Google Photos Locked Folder vs a photo vault app
What Google Photos’ Locked Folder protects, where it falls short, and when a dedicated vault app is the better home for private photos.
· 6 min read
Google Photos has a built-in place for private photos called Locked Folder. It's free, it's already on most Android phones, and for a lot of people it's enough. But it was built for a specific job, and it helps to know where that job ends before you trust it with your most private photos.
What Locked Folder does
Move a photo or video into Locked Folder and, according to Google:
- It no longer appears in your photo grid, memories, search or albums.
- Other apps on your phone that can see your photos and videos can't see it.
- It's protected by your phone's screen lock. Locked Folder has no password of its own.
Backup is optional. With it on, your Locked Folder is available on your other devices and on the web when you're signed in to your Google account. With it off, the items live on that one phone, and Google warns they're lost if you uninstall Google Photos, clear its data, reset the phone or lose it.
On Pixel 4 and later, you can also save photos straight from the camera into Locked Folder.
Where Locked Folder falls short
It uses your screen lock. The people you most want to keep out, a partner, a family member, a friend borrowing your phone, are often the ones who know your phone's PIN or pattern. Anyone who can unlock your phone can open Locked Folder.
It holds photos and videos only. Documents, ID scans, PDFs and other files can't go in it.
Items are locked in, too. You can't add them to albums, edit them, or share them from Google Photos or to other apps without moving them out first.
Backups follow Google Photos' rules. Google protects backed-up items with Google Photos' standard encryption, like the rest of your library. It doesn't describe Locked Folder as end-to-end encrypted, so the backup sits in your Google account like your other photos. Compare that with what Google can see of an encrypted vault backup.
Without backup, it's fragile. Uninstalling Google Photos, clearing its data or resetting the phone wipes it. The same question is worth asking of any vault: does uninstalling it delete your photos?
What a vault app adds
A dedicated vault app is built around the cases Locked Folder leaves out:
| Google Photos Locked Folder | A vault app like Hidey | |
|---|---|---|
| Unlocks with | Your phone's screen lock | Its own PIN or password, plus fingerprint if you want |
| Holds | Photos and videos | Photos, videos and any other file |
| Encryption | Google Photos' standard encryption | Encrypted on your phone before it's stored or backed up |
| Backup | Optional, to your Google Photos library | To a hidden folder in your own Google Drive, encrypted first |
| Hidden from other apps | Yes | Yes |
| Extras | Save from the Pixel camera | Disguises, decoy vaults, intruder selfies (it varies by app) |
Which should you use?
Locked Folder is a good fit if you only need to keep a few photos out of your gallery and search, and nobody else knows your phone's screen lock. If all you want is to stop people opening your gallery, a gallery lock may be enough.
A vault app is the better choice if someone else knows how to unlock your phone, you want to protect documents as well as photos, or you want your files encrypted before they leave the phone.
You can also use both: Locked Folder for photos you'd rather not see pop up in Memories, and a vault for the ones that really matter.
How Hidey compares
Hidey locks with its own PIN or password, separate from your screen lock, with fingerprint as an option. It encrypts photos, videos and files on your phone with AES-256-GCM, deletes the originals once the encrypted copies check out, and backs up to a hidden folder in your own Google Drive, encrypted before upload. Backup and restore are free.
One trade-off to know: Drive backup also lets you reset a forgotten PIN through Google after a 24-hour wait, so whoever controls your Google account could do the same. Zero-knowledge mode (Pro) replaces that with a recovery key only you hold. The security page has the details, and our guide to hiding photos on Android compares the other built-in options.