For times when your smartphone ends up in foreign hands, having the ability to keep certain content, such as photos and videos out of sight could be considered essential. Being Linux-based, Android already offers a primitive, and totally working solution for making certain files and folders accessible only via a file manager app, and nothing else. It's not only simple, but it will also spare you from searching for a dedicated file hiding app.

Method #1

The first trick is making a dedicated hidden folder. Just create a new folder, and make sure its name starts with a dot. It doesn't matter how you name it, so long as it starts with a dot, as shown in the images below.

This basically tells Android to forget this folder and never look inside of it. Only file managers and specific system apps will be aware of its existence. This means files hidden inside the folder won't show up in Gallery apps, multimedia players, e-mail clients, office editors and the likes.

Method #2

The second option is to hide the media files within an existing folder by creating a .nomedia file inside it. This file shouldn't have an extension. It's simply an empty file called '.nomedia' without the quotations.Having that file inside a folder will hide all media files (pictures and video) inside, from any app that tries to interact with them. Note that only a file manager that can create new files, such as ES File Manager would work for this method.

Important! Make sure to enable the viewing of hidden files and folders inside your file manager of choice, because you won't be able to reach your newly hidden files otherwise. Actually, the hardest part of the whole hiding ordeal is finding a good file manager.

If your phone or tablet doesn't come with one, try Xiaomi's File Manager, which does have a "Show hidden files" option in its Settings, and works well with the first method in this tutorial.

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