5 Ways to Hide Any Files Without Any App

Well, who doesn’t have a file on their phone that they want to hide? But in many cases, people don’t know how they can secure them safely so no one can use those files except them. Most people only use third-party applications to lock or hide their files. So in this article, I will show you 5 ways you can hide your files without any other apps. Watch the video tutorial on YouTube to easily understand all of the methods.

1st way - Into the Android Folder

First, go to your File manager, then to your internal or external storage where you have the files that you want to hide. Now locate the files that you want to hide.

I want to hide all of the items in this folder called Tutorial. After you have located your files mark them (You can mark the folder or the files) and move the file/folder to your phone's Android folder.

If you are using an android device you should have this Android folder by default. Now check if the photos and videos are hidden in your phone’s gallery. Since not many people open the Android folder that they have on their device you can rest assured that your files won’t be opened by others. If you still think that someone might find your files in the Android folder then you can actually move those files even deeper into the Android folder.

You should find other folders like cache, data, media, obb, and obj on the Android folder. You can simply move your files to those folders so it becomes harder for others to find your files. If you want to show those files on your gallery just move the folder/files to your internal or external storage. Then you should be able to view the files on your gallery.

2nd way - Renaming the Folder

In this method to hide your files go to your File manager.

I will be hiding this tutorial folder.

To hide it I will first hold down the folder, then click on the three-dot buttons and click on rename.

To hide it you simply have to put a full stop before its name and hit ok. Now that folder is hidden. The media that you have won’t show at the gallery.

To bring them back, go to your file manager, then click on the three-dot or menu button.

After that go to settings and turn on show hidden files. Now if you go back you should find the hidden folder, where you have your files.

Here is my folder and I still have my media files in this folder. To show all of the files on your gallery you will again hold down the folder that you had hidden and mark it. Then you will again rename the folder.

Now you should just remove the full stop, that you placed on the folder's name then click on ok. Now if you go back to your gallery then all the files should be back again. Now make sure to turn off show hidden files from your file manager when you are hiding anything. Alright then let's go to the 3rd method.

3rd way - Renaming the File Name

To hide files with this method you have to go to your file manager and open the folder where you have the media files.

Now click and hold a file and then click on rename.

There are two ways to this method. 1 is to just remove the file name after the dot. Just follow what I do. After removing click on ok.

The file should look like this.

If you try to open it it would ask you how you want to open this file so if someone click's on the video player or image viewer it would open up with one of those options.

So to avoid that when you rename the file you can actually just type dot txt.

Now if someone tries to open this file it would only ask you to open it on a txt editor or your browser. With this method, all your media files should be hidden. Let's move on to the next method.

4th way - Putting a dot Before the File/Folder name

Go to your file manager and find the media files.

Click and hold the file then rename it.

Put a dot before the file name and boom it's hidden.

Now if you want to open that file or bring that hidden file back simply go to your file manager and then go to settings.

Enable Show hidden files. Now you should find the file that you have hidden. Now to show it in your gallery simply rename it and remove the dot that you put before its name. Now, this is exactly the same as the 2nd method but this time you put a dot before the file name. Now to the 5th method.

5th way - .nomedia File

Now to be honest this is the most powerful way to hide any files be it audio, text, image, or video. You can hide them with ease with this method. Let me show you how. I will hide all of the media files that I have on my device. To do that I will go to my file manager. For this method, I would recommend using ES File Explorer because the default ones usually don't have a feature to create files. You can download the ES File Explorer by simply clicking on the ES File Explorer. You can also use this method inside a folder to only hide the files on the folder. But since I will hide all of the media files that I have on this device I will create it on my internal memory.

Now if you are using ES File Explorer just click on the new button below and then click on the file option. Now if you aren't using the ES File Explorer then it could be different so see if you can figure that out. After you have clicked on the file.

Name the file .nomedia and click on ok.

If you can't find the file that you just created enable show hidden folders and you should find the file. After you have created the file .nomedia all of your files should be hidden.

Now to bring them back first delete the .nomedia file and then open the folder where you have the media files.

Create a folder on that file.

Then select all the media files and move them to the new folder that you just created.

Then again move the media files to the previous folder and delete the new folder that you just created. Now check, all your media files should be shown on your gallery.

And those are the 5 ways/methods you can hide any files.