Google’s Locked Folder feature is a great way to hide images that you don’t want anyone to see in yourGoogle Photosapp. It password protects any photos you add, whether that’s a picture of your driver’s license, video of a gift you’re hoping to buy, or anything else you want to keep from prying eyes. The only trouble is that media in the Locked Folder is stored entirely locally in an app that many users choose for its seamless cloud backup. That’s officially changing today.
After we firstspotted the feature in development in February, then gota closer lookjust last week, Google has made things official with aan announcement postfor Locked Folder’s cloud storage feature. Starting today, you can back up your Locked Folder and access those photos and videos from any device with your passcode — you can even set up and access Locked Folder on iOS and the web.
Before you can back up your private media, make sure to set up the Locked Folder feature by heading to theLibrarytab in Google Photos and selectingUtilities, thenLocked Folder. Once you’ve done that, you can head to the mainPhotostab in Google Photos and you should be prompted to enable cloud backup. If you enable backup for Locked Folder, you will be able to access that content across your devices when signing in to Google Photos and opening the Locked Folder.
You can still opt to only store content on your device in Locked Folder if you do not want to use the backup capabilities. Additionally, the photos and videos you save in your Locked Folder will not be visible anywhere else in the app, regardless of whether cloud backup is enabled. They won’t appear in the photo grid, albums, memories, or when you use the search feature of Google Photos.
Another feature we had seen previously that was formally announced today isa redesigned settings menufor the Android and iOS app. Where the old UI lumped all of Google Photos' settings together on one page, there are now sub-menus for Backup, Notifications, Preferences, Sharing, Apps & devices, and Privacy, with all the various options organized within.
These new features are becoming available starting today, but Google hasn’t specified a timeline for when they should reach all accounts. However, past rollouts of similar features have taken a matter of weeks to go from announcement to widespread availability, so with any luck, you should see all of these changes within the next couple of weeks.
