How to hide in your xiaomi mobile what you do not want anyone to see

Sometimes it is difficult to keep the mobile away from prying eyes or curious that take the device without permission. But we can anticipate these uncomfortable moments by taking a series of precautions to keep our content private and protected.

There are many options to hide content on Android, but we will only focus on those offered by Xiaomi through MIUI. So be prepared that we will spend a lot of time in the Settings section of your Xiaomi mobile to make the content that you do not want anyone to see “invisible”.

Protect applications with a password

Hide applications in a private folder

Hide your activity by creating a private space

Hide photos, videos and entire albums

Hide any type of files, documents, music and more

Hide text and content of notes

Create independent and private accounts

Hide messages and contacts

Hide notifications

Password protect apps

One option to hide private content is to password protect apps. Although it does not hide the application, it prevents any curious person from accessing it, since it will be blocked.

To do this, go to Settings and choose Applications >> App Lock. It will ask you to set a pattern, a PIN or a password, depending on what you have previously configured on the device.

Once you do this step, it will show you the entire list of installed applications. You just have to choose the apps you want to block and that's it.

When you want to consult one of these applications, just type the password to enter, or the fingerprint, if you have it configured on the device. So all your content will be hidden and protected.

How can you override this dynamic?

If you want to remove a specific app, then go to the list like we did before and remove it from the list of blocked apps.
And if you want to cancel the whole process momentarily, then choose the gear wheel (as you can see in the image) and deactivate "App Lock".

Hide the apps

If you want something more subtle, so that no one knows that you have a certain app installed, then you can hide it. This is as simple as hiding the application icon so that it does not appear on the home screen.

What does it mean? That will not be visible between installed applications. To configure this go to Settings >> Applications >> Application lock >> and choose the second column "Applications". You will see the list of all installed apps, so you just have to choose the ones that you don't want to show their icons.

Once this option is configured, it is as if the chosen applications were invisible, as if they were not installed. All of them are in a hidden folder that you can access by following these steps:

Create a private space

Instead of individually configuring the apps, photos or files you want to hide, create a private space to manage all the content you want to keep away from prying eyes.

Go to Settings >> Special functions >> Second space. Yes, you can configure a second space that will work independently.

You can change the space using a password or from a shortcut, depending on the established configuration. You will see that it is as if you will release your mobile again… you will not have any scheduled contact or messages or content in the gallery.

So you will have to configure some details from scratch, and then create your new space by adding contacts, downloading applications, etc. Everything you do here stays only in this space. And then you will have to configure some options for the two spaces, as you see in the image (from the same section in special functions), to customize them to your style.

Hide photos, videos and albums

Do you want to keep your photos private ? Or do you prefer to hide certain photo albums? You can do this very simply from the Gallery app.

To hide photos you just have to follow the steps you see in the image: choose the photo, select Add album >> Hidden album. You will have to confirm the action and that's it.
To hide albums or create hidden albums is the same dynamic. Go to the Albums section, select the one that interests you and choose the "Hidden" option.

Another option to keep your photos and multimedia content hidden is applying a password to the Gallery app. Go to Settings >> Applications >> Application lock and in the app list you look for Gallery and activate the option for password lock.

That way, anyone who wants to enter the gallery will have to enter the password. It is simple and practical. In addition, it includes all the multimedia content that you have in the gallery. Another option:

If you only want to hide videos, then password the Videos app. That way, the videos will be seen in the gallery, but they won't be able to play them.

You will find another way to hide multimedia content in the next section.

Hide any type of file, documents, music and more

Are there files and documents that you would like to hide? It is also possible to do this in a few steps.

This dynamic works for any type of file, so it will also help you to hide photos, videos, screenshots, music, APKs. Just follow these steps:

Open the File Manager and choose the file you want to hide
You open the lower menu (from the three dots) and select the option "Hide"

To see these hidden files, just go to the manager menu as you see in the second image.

Do you want to hide a voice recording? This option is not available in File manager or from the Recordings app. But you can choose to put a password to the application, as we already saw in Protecting applications with password.

Hide notes content

MIUI also has an option to hide the notes that we write from the app. There are two ways to do this.

One of them is to hide them directly in the Notes app, using either of these two options:

Option 1: you select a note from the main page and choose Hide
Option 2: open the note, open the 3 dots menu and select Hide

And how do you access the hidden notes? You open the Notes app and slide your fingers down the screen (image 3) until you see the lock. Then it will ask you for your password or PIN and you will be able to access the “Hidden Notes” section.

Another option to keep the notes hidden is to put a password to the Notes app, as we saw before: Settings >> Applications >> Application lock and look for the Notes app.

Create independent and private accounts of apps and social networks

Another option to maintain a certain level of privacy is to use the "Dual applications" option for app accounts or social networks, and then assign a password.

Suppose you want to use a WhatsApp account without complicating passwords or private spaces. And another that remains hidden with important contacts.

For this you can use this method

Go to Applications >> Dual Applications and choose the app you want to duplicate from the list. You will see that an icon is created on the home screen that differentiates the "original" from the secondary one.
Now go to Applications >> Application Lock and in the list find the app that you have duplicated. As you can see in the image the two icons appear, you choose the one that corresponds to the duplicate and check the option to lock it with a password.
Or if you do not want your secondary account to be visible, go to Applications >> Application lock and choose the second column "Applications" and select it so that the icon does not appear on the main screen. So it will be invisible to anyone who takes your mobile.

So you can have a secondary account of WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, etc., protected with a password or with the hidden icon.

Hide messages and contacts

There are several ways to hide contacts on Android, but if we only resort to the options provided by MIUI, you can choose to:

Create a private space, as we saw before, and have different contacts from the ones you have in the main account
Put a password to the Contacts app, and that way nobody can enter
Create a private contact from the Messages app (as you'll see below)

And to hide the messages, follow these steps:

Open the Messages app and scroll your fingers down the screen until you see a lock
Enter the password required to go to the Hidden Messages section
Select the "Settings" gear wheel that will allow you to "add private contact" from Contacts or by writing a phone number

From that moment on, all the messages from that contact will be hidden, and to see them you will have to return to this section.

One detail to keep in mind is that if you take the number from Contacts, it will not become "invisible" because you already have it registered on your mobile. So if you want the number to go unnoticed add your private contact from "Enter phone number" and make sure it is not listed in the Contacts app.

Hide notifications

MIUI has many options to customize how and when notifications appear on the mobile. Let's go over some options to hide them in specific sections:

Hide lock screen notifications
Hide floating notifications
Hide application icons

Keep in mind that you can apply these changes to all apps or only to specific ones. And for this, you can do it in two ways:

Go to Settings >> Notifications and choose each of the sections we mentioned (1)
Or open a specific app to configure how notifications will appear in these sections (2)

And on the other hand, you can also hide the notifications of protected applications and messages from private contacts from the sections that we have already mentioned in the other sections.