Hidlet vs the iPhone Hidden Album: Which Keeps Photos Private?

Hidlet is an iPhone app

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You have photos you don’t want anyone scrolling past. The iPhone already has a place for them: the Hidden album in Photos. It’s free, built in and locked with Face ID. So why would anyone install an app for this?

The answer depends on one question: who are you keeping the photos from? This comparison sets the two side by side, says where each one is the better choice, and is honest about Hidlet’s limits too.

Checked on 24 October 2026, against iOS 27.0.1.

The short version

What the Hidden album really does

When you hide a photo, Photos takes it out of your Library, your other albums and the Photos widget, and keeps it in one place: Collections → Hidden (under Utilities). Since iOS 16 that album is locked by default. You tap View Album and confirm with Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode. In Settings → Apps → Photos you can also turn off Show Hidden Album, so the album doesn’t appear at all.

That’s genuinely useful. A friend looking at your holiday photos won’t stumble on anything, and neither will a slideshow or a Memory.

What it doesn’t do is lock the photos with anything new. Apple says apps with full photo access still see hidden photos, and its security guide gives Photos one Data Protection class, with nothing separate for hidden photos. They have no key of their own. We go deeper on that in Is the iPhone Hidden Album Encrypted?

The passcode is the weak point

Face ID can always fall back to your iPhone passcode. So the Hidden album is exactly as private as that passcode.

That’s fine against a stranger who finds your phone. It isn’t fine against the people who most often see private photos by accident or on purpose: a partner, a family member, a friend who has watched you unlock your phone, or anyone who asks you to unlock it and hand it over. With the passcode they can open the Hidden album, and they can switch Show Hidden Album back on. Our guide How to Hide Photos From Someone Who Knows Your Passcode covers this case step by step.

Hidlet takes the passcode out of the picture:

• You open a vault by drawing a pattern on a 5×5 grid, not with Face ID or the passcode.
• The pattern unlocks the vault’s own encryption key on your iPhone and is never saved.
• Every photo is encrypted with AES-256 before it’s stored.
• Your iPhone passcode opens none of it.

More on how that works on the pattern lock page.

Other apps and other devices

Two things about the Hidden album surprise people.

Apps with full photo access. If you allow an app full access to your photo library, Apple says it can see your photos “including your hidden photos even if the album is locked”. Choosing Limit Access avoids that, but many apps ask for full access. Once you move photos into Hidlet and delete the originals (Hidlet offers to), they’re no longer in your photo library, so other apps can’t see them.

Every device on your Apple Account. With iCloud Photos on, a photo you hide on your iPhone is hidden on your iPad and Mac too. That’s convenient, but anyone who can unlock a shared family iPad or a Mac signed in to your account can open it. On Apple’s servers, hidden photos are end-to-end encrypted only if you turn on Advanced Data Protection; otherwise Apple holds the keys. See Can Apple See Your Hidden Photos?

Hidlet runs on iPhone and iPad (sync between them needs Pro). Its backup is optional, off until you turn it on, and goes to your own iCloud, encrypted on the phone first, so Apple can’t open it either way.

When someone makes you unlock

The Hidden album is one album. If someone insists on seeing it, there’s nothing else to show.

In Hidlet, different patterns open different vaults, and the app never lists them. You can keep a harmless vault with ordinary photos and open that one if you’re pressed. That’s the decoy vault, and it’s in the free plan. Read more about how hidden vaults stay invisible.

Where the Hidden album is better

Be fair to the built-in option. It’s the better choice when:

• You only want photos out of sight, not out of reach of people who know your passcode.
• You want them everywhere, on your Mac, iPad and iCloud.com, with the rest of your library.
• You don’t want another app, another lock to remember, or anything that could be lost.

And Hidlet has limits of its own. It’s an app you have to install, it doesn’t run on your Mac, and the free plan holds up to 100 photos and 10 videos in each vault. Because only your pattern opens a vault, forgetting it and losing your recovery phrase means nobody, including us, can open it.

The bottom line

The Hidden album keeps photos out of view. Hidlet keeps them out of reach. If the people you worry about have never seen your passcode, the Hidden album is probably enough. If they might know it, or might ask you to unlock your phone, a vault with its own key is the safer place, and you can still use both.

Hidlet is available on the App Store.