How to Hide Apps on iPhone (and Your Photos) in 2026

Yes, you can hide apps on an iPhone, and since iOS 18 you don’t need anything extra to do it. Long-press an app, choose Require Face ID, then Hide and Require Face ID, and the icon leaves your Home Screen and goes into a locked Hidden folder at the bottom of App Library. Photos work the same way: anything you hide goes to the Hidden album, which iOS has locked with Face ID by default since iOS 16.

That covers a lot. It does have limits, though. Apple’s own apps can’t be hidden. Settings still knows what you’ve hidden. And everything opens with the same Face ID and passcode that unlock the phone. Below are the exact steps for apps and photos, where the built-in tools stop, and the vault apps and tweaks that pick up from there.

The 30-second answer

• Hide an app → long-press it → Require Face ID → Hide and Require Face ID (iOS 18 and later). It moves to the Hidden folder in App Library.
• Just clear it off the Home Screen → long-press → Remove App → Remove from Home Screen. No lock, but it works for apps that can’t be hidden.
• Hide photos → long-press a photo → Hide. It goes to the Hidden album, which needs Face ID to open.
• Need a separate code, a decoy, or a log of wrong guesses → a vault app like App Secret or Safety Photo+Video Pro.
• Need to hide one chat, not the whole app → WhatsApp has Chat Lock built in; for Instagram, RyukGram adds hidden and locked chats.

How to hide an app on iPhone (iOS 18 and later)

This is Apple’s current path, the same in iOS 18, 26 and 27:

1. On the Home Screen, touch and hold the app until the Quick Actions menu opens.
2. Tap Require Face ID (it says Touch ID or Passcode on iPhones without Face ID).
3. Tap Hide and Require Face ID, authenticate, then tap Hide App.

The icon disappears from the Home Screen and moves to the Hidden folder at the bottom of App Library. To open it, swipe left past your last Home Screen page, scroll down to Hidden, authenticate, then tap the app and authenticate again.

If you only want the lock, tap Require Face ID in step 3 instead. The app stays where it is but asks for Face ID every time, and it locks again as soon as you quit it.

To stop hiding an app, open the Hidden folder, touch and hold the app, tap Don’t Require Face ID and authenticate. It reappears near the top of App Library, and you can drag it back to the Home Screen from there.

A few details from Apple’s guide that catch people out:

• It’s per device. The hidden state doesn’t sync over iCloud, so hiding an app on your iPhone leaves it visible on your iPad.
• There’s a list. Settings → Apps → Hidden Apps shows everything you’ve hidden.
• Kids can’t use it. Children under 13 in a Family Sharing group can’t lock or hide apps. Teens can, but a parent still sees that the app was downloaded and how long it’s used.

What a hidden app still shows

When you hide an app, iOS warns you that it “may still be visible in a few places such as Settings.” That warning is accurate. Here’s what happens to everything else.

Notifications and search. Apple says that once an app is locked or hidden, content like messages or emails from it stays out of search, notifications and other places across the system. A locked app’s content also stays out of notification previews, Siri suggestions, CarPlay and your call history. Reviewers who tested hidden apps found they show no notifications at all. That’s the trade-off: a hidden messenger is quiet, so you won’t see new messages until you open it.

Settings and the App Store. When 9to5Mac tested iOS 18.0, a hidden app still appeared in the Background App Refresh list and under Privacy → Photos if it had photo access. Searching the App Store for it showed Open instead of Get, which gives away that it’s installed. So hiding keeps an app out of sight. It doesn’t make the app undetectable.

Apps you can’t hide

The Hide option isn’t on every app:

• Built-in apps can’t be hidden. Apple’s wording is that only apps you download separately from the App Store can be hidden, so Safari, Messages, Photos and the rest stay visible.
• Some built-in apps can’t even be locked: Calculator, Camera, Clock, Contacts, Find My, Maps, Shortcuts and Settings.
• Your default browser can’t be hidden either, and neither can an alternative app marketplace you’ve set as default in the EU.

For those, you have two partial workarounds. Remove from Home Screen (long-press → Remove App → Remove from Home Screen) moves an app to App Library without deleting it. It isn’t locked, but it’s off the Home Screen. And Screen Time can block some built-in apps and features outright. In iOS 27, Settings → Screen Time → Content & Privacy Restrictions → Other Features lets you block things like Camera and AirDrop.

What about apps from outside the App Store? Apple’s guide only talks about App Store apps and doesn’t say either way. Long-press the icon and check: if Hide and Require Face ID is in the menu, it works like any other app. If it isn’t, Remove from Home Screen still works, and the vaults and tweaks below have their own locks, so they don’t depend on the iOS menu.

How to hide photos on iPhone

1. Open Photos, then touch and hold the photo or video.
2. Tap Hide and confirm.

The photo leaves your Library, your other albums and even the Photos widget, and moves to the Hidden album under Utilities in Collections. To get it back, open Hidden, tap View Album, authenticate with Face ID or Touch ID, then touch and hold the photo and tap Unhide.

Two settings live in Settings → Apps → Photos:

• Use Face ID. On by default since iOS 16. It locks both the Hidden and Recently Deleted albums. If you turn it off, both albums open without authentication. Leave it on, because Recently Deleted keeps photos for 30 days, and a locked Hidden album doesn’t help much if the photos you deleted are still easy to open.
• Show Hidden Album. Turn it off and the Hidden album disappears from Photos completely, until you turn it back on.

One more thing: if you use iCloud Photos, hiding is synced. A photo you hide on your iPhone is hidden on your iPad and Mac too, and on a Mac the Hidden album opens with Touch ID or your login password.

Where the built-in tools stop

The built-in tools are fine for handing your phone to a friend. Beyond that, there are gaps:

• It’s your phone’s lock, not a separate one. The Hidden folder and the Hidden album open with Face ID or the device passcode. Anyone who knows your passcode can open everything you’ve hidden.
• No break-in log and no decoy. Apple’s tools don’t record who tried to open the Hidden album, and there’s no fake view to show someone who insists on looking.
• Hidden photos are still in your library. They sync with iCloud Photos like any other photo and show up on every device signed in to your account.
• It’s all or nothing inside an app. iOS can lock Instagram as a whole, but it can’t lock one conversation.

Vault apps cover the first three. Tweaks cover the last one.

Photo vault apps: a separate code, a decoy and a break-in log

A vault app is a private space with its own lock. Import photos into it, delete the originals from Photos, and they live only inside the vault, with no copy in your library or iCloud Photos.

App Secret goes further than photos and gives each kind of private data its own locked space. Photos and videos go in albums that open only after the lock, and the built-in camera saves new shots directly into the vault, so they never land in your camera roll. Notes, reminders and voice memos sit behind the same code, and there’s a private contacts list with vCard import and export.

What it adds over iOS:

• Three lock styles: a passcode, a combination dial or a dot pattern. None of them is your phone’s passcode.
• Break-in reports: when someone enters the wrong code, the app takes a picture and logs the attempt.
• Decoy mode: a fake passcode opens a second, harmless storage area instead of the real one.

Our build, version 4.1.8, is the app as published, with no modifications, so every lock style, the albums and the decoy code are there from the start. Pick a decoy code that’s different from the real one.

If it’s only photos and videos, Safety Photo+Video Pro is the focused option: a vault from Sixbytes, on the App Store since 2011 and rated 4.7 from about 5,200 ratings. Media you move into it stays behind its own passcode or pattern instead of sitting in your camera roll, and you can add a large batch from a computer through a browser on your Wi-Fi network.

On the App Store this is the paid edition, at $4.99 upfront. Our build is version 7.14.11. The App Store is a little ahead at 7.17.2.

Hiding chats, not whole apps

Sometimes hiding the whole app is too much: you want Instagram on the Home Screen, but not one particular conversation in your inbox.

WhatsApp already does this itself. Touch and hold a chat and tap Lock chat, and it moves to a Locked chats folder. Give the folder a secret code separate from your phone passcode and you can hide it completely, so it only appears when you type the code into search. Forget the code, though, and the only reset clears the messages and media in those chats.

Instagram has no lock like that, and RyukGram adds one.

RyukGram is the full Instagram app with a tweak suite on top, and its Security & Privacy section is the part that matters here:

• Hidden chats: long-press a DM to hide it from the inbox. Hold your account name at the top of Direct to show them again, with an optional passcode or Face ID lock.
• Passcode and Face ID lock for individual chats, the DM inbox, the tweak’s settings, logs and recordings, or Instagram as a whole.
• App switcher cover: when a locked screen is open, the app switcher shows a cover instead of the chat, and locked chats get hidden previews.
• A private gallery: downloaded posts, reels and stories can go into an in-app library instead of your camera roll, and you can import your own photos and videos into it.

Our build is on Instagram 449.0.0, the base of RyukGram 1.4.5, the release that got these chat locks working again on Instagram’s new inbox. You sign in with your normal Instagram account. The rest of what it does is in our RyukGram guide, and the alternatives are compared in the best Instagram tweaks for iPhone.

For WhatsApp, Chat Lock covers hiding. Watusi covers the rest of your privacy there. It can lock the app or individual chats with a passcode and Touch ID, and it lets you freeze your last seen and turn off read receipts and typing indicators per contact. The official app’s read-receipt switch is all or nothing. Our build is WhatsApp 26.38.74 with Watusi 1.3.26. It runs as a linked device on your existing WhatsApp account, and the free tier shows one ad banner. How it compares to the other WhatsApp builds is covered in top 4 WhatsApp apps for iOS.

How to install them

None of the four builds above comes from the App Store, and they all install the same way, from the catalogue, with no PC and no developer account of your own:

1. Register your iPhone at builds.io. It takes one UDID, entered in the browser.
2. Open the app’s page and tap GET. It installs like a normal download.
3. If the first launch says “processing”, that’s Apple’s signing queue, not an error. Most devices are ready within a day, and some take up to three days. It only happens once (what the wait is).

For a vault, staying signed matters more than for most apps. With a free signer, an app expires after seven days. With a vault, that means you can’t open your private photos until you sign it again. Apps from builds.io stay signed for as long as your subscription runs, so the vault opens every time (why the 7-day limit exists).

FAQ

Where do hidden apps go on iPhone? They go to the Hidden folder at the bottom of App Library. Swipe left past your last Home Screen page and scroll down. You can also see the list in Settings → Apps → Hidden Apps.

Why can’t I hide an app? The app is either built in (Apple only lets you hide apps you downloaded separately), it’s set as your default browser, or your iPhone is on a version earlier than iOS 18. Under-13 accounts in Family Sharing can’t hide apps at all.

Do hidden apps still send notifications? Their content stays out of notifications, and testers found hidden apps don’t notify at all. If a hidden app is one you need to hear from, lock it instead of hiding it, or use a per-chat lock inside the app.

Can someone see my hidden photos? Anyone who can unlock your iPhone can open the Hidden album with the same Face ID or passcode. If Use Face ID is turned off in Settings → Apps → Photos, they don’t even need that. For photos that need a separate code, use a vault app.

So which one?

Start with iOS: Hide and Require Face ID for apps, the Hidden album for photos. Add App Secret for a separate code, a decoy and a break-in log, Safety Photo+Video Pro for photos only, and RyukGram to hide single Instagram chats.

More apps with the full version unlocked are in premium unlocked apps for iPhone, and the whole catalogue installs in one tap from builds.io.