How to hide apps on Redmi and Xiaomi (HyperOS)

Redmi and Xiaomi phones can hide apps without installing anything. A hidden app stays installed, with all its data, but it disappears from your home screen and app drawer until you bring it back with a gesture. Here's how to hide apps on a Redmi or Xiaomi phone, how to find and unhide them, how to put a password on them, and what hiding doesn't protect.

The steps follow Xiaomi's own help pages for HyperOS phones. Menu names change between HyperOS and MIUI versions and between models, so if a step doesn't match your phone, search the Security app or Settings for "hide apps". On another brand's phone? Here's how to hide apps on any Android phone.

How to hide apps on Redmi and Xiaomi

1. Open the Security app.
2. Scroll down and tap Hide apps. On some models it's called Hidden apps.
3. Turn on the switch next to each app you want to hide.

The app leaves your home screen and app drawer straight away. It isn't uninstalled, so nothing inside it is lost, and it comes back as it was when you unhide it.

How to find hidden apps on Redmi

Put two fingers on an empty part of your home screen and spread them apart, as if you were zooming in on a photo. A folder with your hidden apps opens, and you can start any of them from there.

If your phone asks for a password first, that's your App lock password. If the folder opens straight away, it opens for anyone who knows the gesture, so it's worth adding a password.

Put a password on hidden apps

Xiaomi's help for some models adds a password to the hidden apps folder:

1. Open Security and tap Hide apps.
2. Tap the settings icon in the top right corner.
3. Tap App lock and set a password.

From then on, spreading two fingers asks for your App lock password before the hidden apps appear. If your phone offers to link your Xiaomi Account while you set it up, say yes: it's how you reset the password if you forget it.

How to unhide an app on Redmi

Open Security, tap Hide apps and turn off the switch next to the app. It goes back to your home screen and app drawer.

If you forget the App lock password

1. Open Settings, tap Apps, then App lock.
2. On the password screen, tap Forgot password.
3. Enter the password of the Xiaomi Account you linked, and reset the App lock password.

If you never linked a Xiaomi Account, Xiaomi says the only way to reset the password is a factory data reset, which erases everything on your phone. So link your account now, while you still know the password.

Hiding isn't locking

A hidden app is out of sight, but it isn't protected:

• The gesture is no secret. Plenty of people who've used a Xiaomi phone know the two-finger spread. Without a password, your hidden apps are one gesture away.
• Installed apps still show in Google Play's list of apps on your device, and in the other places our guide to finding hidden apps covers.
• Notifications can give an app away. If a hidden app still shows notifications, turn them off for that app in Settings, or hide their content on the lock screen.
• Recent apps remember. After using a hidden app, clear it from recent apps.

For the apps that matter, use App lock as well. It's in Settings → Apps → App lock, and a locked app asks for your password before it opens, as our guide to Xiaomi's App lock explains. Our guide to locking apps on Android covers other brands' app locks too. If you'd rather an app stayed in plain sight but looked like something else, see how to disguise an app.

Hiding photos, not just apps

Hiding the Gallery app doesn't hide your photos: File Manager, Google Photos and other apps can still show them, and a locked Gallery has limits of its own. Xiaomi's built-in answer is the Private album, which our Redmi and Xiaomi photo guide covers, but it only exists in Xiaomi's Gallery, on one phone.

Hidey is a vault app that encrypts each photo and video you hide from your gallery, checks the encrypted copy, then deletes the original, so it's gone from Gallery, File Manager and every other app. You don't need to hide Hidey itself, either. With its free calculator disguise, Hidey's icon and name change to Calculator, and it opens as a working calculator. The vault only opens when you type your PIN and press =, and wrong PINs just look like sums. Settings and Google Play still list Hidey by its real name, so the disguise avoids attention while the encryption does the protecting.

Backup to a hidden folder in your own Google Drive is free and encrypted before upload, and it brings your photos to your next phone, whatever the brand. If you forget your PIN, you can reset it through Google after a 24-hour wait, so whoever controls your Google account could too, unless you turn on zero-knowledge mode (Pro).