Hidlet vs Locked Notes: Hiding Photos in the Notes App

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Some people skip the Hidden album and put private photos inside a locked note instead. It’s a clever idea: Notes can lock a note with its own password, and Apple encrypts what’s inside. So is a locked note as good as a photo vault?

For a handful of pictures, it can be. For a private photo library, the limits show up fast. Here’s how the two compare, including where Notes is the better choice.

Checked on 24 October 2026, against iOS 27.0.1.

The short version

What locking a note does

Open a note, tap the Note Actions button (…), then Lock. You choose how notes are locked in Settings → Apps → Notes → Password: Use Device Passcode or Use Custom Password, and you can turn on Face ID or Touch ID too.

Apple documents the custom password well. A key is made from your password, and the note and its attachments are encrypted with AES-GCM. Locked notes in iCloud are end-to-end encrypted, so Apple can’t read them. That’s a real lock, not just a hidden view.

The choice you make on that settings screen matters most. With Use Device Passcode, anyone who knows your iPhone passcode can open your locked notes, the same weakness as the Hidden album. Only a separate Notes password keeps a passcode holder out.

Where Notes runs out

Notes is a notes app first, and its lock shows it:

• No videos. Apple says notes with video, audio, PDF or other file attachments can’t be locked. Images, sketches, tables, maps and websites can.
• The title is on show. A locked note’s title stays visible in the notes list. Anyone scrolling Notes sees that a locked note exists, and its title.
• One unlock opens all of them. Opening one locked note unlocks every locked note in that account for several minutes, until you tap Lock Now, lock the iPhone, or leave Notes in the background for more than three minutes.
• No way out when pressed. If someone insists you open your locked notes, there’s no second, harmless set to show.
• A forgotten password is final. If you forget a custom Notes password and Face ID or Touch ID can’t open the notes either, Apple can’t help you get back in. Resetting it only applies to notes you lock afterwards.

How Hidlet handles the same job

Hidlet was built for private photos and videos, so it starts where Notes stops:

• Photos, videos and files. Import from Photos or Files, or take photos with Hidlet’s own camera straight into the vault, with location data removed. See secure camera.
• Your own key. You draw a pattern on a 5×5 grid. It unlocks the vault’s own encryption key on your iPhone and is never saved. Your iPhone passcode opens nothing. More on the pattern lock page.
• Nothing on show. The app doesn’t list vaults or titles (on the free plan, the paywall for a 4th vault does show that 3 exist). Different patterns open different hidden vaults, and each one opens alone.
• A decoy. Keep a harmless vault and open that one if you’re pressed. It’s in the free plan.
• A way back in. When you create a vault you get a 9-word recovery phrase. If you forget the pattern, the phrase opens the vault again.
• Notes too. You can write notes inside a vault, encrypted with everything else.

If your photos are moving to a new phone, our guide How to Move a Photo Vault to a New iPhone explains what carries over.

Where locked notes are better

Notes wins in a few honest ways:

• It’s already on your phone and on your Mac, iPad and iCloud.com, with the same custom password.
• It’s ideal for text. Account numbers, logins or medical details are often better as a locked note than as a photo.
• It’s free and built in, while Hidlet’s free plan holds up to 100 photos and 10 videos in each vault.

And Hidlet has its own limit: it doesn’t run on a Mac or iCloud.com (it runs on iPhone and iPad), and if you forget your pattern and lose the recovery phrase, nobody, including us, can open the vault.

The bottom line

A locked note with its own Notes password is a good, encrypted spot for a few photos and private text. It isn’t a photo vault: it can’t hold videos or files, it shows every title, and one unlock opens everything. For a private photo and video library that your passcode can’t open, use a vault with its own key, and keep Notes for the text.

Hidlet is available on the App Store.