Hide Photos on Android

Check with your Android device maker to see if they offer a way to secure images. For example, Samsung offers Secure Folder on devices that run Android Nougat 7.0 or newer, and Private Mode for phones that run older Android versions. Similarly, LG offers a Content Lock feature to protect images and videos on some devices.  Once configured, these vendor-provided methods require a PIN, pattern, or password to access protected photos. In every case, these methods make your photos more private than the basic Google Photos archive feature.

Use Open Source Third-Party Apps to Hide Photos

Many privacy-focused professionals prefer open source applications over private, proprietary applications, since open source code can be reviewed. This allows programmers to review code to determine that a program isn’t doing anything nefarious with your photos.

Simple Gallery Pro: Photo Manager & Editor ($1.19 as of September 2020) is an open-source app intended to work on most Android devices and to provide an alternative to default Google apps. Simple Gallery Pro offers the ability to hide photos. You may protect hidden items or, if you like, access to the app, with a pattern, PIN, or fingerprint. The developer, Simple Mobile Tools, also offers several other apps, such as Camera and Simple File Manager Pro apps, that serve as open-source alternatives to various proprietary Android apps.

Professional protection: CameraV 

CameraV provides a camera that takes pictures, as you would expect, and the app can save the pictures securely within the app. You can configure a passcode that must be entered to access the app and images. CameraV is one of several apps overseen by the Guardian Project, which creates apps to serve mobile journalism and advocacy efforts. The app gives journalists (and others) a secure way to document sensitive activities, such as human rights violations, in potentially hostile places. Because of this, CameraV includes a panic option, which deletes all app contents immediately. Once deleted, you won’t have access to your photos, but the person who takes your phone won’t get them either. 

Explore Other Android Vault Apps

Just as a real vault seeks to secure valuables you place in it, a vault app promises to protect your digital content. Typically, a vault app lets you select and place photos, videos, or other files into the app and then requires a PIN, passcode, fingerprint (or, in some cases, other biometric authentication, such as face recognition) for access. A search of the Google Play Store for “Vault” will return a long list. To identify potential vault apps to try, look at the number of downloads as well as the star rating, both of which display in an app’s Play Store listing. In general, look for apps that have several million downloads and a rating of 4.5 or above. Tap “Read more” to see the app’s details to look for the “Updated on” date. Generally, prefer apps that have received one or more updates in the past 90 days, and exclude apps that haven’t been updated in the past year.  See Lifewire’s The 9 Best Vault Apps of 2020, to learn more about four popular Android vault apps: AppLock by DoMobile, Gallery Lock (Hide Pictures), Keepsafe Photo Vault, and Vault-Hide SMS, Picks & Videos.