How to hide videos on Android

Everything in our guide to hiding photos on Android applies to videos. Locked Folder, Secure Folder, Private space and vault apps all accept them. Videos bring three extra problems, though.

1. They're big

A minute of 4K video can take several hundred megabytes. Moving a video into a vault means writing a second copy before the original is deleted, so you need that much free space for a moment. If your phone is nearly full, move a few videos at a time.

Dobr encrypts videos in small pieces as it reads them, so it never needs to hold a whole video in memory. A progress bar shows how far it has got.

2. Messaging apps keep their own copies

Videos that came in through WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal usually sit in that app's own media folder as well as your gallery. Deleting the gallery copy doesn't touch them. Open the chat, find the video, and delete it there too, or use the app's storage settings to clear its media.

3. Playback can leak a copy

Some vault apps decrypt a video to a temporary file so a normal video player can open it. If the app crashes or the phone dies at the wrong moment, that readable file can be left behind.

Dobr plays videos directly from the encrypted file. The player asks for a few seconds at a time and Dobr decrypts just that part in memory, so seeking works and nothing readable is written to storage.

Hiding videos from Google Photos backup

If Google Photos backs up your camera folder, a video you later hide on the phone may already be in your Google account. Open photos.google.com, delete it there, then empty the bin. Our guide on keeping photos out of cloud backup covers how to stop it happening next time.

Last checked 2026-11-01. Phone menus change between Android versions and brands, so labels on your phone may differ slightly.