How to Lock the Photos App on Mac (Hidden Album vs Locking the Whole App)

macOS can lock only part of Photos. Since macOS Sonoma 14, the Hidden and Recently Deleted albums need Touch ID or your login password, but the rest of your library opens for anyone at your keyboard. To lock the whole Photos app behind Touch ID, you need a third-party app locker such as Lockish, which puts a lock screen over Photos until you authenticate.

This guide covers both: how to use the built-in locked album properly, where it falls short, and how to lock the entire app.

What does Photos lock by default on Mac?

Nothing, out of the box, apart from two albums. In Photos, look in the sidebar under Utilities:

• Hidden is locked with Touch ID or your Mac's login password, provided the album is shown at all.
• Recently Deleted is locked the same way, so nobody can browse or recover what you deleted.

Everything else (Library, Albums, People, Memories, Places, your iCloud shared albums) is open the moment Photos launches. There is no "require Touch ID to open Photos" switch in System Settings → Touch ID & Password or anywhere else.

How do I lock specific photos with the Hidden album?

This is the free, built-in route, and it's the right one if you only have a handful of photos to protect.

1. Open Photos and select the photos you want to protect.
2. Control-click and choose Hide Photo (or use the Image menu in the menu bar). Confirm when asked.
3. Open Photos → Settings → General and make sure Show Hidden Photo Album is switched on if you want to be able to reach them. Switch it off and the album disappears from the sidebar entirely.
4. To view them, click Hidden under Utilities and authenticate with Touch ID or your password.

Hidden photos also stop appearing in your main Library, Memories and Featured Photos, so they won't pop up in a slideshow on a shared screen.

Why isn't the Hidden album enough?

Three gaps come up in practice:

• Everything else is visible. Screenshots, receipts, photos of documents and family pictures you never thought to hide are all browsable.
• You have to remember to hide each photo. Anything you forget is exposed, and photos you import later need hiding too.
• Memories and notifications can surface other photos. A Memory pop-up on a shared Mac can show images you did not choose to share.

If you share a Mac with family, a flatmate or coworkers, you want the whole app locked, not a folder inside it.

How do I lock the whole Photos app with Touch ID?

macOS has no per-app lock, so this takes a utility. Lockish is a menu bar app that covers Photos with a lock overlay until you pass Touch ID. Setup takes a couple of minutes:

1. Install Lockish and grant the one permission it needs, Device Control and Data Access (called Accessibility before macOS 27), in System Settings → Privacy & Security. It never asks for Screen Recording.
2. Click the Lockish menu bar icon and add Photos to the protected list.
3. Open Photos. You'll see a lock overlay instead of your library, and every window of the app is covered as it appears, on every display. Keystrokes and shortcuts can't reach the app underneath.
4. Touch ID unlocks it. On a Mac without a Touch ID sensor, Lockish asks for the login password instead.

Lockish costs $9.99 once after a 7-day free trial (no card needed), and one licence works on up to 3 of your own Macs. It needs macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or later on Apple Silicon or Intel.

Can Photos lock itself again when I walk away?

Yes, and this is where an app lock beats the Hidden album. In Lockish you can set a timeout for Photos on its own, anywhere from 10 seconds to 60 minutes, so a library you left open while making tea locks itself. It also relocks when the screen locks or the Mac sleeps, and Lock All Now (⌘L) covers everything in one keystroke.

A green badge in the menu bar tells you which protected apps are currently unlocked, which is a quick sanity check before you leave your desk. For the timeout details, see how to auto-lock a Mac app after inactivity.

People who buy Lockish tell me it is mostly for shared family Macs, coworking spaces, and locking one or two sensitive apps without locking the whole machine. Photos is a natural fit for the first of those.

What does locking Photos not protect against?

Lockish is convenience protection, not a vault, and it's worth being clear about the limits:

• It locks the app, not the files. Someone who can open Finder, or other apps with a photo picker, may still be able to reach the image files themselves. Photos libraries live in your Pictures folder.
• A determined person with admin access could work around it. It stops casual snooping, not a targeted attack.
• It doesn't replace FileVault. Turn on FileVault (System Settings → Privacy & Security → FileVault) so the disk is encrypted if the Mac is lost or stolen. Use Lockish on top of that for the "someone sits down at my unlocked Mac" problem.

If you share a Mac with children, the same setup works for other apps too. See locking apps on a shared Mac so your kids can't get in and the wider shared Mac Touch ID guide.

Which should I use: the Hidden album or an app lock?

The two also stack well. Hide the most sensitive photos, then lock the whole app, so the library is covered twice.

Common questions

Can you put a password on the Photos app on Mac?

Not the whole app, no. macOS only password-protects the Hidden and Recently Deleted albums, using Touch ID or your login password. To lock the entire app, you need a third-party tool such as Lockish.

Does the Hidden album in Photos use Touch ID?

Yes, on macOS Sonoma and later it unlocks with Touch ID, or your Mac's login password if you have no sensor. Hidden photos also vanish from your main Library and Memories.

Is locking Photos with Lockish the same as encrypting it?

No. Lockish stops people opening the app from your unlocked Mac, but it does not encrypt your photo files. For encryption, turn on FileVault.