How to hide WhatsApp photos from gallery

Let's face it, we all get the occasional picture in WhatsApp that we don't particularly want showing up in our photo gallery. Especially if you have the kind of friends that borrow your phone to look at a picture and then start wildly swiping around like it's the most acceptable thing in the world. Today we'll show you how to quickly and easily hide WhatsApp pictures from your gallery app.

To hide WhatsApp photos, you'll need a simple file manager app like ES File Explorer, Total Commander or Astro. I'll assume you already have some images in your WhatsApp folder, but you can do this process anytime you like for existing and future images and it's a breeze to undo too. You don't need root access or anything fancy like that either.

1. Launch your file manager app. For this tutorial I am using ES File Explorer.

2. Navigate to your WhatsApp folder. It's more than likely on /sdcard, as you can see in the images below. Click WhatsApp and then Media.

3. Next you're going to want to go into WhatsApp images and click the + icon in the bottom left. This will bring up the ''Add'' box where you want to click ''File''.

4. Create a file called .nomedia and hit OK. You'll get a toast saying that .nomedia has been created.

5. Go back to gallery app and you'll see that your WhatsApp folder has vanished without a trace (if it is still visible, try clearing the cache for your gallery app in settings > apps/app manager, depending on your manufacturer) If this freaks you out, all you need to do is delete the .nomedia file. The savvy amongst you may notice that there is no .nomedia file in your WhatsApp images folder. All you need to do is enable hidden files in your file manager. In ES all you do is tap the little blue icon in the top left (the phone and globe), then scroll down until you see the on/off switch for ''Show hidden files''.Turn this option on.

6. Now if you go back into your WhatsApp images folder you'll see your hidden files. Just long press the .nomedia file and delete it. Your WhatsApp images will now reappear in your gallery app (again, if they don't try clearing the cache and rebooting your phone if necessary). Don't forget to turn off hidden files if you don't want all of them showing up in every folder in your file manager.