How to hide certain files on your Android phone (no apps needed)

I don't know about you, but I often let a friend or relative borrow my Android phone for a few minutes to play around with it, and before I used to be worrying all the time that he/she might stumble upon files which I didn't want them to know about. In this small guide, I am going to show you how to hide files from appearing in your Gallery app or any other multimedia app.

Sure you can download apps from the Play Store that can lock your gallery app and others, but why sacrifice device storage for such a simple task?

Hiding files:

You can use any File Manager app, or even the default one which comes with your Android OS, and create a folder on your sdcard named .nomedia or any other name as long as it starts with a dot. You then put the files inside that folder that you want to be hidden. It works with whole folders as well as long as it's all located in the folder whose name starts with a dot (.).

After moving the files there, and after the media scanning is complete, when you start up a multimedia app or your gallery app, you won't see the files showing up in there anymore.

But people can see the .nomedia folder, what about that?

There is also a solution to that. You see, the folders starting with a dot are capable of being hidden once you uncheck the option to show hidden files.

In Gingerbread 2.3.6 this is how it's done:

Press the Menu key on your phone and a small context menu should popup. Then choose More, then Settings - You should see an options menu and at the top there should be an option "Show hidden files". If it is enabled, disable it:

As a result, the .nomedia folder should no longer be visible. And that is how you hide files appearing from both your Gallery, multimedia apps and your stock file explorer app.