How to Hide Photos from Memories and Featured on iPhone

To stop a photo appearing in Memories or Featured Photos, touch and hold it in Featured Photos (or on the Photos widget) and choose Remove from Featured, or hide it with More > Hide, since hidden photos are excluded from these suggestions. To turn the whole system off, go to Settings > Apps > Photos and switch off Show Featured Content. For people, open them in People and choose Feature This Person Less.

Why private photos surface

The Photos app actively looks for pictures to show you: anniversaries, trips, people you photograph often. It puts them in Memories, in Featured Photos, in the Photos widget on your Home Screen, and sometimes in a notification. That's pleasant for vacation shots and awkward for an ex, a medical photo, or a scan of a private document, especially when the widget is on a screen someone else can see.

Option 1: Remove a single photo from Featured

1. Open Photos and find the photo in Featured Photos (in iOS 18 and iOS 26, it's one of the collections you can scroll to).
2. Touch and hold the photo.
3. Tap Remove from Featured Photos (on some versions, Remove from Featured or Feature Less).

On the Home Screen widget, touch and hold the widget while the photo is showing; you'll see similar options.

Option 2: Delete or adjust a single memory

1. Open Photos and go to Memories.
2. Touch and hold the memory, or open it and tap the More button (three dots).
3. Choose Delete Memory, or Remove from Memory for a specific photo inside it.
4. For recurring themes, choose Suggest Fewer Memories Like This where available.

Deleting a memory doesn't delete the photos; it just removes that slideshow.

Option 3: Feature a person less

If the problem is a person (an ex, someone who passed away, a colleague), adjust their entry in People:

1. Open Photos and go to People & Pets (or People).
2. Tap the person.
3. Tap the More button (three dots).
4. Choose Feature This Person Less. You may be offered Feature Less or Never Feature This Person.

You can also remove the person from People altogether, which stops the face grouping for them.

Option 4: Hide the photo

Hidden photos don't appear in Memories, Featured Photos, the widget, or your main library.

1. Open the photo.
2. Tap the More button (three dots).
3. Tap Hide, then confirm.

To keep the Hidden album locked, go to Settings > Apps > Photos and turn on Use Face ID. To remove the album from view under Utilities, turn off Show Hidden Album. The full walkthrough is in how to hide photos on iPhone.

Option 5: Turn off featured content entirely

1. Open Settings > Apps > Photos (iOS 17 and earlier: Settings > Photos).
2. Turn off Show Featured Content.
3. Optionally, turn off Show Holiday Events too.

Photos stops automatically suggesting Memories and Featured Photos, and the widget shows a placeholder instead. You can also remove or customize the widget: touch and hold it, then Remove Widget or Edit Widget.

Check the other places photos surface

Memories and Featured Photos aren't the only places Photos shows pictures unprompted:

• Lock Screen and wallpaper shuffles. If you use a Photo Shuffle wallpaper, it picks from people, pets, nature or cities. Touch and hold the Lock Screen, tap Customize, and adjust or remove it.
• Shared with You. Photos sent to you in Messages can appear in a Shared with You section in Photos. You can turn this off per app in Settings > Apps > Messages > Shared with You.
• Search suggestions. Typing in the Photos search box suggests people, places and things. Hidden photos are excluded; everything else is fair game.
• Apple Watch and Mac. Photo faces on Apple Watch and the Photos app on a Mac signed in to the same account have their own featured content and settings.

The limits of every native option

Each method above changes what Photos shows you. None changes who can open the photos:

• Hidden photos open with the same Face ID or passcode as the phone. Partners and family members often know the passcode.
• Search can still find photos by place, object or text in the image, unless they're hidden.
• iCloud Photos syncs everything, Hidden album included, to every device on your Apple Account, including a shared iPad.
• Some apps with full Photos access can read hidden photos.

That's why we wrote is the iPhone Hidden album secure: for curation, it's fine; for privacy from people with your passcode, it isn't designed to be.

Keep photos out of Photos altogether

If a photo should never show up anywhere in your library, the most reliable fix is to not keep it in the library.

sigil. stores photos in an encrypted vault, separate from the Photos app. Photos inside it never appear in Memories, Featured Photos, the widget, search or iCloud Photos. Each vault opens with its own sign drawn on a 5×5 grid, not with your phone passcode, and you can keep multiple hidden vaults with no visible list.

After importing photos into sigil., delete them from Photos and empty Recently Deleted, otherwise the originals can still turn up. Note that sigil. is local-first and has no cloud backup yet.

Which method for which situation