January 21, 2020

Your smartphone is full of personal information and all kinds of files that accumulate in your memory with use. Many of these files are photographs and videos, which we download or receive through social networks and messaging applications.

What if I want to protect those multimedia files? What if I don’t want anyone to see some pictures? In the following lines we will explain how to hide images and videos on your mobile, thanks to the .nomedia files .

What is a .nomedia file?

A file with the name “.nomedia” will tell your device that you should avoid displaying the folder in which it is located . In this way, any photo or video that is in that folder will be hidden when you enter the gallery.

Therefore, if what we want is to hide any kind of multimedia content , all we have to do is create a file with that name in the same folder. You should keep in mind that the images or videos will not disappear, but will be hidden in your device. To be able to see them you will have to use a browser.

Hide photos and videos from prying eyes

The first thing you should do if you want to hide something is to download a file browser . ES File Explorer is a good example and although it has some advertising in its free version, it gives us the option to create new files, which is precisely what we are looking for.

In the folder we want to hide, images of WhatApp in this case, you must create the file “.nomedia” . It is not really necessary that you create it in the same multimedia files folder, as it will have the same effect if you create it in the general WhatsApp folder.

When the file is created, you only have to leave a few seconds for your smartphone to read the folders again and everything will be ready. Go back to your gallery, you can see how any WhatsApp multimedia file has disappeared. Don’t be scared, you haven’t lost your images, they just won’t show up . You will find them with your usual file explorer.

Use an application designed for it

There is another way, and in Google Play you can find applications specifically designed for the creation of such files . Nomedia, as its name implies, is an example.

Its operation is very simple. As soon as you enter the application you will find a list with all the folders on your device that contain multimedia files. Next to it, an “on-off” button that will be off. Turn it on so Nomedia does its job and those files don’t appear in your gallery anymore.

Either thanks to an application or by creating the file in the corresponding directory yourself, the process to hide multimedia files on your smartphone is quite simple . If you want to keep your videos and images away from prying eyes, you know how to do it.