The Daily App: Hide Embarrassing Photos

It's an increasingly common gaffe of modern life: you're showing off photos on your iPhone to friends or family, and suddenly that crazy, drunken snapshot of you -- eyes half-closed, mouth hanging open, beer in hand as it's spilling on your clothes -- pops up in your camera roll.

It's one of the foibles of Apple's Camera Roll feature: it records every single image and video your iPhone takes, but to keep more embarrassing photos from popping up, you have to delete them entirely. The "Safe Slide" app makes sure you can avoid potentially embarrassing photo-sharing situation, tucking away incriminating camera evidence from easy view before you hand over your iPhone.

What's the App?

Safe Slide, available for $2 for iOS devices, is a simple, straightforward photo app that helps users hide embarrassing, silly, goofy or not-suitable-for-work images on their mobile devices without deleting them entirely. Users open up the app, which begins a slideshow of images on their device. Flicking through the slideshow allows users to select "Share" on individual photos, which then marks the image as safe to scroll through. Anything not chosen is hidden away by default.

With a clean, simple interface and overall design, the app is very easy to use and simple to navigate through, and works well in general -- it didn't slow down my Apple device, though some reviewers noted a little sluggishness with their own gadgets in using the app.

You'll Want It If...

You love both taking lots of pictures and sharing them with friends and family -- and you have a habit of snapping questionable, silly or embarrassing images for whatever reason. Or you're ever just nervous handing over your device for someone to peruse, and worry that one misguided or mislaid tap could pop up something meant for your eyes only.

It's Not My Thing -- What Else Ya Got?

Safe Slide falls under the category of apps that do one thing, but does it extremely well. If you're looking for potential insurance against social embarrassment of a peculiarly modern sort, then this app will serve your purposes fine. It does fill a particular missing function that many Apple device users would like to see made standard in some way on iOS: the ability to make private or otherwise lock up some photos on a device, which has been curiously missing on the platform for some time.

However, despite its excellent execution of this missing function, Safe Slide's $2 price tag seems a bit steep. A simple and free solution would be to simply open your device's Photos app, create a folder, and transfer your acceptable-to-share images into it. Of course, it takes habit and presence of mind to remember to open up that folder before handing a device to share with someone, so it may be worth it for users to hand over $2.

For those looking for a different approach to locking down sensitive material on a phone in general, Foxygram offers a "security vault" solution to this issue, creating a special storage area in an Apple device to store sensitive images and videos while also providing a platform for users to send encrypted messages and information to others. Users looking simply to lock down images might find Foxygram's comprehensive solution a bit paranoid for their purposes, but wannabe spies could enjoy the app, as well as its free price tag.

Android users looking for apps with similar photo-protection functionality can go with Vaulty as an option, which lets them hide photos behind passwords as well as organize them into hidden folders. ♦

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