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Ok, I'm I smoking something or didn't this ability exist before iOS 14?

Edit: Realized I was thinking of MacOS.
 
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It’s a half baked integration by Apple. It just makes it easier for anyone with knowledge of an iPhone to find your special photos. As others mentioned it should not allow other apps to view them and be protected by face or Touch ID. Oh well maybe in iOS 20.
 
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Looks like the developers of all those "hide my photos" apps can breathe a sigh of relief. We were watching a true crime show last night about Chris Watts, the guy in Colorado that murdered his wife and three- and four-year-old daughters, and hid their bodies. He used one of those looks-like-a-calculator photo vault apps to hide pictures taken with his mistress.
 
I repeatedly requested for them to add passcode lock and or Face ID protection like they did with Notes.. why is it so hard for them to implement this feature to hidden albums!?
 
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You want to use the bathroom in my house? Sure, let me unlock the door, now go ahead on in, I’ll wait until you’re done!

(Good thing I’ve got my embarrassing photos hidden in my dresser drawer!)

I know folks WANT to be that person that freely lets anyone use their phone, that person that has nothing to hide! But, if you value your privacy, assume that anyone with hands on your phone when you’re not looking over their shoulder has full access to everything there. There ARE exploits that only work with physical access and you make the job a LOT easier by authenticating first.
 
Is there much point though if anybody can see it and doesn't require face ID?
Yeah, if you want to keep ALL the photos you’ve taken (if you have the storage, why not?) but when you search the images from another app, you want it NOT to show specific images you don’t want to go through. Like 15 shots of that one sunset, but only 2 would be worth using or shots that you were taking as a group, but their shots ended up better than yours, so you hide yours.

To me, if you take a lot of pics, but only want to use a few in projects or to send, you could use favorites, or put those in an album, etc. If you take a lot of pics and generally want to use the majority of them (because your eye is THAT good) except a few, then you put those few in the hidden folder. Same sort of problem solved from two sides.

EDIT: Sorry, I missed answering your question, actually. NOBODY can see the photos in the “hidden” folder because getting to Photos requires FaceID to start with. You can’t even go into settings and set it so that Photos is available when locked. Once you unlock your iPhone then if you hand it to someone else unlocked, that person will be able to see the hidden folder.
 
Basically any private photos simply should be moved outside the Photos app (like an On This iPhone Files folder, which you can hide I think) and then deleted from the Photos app.

How Apple doesn't have a decent solution to this is baffling.
 
Why can we password protect Notes, but not Photos?
Because that would require a different encoding system for password metadata. Then it comes the question should password-protected photos be encrypted or just permission-protected? How much overhead would there be on loading? How much overhead would it be on AI processing?

Notes can only be encrypted if it doesn’t have any “attachments“.
 
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Why don’t they just let you lock it instead of having to do unnecessary extra steps? 🤦🏻‍♂️
 
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We all know what this album is for.

Thanks for the guide, by the way. But I wish the hidden album (or any album) could be password-locked or accessible only with Face ID/Touch ID.

Better yet, bring GUEST MODE to iPhone, usage scenarios:
  • You want to make a call? sure...
  • Can I quickly look up something on the Internet in your phone?... go for it...
  • Want to handle the music? By all means.
All without access to our private information (chats, nudes, credit cards, passwords, emails, notes, phone directory, etc.)




Have you tried not using it? It might work.

Uh, ever heard of Guided Access? Not perfect, but pretty close.
 
Would’ve come in handy for Chris Evans the other day

this ad is so well embedded I wondered what the heck this dude had to do with Chris Evans
4B42D6A8-477B-4C18-9891-1F0850AB9CEE.jpeg
 
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Several third-party apps are now allowing me to require FaceID or a password/PIN to access the app entirely. I wish Apple would integrate this into iOS for native apps. If they're not going to allow multiple (or guest) accounts per device, the next best thing is locking out anything I don't want people to have access to. For instance, when I let my little cousin hold my phone to play games, I don't necessarily want him snooping through my photos or my texts. Or when I hand a pharmacist my phone to scan a GoodRx code, but I forget to put the phone in Airplane Mode and she sees an embarrassing meme come over iMessage in the 15 seconds she was holding the phone. :(

I get that it may seem illogical to some people, but a simple toggle switch to turn passwords/FaceID on or off for each app (similar to the way you can change notifications for each app) would work.
 
This is really lame by Apple, especially a company who really pats themselves on the back for privacy.

1. Anybody who knows about that toggle switch can simply turn it back on in settings.
2. It can be seen by 3rd party apps, regardless of the toggle

The only solution is to passcode/FaceID lock it like notes. Common Apple. This is a layup.
 
This is really lame by Apple, especially a company who really pats themselves on the back for privacy.
The content is absolutely private and secure until YOU take the step to authenticate/unlock your phone AND hand it to someone. Apple can’t really control who you hand your phone to, it’s about personal responsibility. AND, you can be sure that, if Apple were to implement that, then someone’s going to forget to “protect” an image. Then it becomes, “Apple should really scan through all my images and find the ones I forget to hide and auto-hide them.”
 
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