In most cases, people keep an eye on their smartphone because it usually stores a lot of confidential and personal information – photos, videos or applications that others probably shouldn’t see. But there are situations when the user has to transfer his gadget to another person, and in this case, I would like to be able to hide my confidential data before transferring the device into the hands of third parties. At the moment, unfortunately, Android does not have the ability to hide important applications with sensitive data in a protected area, but this will probably be implemented in the near future through the “Personal Space” feature.
Journalists from the news publication AndroidPolice report that even at the release of Android 14 QPR2 Beta 1, they noticed a new settings page, which is intended for a function called Private Space (analogous to Secure Folder from Samsung). Then they could only assume that this feature would provide the ability to hide applications on a smartphone from other people, and with the release of Android 14 QPR2 Beta 2 it became clear that this was indeed the case. Moreover, representatives of the publication even managed to activate the new “Personal Space” function through the “Security and Privacy” item in the “Settings” of the device.
During the process of creating and configuring Private Space, a new profile is created within the smartphone (android.os.usertype.profile.PRIVATE), which is associated with the main user of the Android device in the same way as a work profile. Accordingly, as in the case of the work profile, notifications from applications running in the main personal profile will be hidden from users until unlocked. You can block your personal profile from third-party users using a PIN code, password, input pattern or biometric data. At the moment, you can access applications from the main personal profile through the lower application bar, plus Google is testing access to unlocking through a search using the private space keywords – this will be useful if the user wants to hide the very fact of using this function.
I would like to be able to hide my confidential data before transferring the device into the hands of third parties.
It is worth noting that some elements of this function do not yet work, and the interface itself may well change at the time of release – now journalists doubt that Google has released the final version of the user interface. This feature will probably officially appear in Android 15 next fall.