Let's face it, there is always something in the gallery that we do not want to be made public or seen by the wrong person. It does not have to be a compromised photo or video, it can be something related to our childhood, or one of the many images that we receive every day on WhatsApp. It is time to know how to hide all that content in the Google Photos gallery.
It is applicable to almost any Android gallery, whether it is native or not. However, we will focus on showing it from Google Photos, since it is an app also pre-installed on Android devices that is always presenting new functionalities, and which is therefore the most used by users. We not only have one, but there are several methods to hide gallery items.
Hide photos with nomedia
It is a file extension that, when created in a folder in the explorer, will allow to hide any multimedia file that is added to this folder. In this way, all the photos and all the videos that we select to send to said folder will not be seen in the gallery again. They will not disappear completely, they can simply be viewed from the file explorer.
Unfortunately, the native browser on the smartphone does not contain this support for files in the .nomediaIn addition, the option to share items from Google Photos to said browser does not usually appear. Therefore, we must resort to an external app, no matter what it is. For the tutorial we have chosen the already known ES File Explorer, that after installing it, we will directly create a new folder.
We go to the "+" symbol and give the new folder a name. We go back to Google Photos to select all the elements that we want to hide, and we share them to the browser that we have installed. Once those images are in the new folder, we are going to click on the "+" sign again, although this time we select "Create new file". This is where we enter the name of said extension, and it is important that you write it correctly, being ".nomedia", no capital letters or spaces. And here, After waiting a few seconds for the folder to be read, that content will have disappeared from the gallery.
What if you want to undo the process?
There is no need to worry that the change made will be eternal. If we believe that it is no longer necessary to hide anything, we can always undo it. To do this, we select those hidden images and we move to another folder within the internal storage, either to a new folder or to the one they previously belonged to, or simply by deleting the ".nomedia" file, although it is not always possible. With that, and after waiting a few seconds, everything that had previously vanished in the gallery will reappear.
Hide photos from Google Photos
Recently Google has implemented a new section to have, in a somewhat more reserved way, photos and videos from the gallery itself. This section is called "File", and it can be found in the sidebar of the app. Nevertheless, though front-page elements disappear, They are still in the gallery, but it is an alternative in the event that we do not want to complicate our lives as much as in the previous step.
To do this, we simply select all the elements to hide, a selection that we can make simultaneously with all the amount of images we want. Click on the three points in the upper right corner, and there will be the option to «Move File». If it is only from a specific image, we enter it, slide up, and we will find the same option. To undo the changes, you simply have to carry out the same procedure, with the difference that the option will be "Unarchive".