Switching from iPhone to Android without losing or exposing private photos

A new phone is a rare moment when every photo you own gets copied in one go. The transfer tools are good at ordinary photos. They’re less predictable with the ones you’ve deliberately tucked away, and a switch is exactly when private photos end up in the wrong place: dumped into a new gallery, left on an old phone you sell, or locked inside an app that no longer opens. A little planning avoids all three.

Step 1: take stock on the iPhone

Before touching the new phone, list where your private photos actually are:

• The Photos app’s Hidden album.
• Vault or locker apps, each with its own storage.
• Chat and note apps that keep their own copies of photos and scans.
• Your cloud photo library, if photos are optimized or stored only in the cloud.

For each place, decide where it should go on Android: a vault app, a locked folder, private space, or nowhere.

Step 2: get photos out of vault apps

Vault apps keep their files inside their own storage, which phone transfer tools generally don’t copy, and most vault apps can’t open an iPhone backup on Android. Use each app’s own export or backup feature:

1. Open the vault and find its export, share or backup option.
2. Export to somewhere you control: a computer, or the app’s cross-platform backup if it has one.
3. Open a few exported files to check they’re real photos, not unreadable app files.

How to export everything from a vault app covers what to look for, including apps that make exporting hard.

Step 3: decide what to do with the Hidden album

The Hidden album is a view in the Photos app, not a separate store. Rather than trusting a transfer tool to handle it the way you want, choose:

• Move them into a vault before switching, if the vault works on both platforms, or
• Export them to a computer, then import them on Android into a locked folder or vault, and delete the computer copy.

That way nothing private lands in your new main gallery, where memories, widgets and the photo picker would show it.

Step 4: transfer

On the new Android phone, the setup screens offer to copy from an iPhone, by cable or wirelessly. The official help lists photos and videos among the data that moves. Keep both phones close, charged and connected until it finishes. If you skipped it during setup, many phones let you run the transfer later from Settings.

Photos stored only in your cloud photo library aren’t on the iPhone itself, so they need a separate transfer from that cloud service. Large libraries can take a long time; start early.

Step 5: put private photos away on Android

As soon as the transfer finishes, before backup on the new phone catches up:

1. Pause photo backup on the new phone, or switch off backup for folders that will hold private photos. See stop Android backing up private photos.
2. Import exported vault photos into your chosen vault, or move them into a locked folder or private space.
3. Check the main gallery for private photos that came across with everything else, and move them too.

How to hide photos on Android compares the options.

Step 6: check, then wipe

Open your vaults and locked folders on the new phone and spot-check the photos you care most about. Only then reset the iPhone, following before selling your phone. Keep any computer export until you’re sure, then delete it.

Going the other way? See switching from Android to iPhone.

Silo, coming soon to iPhone and Android, can export everything in its vault at any time, so moving between platforms doesn’t depend on the phones’ transfer tools. Restoring a vault to a new phone with your recovery phrase is arriving with launch, through Silo’s own encrypted backup.