What Is Private Space on Android? How to Set It Up

Private Space is a locked, hidden profile built into Android itself: a second, sandboxed area of your phone where apps and their data are kept separate from your main space and disappear from your launcher, recents, notifications, and settings until you unlock it with a PIN, pattern, password, or fingerprint. It ships as a system feature starting with Android 15, works alongside (not instead of) a work profile, and is the closest thing stock Android has ever had to Samsung's long-running Secure Folder.

If you've searched for "private space android 15," "private space android samsung," or "private space android download," you're likely trying to figure out whether your phone has it, how it's different from the work-profile or guest-mode tools you may already know, and whether it's actually safe to put something sensitive inside. Here's what Google's own documentation says, how to set it up, and where its limits are.

What is Private Space on Android?

According to Google's support page, private space is "a separate space on your Android device to hide and organize apps." Practically, that means you can install a second copy of, say, a banking app, a messaging app, or a dating app inside the space, and until you unlock that space, the apps simply aren't visible anywhere else on the phone — not in the app drawer, not in recents, not in notifications, and not in Settings' app list or storage breakdown.

Under the hood, Android's own security documentation describes private space as a new kind of Android user profile — AOSP's technical docs call it a "sandboxed space separate from the main Android user." It sits on top of Android's existing multi-user architecture, the same system that already powers work profiles and guest accounts, but adds a profile type built specifically to be hidden and quietly stopped when locked.

How Private Space works

Because private space is a full user profile rather than just a hidden folder, apps you add to it are installed as separate copies — the Android documentation is explicit that "no app data is copied" from your main space when you add an app inside. If you want WhatsApp in both your main space and your private space, you install it twice and sign in separately each time.

Locking the space effectively stops that profile the way Android stops any inactive user: background processes halt, so an app that needs to keep running — Google's help page gives medical apps as an example — isn't a good fit for private space. Unlocking restarts the profile and makes its apps reappear.

A few integration details worth knowing:

• The system sharesheet and Android's Photo Picker can move content into or out of private space, but only while it's unlocked.
• Phone-call intents are always routed to your main profile, with a notification, rather than being handled inside private space.
• Starting with Android 16 QPR2, an "Add files" shortcut lets you copy or move files in from outside the space using the system file picker; anything moved lands in the space's own Downloads folder.

Private Space vs. work profile vs. Secure Folder

It's easy to confuse private space with two older, similar-sounding Android features. All three create a second, separated set of apps on one phone, but they exist for different reasons and behave differently.

A work profile is Android Enterprise's tool for separating an employer's managed apps and data from your personal apps — it's typically set up by an IT admin or a company's mobile device management (MDM) software, not something you create for your own privacy. Samsung's Secure Folder, meanwhile, is a Samsung-specific feature that predates private space by years and has recently been re-architected, on newer One UI versions, to run on the same private-profile system Google built for private space — as One UI has evolved, Samsung has leaned further into Google's own profile model rather than its own.

Which phones and Android versions support it

Private space requires Android 15 or newer; Google's help page also notes it needs "supporting hardware" on some devices and directs hardware-specific questions to the phone's manufacturer. On the software side, it won't appear if the device is enterprise-managed, if a supervised Google Account is signed in on the main space, or if the device already has more than four users or profiles set up. Android 15 itself reached Pixel phones on October 15, 2024, with private space among the features added during that release's beta cycle, so any phone that has been updated to Android 15 or later — Pixel or otherwise — should have the Security & privacy > Private space entry, hardware and manufacturer restrictions aside. For a broader look at which phones are even eligible for the Android versions this feature depends on, see our Android 17 rollout breakdown.

On Samsung's Galaxy lineup, Secure Folder has started moving onto the same underlying private-profile system as private space on newer One UI releases, which is why some newer Galaxy phones show both a Samsung-branded Secure Folder and, separately, Android's own private space option in settings.

How to set up Private Space, step by step

These steps follow Google's official instructions:

1. Open Settings, then go to Security & privacy and tap Private space.
2. Authenticate with your device's screen lock. If you haven't set one up yet, you'll be asked to create one first.
3. Tap Set up, then Got it to continue.
4. Optionally sign in to a Google Account for the space. Google specifically recommends using a dedicated account you don't use anywhere else, so app data and sync activity inside private space stay separate from your main Google Account.
5. Choose a lock for the space — you can reuse your device's existing screen lock, or set a new PIN, pattern, or password that's different from it.
6. Tap Done. Private space now appears at the bottom of your app drawer, with its own lock icon.

Once it's set up, add apps the same way you would normally — open private space, tap its install option, and download from Google Play as usual. Because the profile is separate, you'll need to sign back in to each app inside it.

How to lock, unlock, and hide it

To lock private space manually, scroll to it in your Home screen or All Apps list and tap its lock icon, or open Private space settings and turn on automatic locking — options include locking whenever the device locks, five minutes after the screen times out, or only after a restart.

To unlock it, open Private space from the Home screen, All Apps, or Settings > Security & privacy > Private space, then authenticate with the private-space lock (or your device lock, if you didn't set a separate one).

To make the space disappear from your app list entirely rather than just showing as locked, open Private space, tap its settings, and turn on "Hide private space when it's locked." The change takes effect the next time the space locks. Google's documentation notes that a "Reset private space" entry can still appear in system settings even for devices with no private space configured, which is intentional — its presence alone isn't meant to reveal whether one exists.

What you can't do in Private Space

Private space trades some convenience for isolation. Per Google's support documentation, you currently cannot:

• Use it as a guest or secondary device user — only the main user can create and use one.
• Add its apps' widgets or shortcuts to your home screen.
• Use Find Hub or voice commands to reach apps inside it.
• Move an app's existing data from your main space into private space — you reinstall and sign in fresh.
• Receive Quick Share or Bluetooth transfers directly into the space.
• Recover access if you forget the private-space unlock factor — Google states "unlock factor recovery" isn't supported.
• Rely on it for apps that need to run continuously in the background while locked.

Google's own page also flags that private space "can be uncovered through computer access," naming ADB, device logs, and other apps as potential ways its existence could be detected — worth knowing if your threat model includes someone with physical access and technical skill, not just casual snooping. Separately, private space apps bypass any VPN running on the device, which matters if you were counting on a device-wide VPN to cover everything.

How to delete Private Space

There are two official paths, per Google's help documentation:

1. From inside Private space settings: authenticate with the private-space lock, tap Delete private space under System, confirm, and re-authenticate.
2. From System settings: go to System > Reset options > Delete private space, enter your device PIN, and tap Delete.

Either way, deletion removes the space's apps and their on-device data with no backup. Any data those apps had synced to the cloud can usually be restored by signing back into them elsewhere, but Google is explicit that private space's on-device data isn't included in regular device backups — so if something in there only lived locally, it's gone for good once you delete the space.

Is Private Space actually secure?

For its intended purpose — keeping a nosy roommate, family member, or casual thief who's unlocked your phone from stumbling onto an app or photo — private space does what it says: locked apps genuinely vanish from the launcher, recents, and notifications, and Android's own technical documentation confirms settings are built to avoid revealing the space exists while it's locked. It is not described, by Google, as protection against forensic tools, law enforcement extraction, or a sufficiently technical attacker with physical access to the device; the "can be uncovered through computer access" line in Google's own support page is a direct acknowledgment of that limit. Treat it as a privacy feature for everyday hiding, not an encryption vault.

What's next

Private space is still a young feature, having arrived with Android 15 and picked up additions — like the Android 16 QPR2 file-transfer shortcut — in subsequent releases. Expect Google to keep closing small gaps (file handling, Quick Share, Find Hub support) release over release, and expect more OEMs to fold their own secure-folder-style tools into the same underlying profile system Samsung has already started adopting. If you're on a phone that doesn't have it yet, check Settings > About phone for your Android version — once you're on Android 15 or later, Security & privacy > Private space is the only place you need to look.

Written byNadia Osei

Nadia Osei covers mobile and consumer gadgets for Pandromeda: smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, earbuds and smart-home devices. She tracks launches, software updates and pricing across Apple, Google, Samsung and the rest, and builds comparisons from the manufacturers' published specifications.

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