How to Use Samsung Secure Folder – Everything You Need to Know!

How to Use Samsung Secure Folder - Everything You Need to Know!

You know you can hide photos, videos, documents, and password-protect them. You can lock apps and even run two instances of the same app. All of this can happen on your Samsung phone without installing any third-party app. It’s called Samsung Secure Folder, and it’s not even turned on by default. So let me help you set it up and make it untraceable.

Setting Up Samsung Secure Folder

Okay, so there are two ways to set it up. First, you could pull down the notification tray and, over here, look for Secure Folder. If it’s not here, it’s all right. Go into your settings, then go into Biometrics and Security, and then scroll down to where you see Secure Folder. When you click on it, the process is pretty straightforward. You will have to sign in or sign up with a Samsung account, and that would be critical, especially if you lost access to your Secure Folder in some way.

Once it’s all done, you’re going to have to set up how you wish to unlock to get into Secure Folder. I suggest that setting up a pin is the safest option, even more so when compared to biometrics. That’s it; that’s all you have to do when it’s all set up.

How to Hide Files, Photos, and Videos

Now that you’ve got your Samsung Secure Folder set up, you can move your photos, videos, and files pretty easily. Select your files in your gallery or in your file manager, tap on More, and then just tap on Move to Secure Folder. That’s it. It’s going to pick up those files and transfer them to Secure Folder, and they will not be in your regular zone anymore. If you wish to access them, just go into Secure Folder. Of course, you’re going to have to enter your pin, and then go into your gallery, and all those photos you moved are right there.

If you want to move your files out of Secure Folder, you can do that too. Just go to where your files are in Secure Folder, select them, tap on More, and Move Out of Secure Folder, and they will go back to where they were originally.

How to Lock Apps on Samsung Phones

Okay, now let me tell you how you can lock apps using Secure Folder. For example, I want Facebook Messenger to be locked, which right now is here out in the open for anyone to access if my screen is not locked. So let’s go into Secure Folder, and you’ll see there’s no Facebook Messenger application over here as of now.

Just tap on this plus icon here, and you can install from this list of apps, which will show the apps that are already on your phone. If you did not have an app, you could just download it from the Play Store, and you get the option right here. Because I do have Facebook Messenger installed outside of Secure Folder, I can see it here. I can tap on it and click on Add.

Now, do note, once I do this, it installs a fresh copy of Messenger, a duplicate copy of Messenger, inside of Secure Folder. I just sign in with my regular credentials, and that’s it. All my data flows in. I long-press on it and tap on Add to Home, and it just adds this secure Facebook Messenger onto my home screen. I can see it right here.

Now when I tap on it, it’s going to ask me for my pin first before I can open Facebook Messenger. And there you go. But what about the previous Facebook Messenger? Well, you don’t need that anymore. So just long-press it and uninstall it. It’s not going to affect the secure Facebook Messenger that you just installed, so don’t worry; you can go there and access it as usual.

How to Run Another WhatsApp or Messenger

Just follow the same process to lock any other app on your phone. Now you can use the same technique to pretty much duplicate apps or run two instances of the same app. For example, I’ve got WhatsApp running on my personal phone number, and now I want to run another WhatsApp on another number, but on my same phone. It should not be a WhatsApp Business account; I can do that.

So here’s my regular WhatsApp that’s running on my everyday personal phone number. But now I want to add another personal WhatsApp account, but on another phone number on this phone. So go into Secure Folder, tap on Plus, and select WhatsApp. That’s it. As soon as I click on Add, it’s going to install a fresh copy of WhatsApp in my Secure Folder.

Now, when I open it up, it’s going to be as if there was no WhatsApp ever, and I can put in the second phone number here and have another WhatsApp running just like this on the same phone. Just like that, I’ve got one WhatsApp that’s running on my regular phone number and another WhatsApp that’s running on another phone number, putting the same phone in my Secure Folder. Sure, one’s password-protected and one’s not, but that’s okay.

Extra Tips on Making it Super Secure

If you want to be super private about your private apps in Secure Folder, I mean, if you want to make them completely undetectable, there are a few things left to do. Change the name of Secure Folder to something else because other folks who use Samsung would know about it. To do this, once you’re inside Secure Folder, tap on Customize and just give it a name that’s a little bit more abstract or something that won’t be suspicious.

Change the color and give it an icon, and that’s it. Just make it look different in your app drawer. You also might want to cut off any notifications that might come to you from Secure Folder. That would sort of give away the fact that you have a Secure Folder. So open Secure Folder, go into Settings, and then there’s something called Notifications and Data. Go into App Notifications, and here you can manage notifications by each and every app that you’ve installed in Secure Folder.

Keep it on or off; it’s up to you. You can also decide if you want to show the content of that notification or not. Next, you might prefer your secure apps to lock themselves immediately as soon as you leave them, but that’s not the setting by default. Let me show what I mean.

So let’s say I open up Gallery inside Secure Folder, and then I go all the way out. Now, if I go back into Secure Folder, it does not ask me for a password. That’s because Secure Folder will only ask you for a password if you’ve locked your screen at least once. That’s the Auto Lock Secure Folder setting that you have to change. So just change it to “Each time I leave the app,” and that way, every time you leave the app, it’s going to ask you for a password.

Now if I go into Secure Folder, it’ll ask me for a pin. So let’s say I enter the pin and I go back out, and then I want to go in again. It’s going to ask me each time, and that’s what you want.

Bonus Tips on Secure Folder

Okay, that’s pretty much it on what Samsung Secure Folder can do, but there are a few interesting things that you must know. Number one, Samsung Secure content can be backed up. So let’s say you get yourself a new phone; you’ve got nothing to worry about. You can back up all of that content on Samsung Secure Folder.

Let’s say you’re using Samsung Backup of any sort or Samsung Smart Switch. So yeah, back it up, and then you can transport all of that to your new phone. Just make sure that your new phone has Samsung Secure Folder and it’s already set up so that it knows where to go.

Lastly, if you’ve got yourself a more recent Galaxy M Series phone or an A Series phone, then you’ve got something called Quick Switch or the Alt Z feature. What that does is that with just double tapping the power button, you quickly get into the secure mode of that app. Let me demonstrate. If I want to go into Secure Folder, I just double tap; it’s going to ask me for the pin, and there you go. I’m inside.

Let’s say I’m on my regular WhatsApp, and I want to go into my private WhatsApp. I double tap, enter the password, and I’m into WhatsApp in my Secure Folder. I’m going to go back out; I just double tap.

 

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