How to hide apps on vivo and iQOO
Hide apps on a vivo or iQOO phone with Hide App, find hidden apps with a two-finger swipe or in Settings, unhide them, and know what hiding doesn’t protect.
· 5 min read
vivo and iQOO phones can hide apps without installing anything: a hidden app disappears from your home screen, app list and recent apps, behind your privacy password. Here's how to hide apps on a vivo phone, how to find hidden apps again, and what hiding doesn't do.
Menu names vary between Funtouch OS and OriginOS versions. The steps below follow vivo's own help, which says app hiding needs Funtouch OS 9 or later. If a menu doesn't match your phone, search Settings for "hide app".
How to hide apps on vivo
- Open Settings and tap Fingerprint, face and password. On some phones it's Fingerprints and passwords, Security or Privacy.
- Tap Privacy and app encryption. If you haven't set a privacy password yet, set one now, with a security question you'll remember.
- Tap Hide App and turn on the switch next to each app you want to hide.
A hidden app is closed completely, and it no longer appears on your home screen, in recent apps or in your app list. vivo warns that a hidden app may stop receiving new messages, so don't hide one you rely on for notifications.
How to find hidden apps on vivo
vivo gives you two ways back to a hidden app:
- With a gesture. In Hide App, turn on View Hidden Apps. Then swipe up with two fingers on your home screen, and your hidden apps appear.
- From Settings. Open Privacy and app encryption and tap View Hidden Apps.
After you've used a hidden app, clear it from recent apps, or it stays visible there until you do.
How to unhide an app
Open Settings → Privacy and app encryption, enter your privacy password, tap Hide App and turn off the app's switch. It goes back to your home screen.
If you forget the privacy password
Open Privacy and app encryption and tap Forgot password, then answer your security question. vivo says that if you've forgotten the answer too, the only way out is to erase all data, which wipes the phone, along with anything in File Safe. So write the answer down somewhere that isn't your phone.
Hiding isn't locking
A hidden app is out of sight, but it isn't protected:
- Anyone who learns your privacy password, or watches you type it, can see every hidden app.
- The two-finger gesture is easy to find if someone knows vivo phones, so turn it off if you don't need it.
- Your installed apps still show in Google Play's list of apps on your device.
For apps that matter, lock them as well as, or instead of, hiding them. Our guide to vivo's app lock shows how. If you'd rather an app stayed visible but looked like something else, see how to disguise an app.
Hiding photos, not just apps
Hiding your gallery app doesn't hide your photos: File Manager, Google Photos and other apps can still show them. To hide the photos themselves on a vivo phone, use File Safe or Albums' hidden photos, as our guide to hiding photos on vivo explains.
Or use a vault app like Hidey, which encrypts each photo on your phone and deletes the original, so no other app can open it. Hidey can disguise itself as a working calculator for free, which suits phones where hidden apps are the first place people look. Its encrypted backup to your own Google Drive is free too. The trade-off to know: that backup also lets you reset a forgotten PIN through Google after a 24-hour wait, so whoever controls your Google account could reset it too, unless you turn on zero-knowledge mode (Pro).