If you frequently suffer the minor pang of
a panic attack when you hand your phone to someone and realize you have
sensitive emails/documents/images or other files on your device, then you need
a way of hiding those files from prying eyes. Or perhaps you have apps
installed that you'd rather keep for just your own eyes. No one needs to know
about that Farming Sim app you play. Either way, we've put together a list of
different ways you can keep your personal files and apps secure.
Basic ways to hide photos, apps and files
While some manufacturers have added 'vault'
features to provide a secure space on handsets (Samsung, for example), stock
Android hasn't been very good at dealing with the need to selectively show
files and folders by default, and from what we've seen of Nougat so far, it
hasn't made great leaps in this area just yet.
What users with any version of Android can
do for a really basic privacy fix is alter the names of the folders holding the
content you want to hide. So if you want to hide your images, open up a file
explorer (there's a basic one built into Android Marshmallow and Nougat),
select the folder with the images you want to hide and alter its name. Now, it
won't show your images in your gallery or files in folders.
Of course, it's not really very hidden
though - Android isn't automatically pulling the information onto your display
anymore but if you lose your phone the files are still fully accessible.
Similarly, you can hide those annoying
pre-installed apps that arrive with your phone but don't allow uninstallation
without using a third-party app. To do so, you need to navigate to Settings
> Apps and then choose the app you want to hide. If you can't uninstall
them, you can usually disable them. If you need to learn how to stop apps from
running in the background, you can do that first.
Outside help
If you just want to hide, rather than
secure, your apps, one of the easiest ways to do this is by installing a
non-stock launcher (assuming your manufacturer hasn't provided a native option
for hiding apps). There are a whole lot to choose from that let you hide apps,
but among the most popular on the Play Store is the ever-present Nova Launcher.
While there's a free version of Nova Launcher,
you'll need the paid Prime upgrade to unlock the option to hide apps. If you
purchase that, you'll need to navigate to Nova Launcher > Nova settings
>App & Widget drawers and then scroll down to the Drawer groups >
Hide apps option.
Private Zone-applock
Private Zone is the good app for hiding photos
and media security. The program just hides photos and other files in the
program instead of uploading any data to the app server. The data in the
smartphone is encrypted to make sure no one could see them even if they access
the Android device.
The
photos can be easily added to the locker via different means.
Get
full control over the photos inside the app, such as zooming, panning and
slideshow view.
It
will also auto lock itself if your phone goes to sleep.
