Google Is Making Your Android Phone More Secure

If you use an Android phone for work, there are plenty of steps you can take to keep your sensitive information safe and secure. However, later this year, Google is going to make protecting your business data even easier, starting with a major new Android feature.

With Android 15, the upcoming Android update set to release later this year, Google is adding a feature called “private space.” Private space is a secure home for any app on your smartphone you don’t want visible on the home screen or in your list of apps: When you assign an app to private space, it’s hidden until you open private space yourself. By default, private space lives at the bottom of your app drawer, but you can hide it from here as well if you really want to lock down these apps.

Private space is the perfect place for apps containing financial information, confidential company data, or sensitive correspondence. If you need to keep work emails secure, for instance, move your work email app to private space.

Private space will not only hide your apps for you, it will hide notifications and data for any apps that are placed here. It might mean you miss some alerts if you don’t think to check, but no one else will see those notifications either.

Even if someone were to unlock your smartphone, however, private space has another security trick up its sleeve: You need to set a separate PIN from the one you use to unlock your Android device. So, if a bad actor, or even a friend, knows your PIN, and unlocks your phone, they won’t be able to access your phone’s private space without the private space PIN.