How to hide videos on iPhone without losing quality

Updated November 1, 2026Written for iOS 17 to iOS 26; menu labels checked on iOS 26By Mirage Vault team

To hide videos on iPhone, open the video in Photos, tap the More button (three dots), choose Hide and confirm. The video moves to the Hidden album under Utilities, behind Face ID, but stays an ordinary file that the iPhone passcode unlocks. A vault app such as Mirage encrypts the video on the device and plays it back without a decrypted copy.

You need: iPhone with iOS 17 or later · the Photos app.

Hide videos on iPhone with the Hidden album

Videos hide exactly like photos in the Photos app. The labels below are from iOS 26.

  1. Open the video, or select several

    Open one video in Photos, or tap Select and tap each video you want to hide. The Videos collection under Media Types in the Collections tab lists them all.

  2. Tap the More button, then Hide

    Tap More (three dots) at the top right, choose Hide and confirm Hide Video. The video leaves the Library, the Videos collection and every album.

  3. Lock the Hidden album

    In Settings › Apps › Photos, keep Use Face ID on. Turn Show Hidden Album off if you do not want the album listed under Utilities at all.

  4. Watch a hidden video

    Collections tab › Utilities › Hidden, unlock with Face ID, tap the video. To bring it back, tap More and Unhide.

What hiding a video leaves exposed

A hidden video is still a normal file in your library. Four things stay true:

  1. The passcode opens it. Face ID on the Hidden album falls back to the iPhone passcode, and the Show Hidden Album switch is behind the same passcode.
  2. It is in every copy of the library. iPhone backups, a Mac with iCloud Photos, a shared family iPad signed into the same account: the Hidden album is there too.
  3. It still counts. Storage, iCloud quota and the Videos count include hidden videos.
  4. It can be found by anyone who knows where to look. Utilities › Hidden is the first place people check.

Hide videos on iPhone in an encrypted vault

A vault takes the video out of the library and stores it as an encrypted file. The part that matters for videos is playback: a vault that decrypts the whole file to a temporary location before playing it leaves a readable copy on disk, however briefly. Mirage Vault plays videos through an encrypted resource loader that decrypts 1 MiB chunks as the player asks for them, so there is never a decrypted video file.

  1. Add the video

    In the vault, tap + and choose Add from Photos, or Take a photo to record straight into the vault with the system camera (the recording never touches the Photos app). Videos keep their format; HEVC is not re-encoded.

  2. Delete the original if you want

    The toast asks Delete the originals from Photos? After Delete, iOS asks for its own confirmation, and the original waits in Photos’ Recently Deleted for 30 days.

  3. Play it

    Tap the tile. The viewer plays the video from the encrypted file, with scrubbing. AirPlay and picture-in-picture are off on purpose: both would hand the stream to another screen.

  4. Get it out again when you need it

    From the viewer, Save to Photos writes a decrypted copy back to the library, and the share sheet exports it to another app, with an option to strip the location.

The Mirage Vault viewer with an item open and the actions Export, Favorite, Album and Delete along the bottomThe Mirage Vault viewer with an item open and the actions Export, Favorite, Album and Delete along the bottom
The viewer decrypts in memory. Videos play chunk by chunk from the encrypted file.

The free plan holds 10 videos and 100 photos; Mirage Pro has no limit. Encrypted iCloud backup is free on both and carries videos as the same encrypted chunks, so a 2 GB video is a 2 GB upload to your own iCloud account.

Hiding videos: the options side by side

Method Encrypted Opens with the iPhone passcode In iCloud Photos Keeps quality
Hidden album No Yes Yes Yes
Hidden album with Show Hidden Album off No Yes, after flipping the switch Yes Yes
Locked Photos app (Require Face ID) No Yes Yes Yes
Vault app that re-encodes or converts Usually No No No
Mirage Vault Yes, AES-256-GCM per chunk No No (own encrypted backup) Yes

Not working?

  • Hide is greyed out. The video is in a shared album or a synced library you do not own. Save it to your library first.
  • The video is still in the Videos collection. It was duplicated before hiding, often by an edit. Hide both or delete one.
  • Playback stutters in the vault on an old iPhone. Decrypting 4K chunks on the fly costs CPU. Lower resolution recordings play smoothly on every supported iPhone; 4K60 may stutter on the oldest models.
  • The import stops at the free limit. The vault holds 10 videos free. Everything already inside stays; Pro removes the limit.

Questions

Does hiding a video reduce its quality?
No. The Hidden album only changes where the video is listed. Mirage Vault also keeps the file as it is: HEVC stays HEVC, 4K stays 4K, and the video is encrypted chunk by chunk without re-encoding.
How much space do hidden videos take?
The same as before. Hiding does not compress. In a vault the encrypted file is the same size as the original plus a few bytes per chunk, and the preview and thumbnail add a little more.
Can I hide a video that is still uploading to iCloud?
Yes, but the Hidden album syncs with iCloud Photos, so the hidden video will appear in the Hidden album on your other devices too. A vault keeps videos out of iCloud Photos entirely; its own backup is encrypted.
Why does the free plan count videos separately?
Videos are large, so Mirage Vault limits the free plan to 10 videos and 100 photos. Mirage Pro removes both limits.