How to make a private photo album on iPhone

If you’re wondering how to make a photo album private on iPhone, here’s the honest answer first: you can’t lock an individual album in Apple’s Photos app. Albums and album folders have no lock or password option. Apple locks exactly two places in Photos, the Hidden and Recently Deleted albums, and both open with your iPhone’s Face ID, Touch ID or passcode. What you can do is choose the right workaround, and each one gives you something different. This guide covers four, with steps for iOS 27, the current version.

Can you make a photo album private on iPhone?

An album in Photos is a way of organising your library, not a separate store. Apple’s guide describes creating, renaming, sorting, sharing and deleting albums, and grouping them in folders, but there’s no setting to lock one. If you use iCloud Photos, your albums also sync to every device signed in to your Apple Account.

So the question becomes: which kind of private do you need? Out of sight when you hand your phone over? A code that isn’t your passcode? Several separate private albums? The options below line up against those.

Option 1: use the Hidden album as your private album

The Hidden album is the closest thing to a private album iPhone has built in. On iOS 16 and later it’s locked by default.

1. Open Photos, tap Select, and choose the photos for your private album.
2. Tap the More button (three dots), then tap Hide.
3. To open them later, tap Collections, scroll to Utilities, tap Hidden, tap View Album, then unlock.

To take the album off screen entirely, go to Settings, tap Apps, tap Photos, tap Albums, and turn off Hidden Album.

The trade-offs. There’s only one Hidden album, so you can’t have a private holiday album and a separate private documents album. Hidden photos don’t show in your other albums any more. The lock is your phone’s passcode, so anyone who knows it can open the album. And with iCloud Photos on, hidden photos sync to your other devices like everything else. There’s more on all of this in how to hide photos on iPhone.

Option 2: lock the whole Photos app

Since iOS 18, you can make Photos ask for Face ID before it opens. That makes every album private, at the cost of locking the ones you didn’t mind people seeing.

1. On the Home Screen, touch and hold the Photos icon.
2. Tap Require Face ID (or Touch ID or Passcode).
3. Tap Require Face ID again, then authenticate.

The trade-offs. It’s all or nothing: you can’t lock one album and leave the rest open. It still opens with your passcode. And the lock only applies to that iPhone; the setting doesn’t sync to your other devices. Full steps are in how to lock photos on iPhone.

Option 3: a locked note for each private album

Notes can lock individual notes, and you can choose a Notes password that’s different from your phone’s passcode. That makes it the only built-in way to have more than one private “album”, each with photos in it.

1. Open Settings, tap Apps, tap Notes, tap Password, then choose Use Custom Password or Use Device Passcode.
2. In Notes, create a note per album and add photos with the Attachments button.
3. Tap the Note Actions button, then tap Lock.

The trade-offs. Apple won’t lock notes that contain video, audio, PDF or file attachments, so this is for photos only. Note titles stay visible in the list. The originals are still in your library until you delete them, and then they sit in Recently Deleted for 30 days. If you forget a custom Notes password, Apple says it can’t help you recover those notes. And a note isn’t built for browsing lots of photos the way an album is.

Option 4: a vault app

A photo vault app gives you what Photos can’t: separate private albums, behind a code that isn’t your phone’s passcode, with the photos moved out of your library rather than hidden in it.

The trade-offs. You’re trusting another company with photos that may be your only copies, so check two things before you move anything: how it encrypts, and how it backs up. Plenty of people lose a vault when they change phones (see do hidden photos transfer to a new iPhone). Look for a backup you can see is working and a way to restore that doesn’t depend on the company still being around.

What not to use as a private album

• Shared Albums. They feel private because you pick who’s invited, but Apple says Shared Albums don’t support Advanced Data Protection, so the encryption keys for that content are held by Apple.
• Album folders. Putting an album inside a folder only tidies the list. Anyone who opens Photos can open the folder.
• Turning off the Hidden Album switch on its own. It removes the album from view, but the setting is easy to find and switch back on.

Which one should you pick?

For most people, the Hidden album plus a locked Photos app covers everyday privacy. If you need a code nobody else knows or more than one private album, that’s where a vault app earns its place.