Hide certain albums or restrict access to specific pictures in the Photos app

Hi, Marisa from Fort Worth, I'm Richard from Dallas…

If I understand this, you want to be able to organize your Hidden pictures into albums and keep the pictures hidden, is that right? But there is only one Hidden album, and albums can't contain other albums.

Here's a workaround: In Hidden, Select All, (be sure to get them all,) then go to More (•••) and choose Add to Album. Hit + to create a new album-- name it MyHidden, or something. It's weird, because when you look in this album it will be empty! They're all hidden! 

Then, when you want to look at the pictures, you can go to Hidden, select them all, and choose UnHide. They will disappear from Hidden, which will now be empty, and all your hidden pictures will be visible in MyHidden and whatever albums they come from.  The point of the MyHidden album is that now you can send them all back to Hidden without having to track them down.

If you want to divide them up, you can organize the now visible hidden pictures into albums as you like. If you want, you can put the new "to be hidden" albums in a single folder. When you're through, you can go back to My Hidden and re-hide them all. Then, at your leisure, unhide all in Hidden, look through albums, then hide all again in MyHidden.

If you add more pictures to Hidden, be sure to add them to My Hidden, as well, so you don't lose track of them when you unhide them again.

Will this work for you?

Marisa, areyou asking about the Photos.app on a Mac or on a mobile device, like iPhone or iPad?

On a Mac you can keep hidden photos visible in smart albums while hiding them in the library.

On aMac try this:

• Create an album with the photos you want to hide in the library views, like "All Photo". Call this album for example "My Hidden".
• Then select all photos the album "My Hidden" and hide them, just as described by Richard.
• Now create a new Smart album with "File > New Smart Album".
• Set the rule to "Photo is Hidden"
• Add another rule "Album > is > My Hidden"
• Combine the rules with "Match all".

This smart album will show you all hidden photos from the album "My Hidden" without having to unhide them. You could also use a rule based on the Favorite rating or similar.

Right, Richard, the Mac will ask for the password, when you open a smart album, with a "Hidden" rule but only, if you enable the password protection for the Hidden and the Recently Deleted photos n the Photos > Settings > General.

I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to ask, but this might help you --> Filter and sort photos and videos in albums on iPhone - Apple Support

If you want to hide photos --> Delete or hide photos and videos on iPhone - Apple Support

léonie wrote: …On a Mac you can keep hidden photos visible in smart albums while hiding them in the library.

At first I was thinking the Smart Albums would show pictures you wanted to be hidden but, I think you showed earlier, that the Smart Album will ask for your password before opening the Hidden pictures. So for a Mac, this seems perfect!

Hey marisafromfort worth,

One thing that's confusing is we don't know if you're using a Mac, an iPhone, an iPad, or what. And we don't know what macOS, iOS, or iPadOS you're using. So léonie's terrific suggestion about Smart Albums was only good on a Mac-- is that what you have? My suggestion, more complex, works on a phone, as well.

We might be more helpful if you gave us more details, and a clear detailed example of what you want might be useful in letting us know what you're wanting to do, and why.

marisafromfort worth wrote:

I just want to create a file to hide some photos in the main library.

See the link (words in blue) in my post to you above with how to hide photos.