How to hide videos on iPhone

Videos are harder to keep private than photos. They play automatically as you scroll, they show up in Memories, and a single clip can be gigabytes that quietly syncs to every device on your Apple Account. So it’s worth knowing exactly what each hiding method does before you rely on it.

All the Apple steps below come from Apple’s own support pages (checked November 2026).

Hide a video in the Photos app

This is the built-in way, and for most people it’s the right first step. Apple’s guide to deleting or hiding photos and videos covers the same steps.

Hide one video

1. Open the Photos app and open the video.
2. Tap the More button (the three dots).
3. Tap Hide.

Hide several videos at once

1. In Photos, open your library or a collection. To see only videos, open the Videos collection under Media Types.
2. Tap Select, then tap each video you want to hide.
3. Tap the More button, then tap Hide.

Hidden videos move to the Hidden collection. Apple’s wording is that you "can’t view them anywhere else", so they stop turning up as you scroll your library.

Find and unhide a video

1. In Photos, tap Collections.
2. Under Utilities, tap Hidden, then tap View Album and unlock with Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode.
3. Open the video, tap the More button and tap Unhide.

Make the Hidden collection harder to find

Two settings, both in Settings > Apps > Photos, make hiding more than cosmetic:

1. Keep Use Face ID on (or Use Touch ID or Use Passcode). The Hidden and Recently Deleted collections are locked by default, and this is the switch that keeps them that way.
2. Turn off Show Hidden Album. The Hidden collection disappears from the Photos app until you turn it back on.

Then deal with the copies you may have forgotten:

• Recently Deleted keeps videos for 30 days. If you deleted a video instead of hiding it, it’s still there, locked the same way as Hidden. Empty it if you want it gone now.
• iCloud Photos hides everywhere at once. With iCloud Photos on, Apple says photos and videos you hide are "hidden on all your devices". They’re still in your iCloud library, and in the Hidden collection on your iPad or Mac.

What hiding a video doesn’t do

Hiding is a filter on your library, not a separate lock. Four things to know:

• Your passcode opens it. The Hidden collection unlocks with Face ID, Touch ID or your iPhone passcode. A partner, child or friend who has seen you type your passcode can open it, and turning Show Hidden Album back on takes a few seconds in Settings.
• It doesn’t get its own encryption. Hidden videos are protected by your iPhone’s normal data protection, the same as everything else on the phone. There’s no separate key that only the Hidden collection uses.
• iCloud may hold the keys. Under standard iCloud data protection, Apple keeps the keys for Photos so it can restore your library on a new device. Turning on Advanced Data Protection makes Photos end-to-end encrypted, though Apple notes that some metadata, including whether an item is marked as hidden, stays under standard protection.
• It doesn’t free up space. A hidden 4K video takes exactly as much storage as before.

Why the locked-note trick doesn’t work for videos

A lot of guides suggest pasting a video into a note and locking it with a password. Locked notes are a good feature: you can choose a Notes password that’s separate from your iPhone passcode, and locked iCloud notes are end-to-end encrypted.

But they can’t hold videos. Apple’s page on locking notes says: "You can’t lock notes that have tags, PDFs, audio, video, Keynote, Pages, Numbers documents". Add a video to a note and you can’t lock that note. Locked notes are fine for photos and text, not for clips.

Lock the Photos app itself

On recent versions of iOS you can lock any app. Touch and hold the Photos icon, tap Require Face ID (or Touch ID or Passcode), and confirm. Per Apple’s guide to locking or hiding an app, the app then asks for authentication each time it opens, and its content stays out of search and Siri suggestions.

Two limits: apps that came with the iPhone, like Photos, can be locked but not hidden, and the lock accepts your iPhone passcode. It helps when you hand your phone to someone to look at one thing. It doesn’t help against someone who knows your code.

Move videos into an encrypted vault

A vault app keeps videos in its own storage, encrypted, behind a lock that isn’t your iPhone passcode. Here’s how it works in Umbra:

1. Install Umbra and draw a pattern on the 5x5 grid. It’s the key to your vault and has nothing to do with your iPhone passcode.
2. Save your 12 recovery words. There’s no account, so they’re the only way back in if you forget the pattern or change phones. Nobody can reset them for you, including us.
3. Tap the add button and import from Photos or Files. Each video is encrypted with AES-256-GCM under its own random key, in 256 KB chunks.
4. Let Umbra delete the originals. After importing, Umbra offers to remove them from your library. Say yes, then empty Recently Deleted in Photos, or the originals stay there for 30 days.

After that, a few things work differently from the Hidden collection:

• Videos play from the encrypted file. They stream without being written to storage in the clear.
• New clips can skip the camera roll entirely. Record with Umbra’s own camera and the video goes straight into the vault.
• Screenshots and screen recordings come out black, and the app switcher shows a cover instead of your video.
• Separate vaults for separate things. Each pattern opens its own vault, and the unlock screen never lists them.
• Backups stay encrypted. On iPhone and iPad, vaults back up to iCloud end to end encrypted, and restore only with your recovery phrase.

To be upfront about the free plan: it holds 10 videos and 100 photos in total across up to 3 vaults. Umbra Pro removes the limits, from $1.99 a week, $14.99 a year with a 7-day free trial, or $39.99 once.

Which option should you use?

If your worry is a shoulder-surfer on the bus or a kid scrolling your camera roll, the built-in Hidden collection is good enough and costs nothing. A vault earns its place when the person you’re worried about knows your passcode, or when you don’t want the video in iCloud Photos at all.

Questions

Checked against public pages on 5 November 2026. Details change, so check the linked pages before you decide. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.