How to hide apps on your Google Pixel smartphones

Keeping a secure vault of sorts that hides personal apps, photos, and contacts from friends, family, and thieves, is a great way to maintain your privacy and protect critical information such as bank details and passwords.

If you’re on a Google Pixel phone or an Android phone that is expected to get the Android 15 update on time, you’re in luck. Google recently announced a privacy feature that does all of the above and more to protect your privacy. If you can’t upgrade to Android 15, you can try a third-party launcher.

That said, here are the different ways in which you can hide your apps on a Google Pixel snartphone.

Private Space in Android 15

One of the most interesting additions to Android 15 is the introduction of Private Space. As the name indicates, this is meant to be a hidden area in your phone that is secure and invisible to the rest of your phone.

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Once enabled and set up, you’ve essentially created a secondary private account within your Android phone that nobody but you can access. The idea here is that any apps you download, contacts you save, and data that you generate within the private space will be exclusive to that space.

To set it up, head to Settings > Security and Privacy > Private Space. Follow the on-screen instructions. During the setup process, you’ll be asked whether you want to create a unique pin or not. We’d recommend doing so and setting up a pin that’s different from the pin you use to unlock your phone. This adds an additional layer of security. We’d also recommend creating a new Google account when prompted. This account will be unique to private space and will be used to install apps and services that you’d rather not see in the main OS space.

Data stored in Private Space includes apps, Play Store history, Photos, contacts, and more. One caveat is that you’ll need to be running Android 15 to use Private Space, but Google hasn’t released the OS yet. Some reports indicate that we can expect the update to arrive by 15 October, so there’s no need to wait for very long. Most Google Pixel phones will of course be upgradeable on release, but it might take a while for other manufacturers to add support for the Android 15.

Third-party launchers

If you need to hide apps right now or you’re running a phone that won’t get Android 15 anytime soon (or ever), we’d recommend you try a third-party launcher like Nova launcher. Do note that while these apps will hide apps from the App Drawer, hidden apps are sometimes searchable and can be opened from the search window. Third-party apps also do not hide additional data such as Photos as securely as Private Space is expected to.

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To use the feature, you can try Nova Launcher Prime (you’ll need to purchase it for Rs 99). Run the app and provide it with the necessary permissions. Then open Nova launcher settings from within the app, head to ‘App Drawer’, and then select ‘Hide apps’.

Here you can select from a list of apps to hide. These apps will remain hidden when using Nova Launcher, and they will also be hidden from the app drawer and home screen. As mentioned earlier, the apps are still searchable so they’re not entirely hidden. Most snoops are not likely to look for an app that isn’t visible, so there’s a higher chance that your data is safe.

Keeping part of your digital life private should be quite simple once Android 15 rolls around. Apple recently introduced a similar feature in iOS 18 that allows users to hide apps behind Face ID, but we think Android’s implementation is more robust as you not only hide data behind a secondary pin, you can also use a secondary Google account to further isolate your private data.