If you use the Photos app to view pictures stored on your Windows 10 computer, you probably have noticed that normally it displays all pictures it can find on the PC. What if you don't want some of the pictures to be visible in the Photos app? This article will explain how to do that.

The most important thing to understand about how the Photos app finds the pictures to display is that it does NOT look for the image files stored on the hard drive directly. Instead, it uses information from the Windows search index: if it finds information about an image file in the search index, it uses it to display the image. So in order to prevent an image from appearing in the Photos app, we need to find a way to remove information about that image file from the search index.

Windows 10 offers just a tool for that: from the Start menu, open Settings, and there select Searching Windows. You should get to the screen that lets you control the folders that Windows search includes or excludes in its index. The amount of control that you have depends on the type of your user account: some features are only available to the administrators, and not to the standard users. Regardless, you should be able to open the Advanced Search Indexer Settings:

Opening the Advanced Search Indexer Settings

Another thing to understand about Windows search index that you cannot exclude individual files from it, you can only exclude folders. If you tell Windows to exclude a certain folder from indexing, then all files in that folder will be excluded. So, unless you have already done so, you should first create a folder for the image files that you want to be hidden from the Photos app, move the images files you want to be hidden in that folder, and then tell Windows to exclude that specific folder from its index.

Right-click the image that is intended to be hidden and then click “Hide Photos” (You can also choose Hide Photos using Image Menu on Menu Bar) A prompt will open up asking you to confirm the action. Click on “Hide Photo”to confirm and the photo will not be visible in Photos anymore. However, you can still find it in Hidden Photos. Open the Photos app on your Mac by clicking on the Photos App icon in the Dock. Next, find the photo that you want to hide. Right-click on the Photo that you want to hide and then click on Hide Photo option in the menu that appears. You will see a pop-up, click on the Hide Photo button. How to Hide Photos on Mac Step 1. Open Photos on Mac. Select one or more photos that you want to hide from others. Control click and select Hide Photos.

For example, suppose, for whatever reason, you don't want the pictures of your cats to appear in Photos app. Open File Explorer, navigate to the Pictures folder, and create a new folder there with the appropriate name (Cats in our example). Move the image files of the cats into that folder (drag-and-drop should work just fine for that). Use the Folders link of the Photos app to navigate to the Cats folder to check that the images you want to hide are actually there:

Now return to the Indexing Option screen we've discussed above and press the Modify button. When the Indexed Locations screen opens (see below), navigate to the folder you want to exclude (do not use the check boxes for that, use the little arrows to expand and collapse folders as needed.) For a folder in your Pictures folder, expand Local drive C:, then Users, then locate your user name and expand that folder, and finally expand Pictures. The folder we want to exclude from the index (named Cats in our example) should appear there. Now clear the check box next to the Cats folder, and that will tell Windows to exclude it from the search index (only the folders that have the check marks next to them are indexed.)

Press OK to close the screens you've opened and .. wait. Yet another thing to know about Windows search index is that it's picky about getting itself updated. Oftentimes, when Windows detects that you are actively using your computer, it delays the updates to its search index until your activity stops or slows down. Other times it may update the index almost immediately after you make changes to it. If you are an administrator of the computer, you can try to force Windows to rebuild the search index: on the Indexing Options screen, press Advanced, and then use the Rebuild button:

However, even forcing to rebuild the index sometimes does not make it happen soon enough. If you've waited a few minutes and nothing seems to change in the Photos app, try restarting the computer and check the Photos after that. Eventually, Windows index should catch up with the changes you've made, and the Photos app should stop displaying the images from the excluded folder. If it does not, consider moving the Cats folder out of the Pictures area altogether. For example, create a Cats folder in the root of the C: drive, and move the pictures there. This should force Photos app to refresh and remove the images from the view.

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That's nice, you might say, but what about other apps and File Explorer itself? Even if the images are not visible in the Photos app, anyone could still navigate to the Cats folder with File Explorer and see the images there. If you want to prevent that, excluding the folder from the search index is not enough, you need to protect access to the folder in some other way. Of course, we would be fools not to take this opportunity and suggest that our software Folder Guard was designed for just such a task! You could use it to add a password to the Cats folder, and any time someone would want to look into it with File Explorer, they would need to enter that password first. Check it out!

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“May I use your laptop for a few minutes?”

What is your gut instinct when you hear these words? Uncertainty, because you’re not sure when you last encrypted and sorted your video files? Fear that the person may click on the “wrong” folder? Do you hover around in case you have to tackle them because they’re about to click on a folder that stores your personal video and media files?

These are not the thoughts of someone that is paranoid, rather they are the thoughts of someone who wants privacy. While the scenario above is focused on shared Macs, there are far more sinister alternatives like your system being stolen or a hacker gaining access.

How to keep private video safe on macOS

We are going to show you some practical measures that you can take to ensure that your video files are properly secured. We start with manual methods and then reveal the best video hiding tool of all, Hider 2.

Hide videos in plain sight (but not total securely)

Mac Photos App On Windows

There are many basic ways in which you can hide your video folders and files. Even though they are not super secure, these simple solutions may be enough for you to feel at ease.

The most obvious method, which many people use, is to give your video folder a boring name like “Data” and move the folder somewhere obscure where it wouldn’t be found by accident. You can take this even further by renaming your video files to make it even less likely that a search for private media files would pick them up.

Personally, I wouldn’t feel very safe with that as many only method so let’s look at something a bit more effective – the easy little trick of hiding private videos in another account on your Mac.

Simply create a new user in the System Preferences Users & Groups preference pane, then log in to it and put the video files and folders you want to hide into that account. This does mean you have to constantly switch accounts to access your hidden videos, but it will at least eliminate the accidental discovery by a colleague or family member.

Use encryption as your video locker

A method with a much higher level of security is encryption. By encrypting your private videos or video folder, you will make sure it cannot be viewed even if someone finds it. Once encrypted you can also move it to an external drive or even backup to DropBox, knowing that if you drive is lost or your cloud is hacked, your videos will remain secure.

The MacOS app, Disk Utility, can do this for you but it wasn’t developed for the purpose of hiding files so it’s not an ideal solution.

If you want to give it a try we’re going to show you have to create an encrypted folder (in this case called an “image”) with Disk Utility.

1. Open Disk Utility
2. In the top bar choose File > New Image > Blank image
3. In the dialog choose where you want the image to be created, the name, and all other simple information
4. We recommend macOS Extended for format.
5. 256 bit AES for encryption. You’ll be asked to create a new password, choose a strong password that you will remember (or use Keychain Assistant, its icon is next to the form).
6. No Partition Map for partitions, and Read/Write Disk Image for image format.
7. Click Save

Disk Utility will then create and mount the encrypted image. Now open Finder and move your private videos into the image like it was a disk drive. When you’re done, simply unmount the image and your videos are now safe and secure.

To view them just double click the image you’ve created and enter in the password. Remember to always unmount the image when you’re done.

Hide video files with Terminal

Using Terminal to hide video files and folders is effective, but cumbersome. You can absolutely guarantee that these files will be hidden, but it’s a laborious process every time you want to hide and access a file or folder.

Here’s how to hide videos with Terminal.

Method 1:

1. In Terminal, type chflags hidden
2. Drag a folder or file you want to hide into the Terminal window
3. Make a note of the path of the file folder.
4. Press Enter

Your video file or folder will now be hidden from Finder.

To access your hidden video file or folder navigate to Finder > Go > Go to Folder and enter the path e.g. ~Desktop/HiddenVideos. In this sense, the folder or files are always there, but you have to know the path to find them.

Mac jupyter notebook app. To permanently unhide a video folder or files, go back to Terminal and type chflags no hidden followed by the file or folder path.

Photos App For Mac

Method 2:

Type mv filename .filename in Terminal. This moves the original folder to one with a period at the beginning of its name; by default, folders with periods at the beginning of their names are hidden in macOS.

You can also type mkdir .hiddenfolder to create a new hidden folder. You can access those hidden folders and files by summoning the Go to Folder dialog (Command-Shift-G) and typing in their full paths.

Use a specialized video locker to keep your privacy

In a perfect world all of the Terminal functions and the encryption security of the Disk Utility method would be combined into one user-friendly interface with all of the security and none of the drawbacks, difficulty or vulnerabilities.

Well, welcome to the perfect world because there is a great video hider app called Hider 2.

It is the quickest and easiest method for securing your most personal video files from snoops and unintentional exposure.

Simply download, install and launch to create a password for your new video locker (although you can hide any type of file – hide photos, hide documents, even hide songs). With an easy drag and drop interface, Hider 2 will hide your video files in minutes.

Once your video files are toggled to hidden, no amount of searching will find them. And, as a bonus, with 256 bit AES encryption, you have a strong layer of security that even hackers can’t break into. It’s rare to have such a powerful security feature that is also so easy that anyone can use it.

Upgrade Photos App On Mac

Now you know how to hide videos in a video locker

Hiding video files on your mac doesn’t have to be a chore that takes up hours and hours. It’s great to be able to have many different solutions and tools at your fingertips. Whether you want something super simple or secure but complicated or the best of both worlds, you have the choice.

How To Hide Photos App On Mac Desktop

It’s time to take control of your privacy so that you can rest assured that what is personal to you does not become public knowledge.