Whether you’re trying to maintain social media handles for multiple accounts or you’re just trying to hide the fact that you have a dating app on your phone, Samsung gives you the tools to do both without the need for third party apps or tools, or needing to carry multiple phones to manage multiple accounts.

Had I known that Samsung devices natively offer an app cloning function as part of its Secure Folder suite, my life would have been so much easier not having to log in and out of separate business and personal accounts.

Samsung Secure Folder does more than you think

It’s also an app cloner

Most people know Secure Folder as a way to hide certain and secure files on your phone, such as pictures you don’t want people to see, or files you want to place behind hardware encryption, which you can do within the three-dot menu of most files and photos (go to More > Move to Secure Folder).

But Secure Folder has another trick you might not know about. It’s something that certain paid third-party apps do, but if you have a Samsung Galaxy, it’s free and built-in as is becoming the case with other Android manufacturers. I’m talking about cloning apps such that each cloned app has separate data and separate logins.

Why would you want to have multiple versions of the same app? Perhaps you have a side business and want to silo your business’ social media from your personal accounts. Another common use is to hide dating app profiles you don’t want anyone to see. A lot of people use app cloning to run multiple shopping or loyalty apps (Amazon/airline/other travel) to be able to maintain different profiles. Or maybe you just want to put your banking, dating, or health app behind an extra level of protection.

Whatever your reason for using app cloning, it’s a very useful tool, and here is how to set up this tool.

How to set up Samsung Secure Folder

Configure it once

Secure Folder is not enabled by default. So first you need to enable it by going to Settings > Security & privacy > More security settings > Secure Folder > turn it on, and let your Samsung set up the secure folder, where you’ll be prompted to login to your Samsung account and pick a lock method.

How to clone apps with Secure Folder

To clone apps with Secure Folder so that you can maintain an entirely separate version of the app, just open Secure Folder, press the plus icon to bring up your full app list, then check off which apps you want to clone and press Add.

I should note that if you later uninstall an app from the secure folder interface, it keeps the main app intact. If you want to totally remove an app from your phone that you’ve added to the secure folder, you must both uninstall it from Secure Folder and from the main app tray.

If you want to hide the fact that you have an app on your phone altogether, you can do this if you just install the app within Secure Folder (which has its own instance of the Play store), and not within the “main” Play store app, and you can do this by going to “Download from Play Store” when you go to add apps, and then apps will download directly to the secure space.

Apps in Secure Folder require authentication to open

Whenever you try to open one of your cloned apps, you are prompted to authenticate with your security method of choice, whether fingerprint, PIN, or password. To configure your security method, just go into your Secure Folder, tap the three dots, and go to Settings, then Secure Folder lock and biometrics where you can specify which unlock method you’d like to use (we wish Samsung would bring back their super secure face unlock).

Auto lock Secure Folder

It’s not obvious, but this is an important setting to change, as it forces reauthorization to access your apps in Secure Folder should someone pick up your phone and try to use it. To set this up, go to Secure Folder > Settings > Auto lock Secure Folder. I like to set this to “When screen turns off” so that every time I lock my phone, I get that extra level of protection.

Hide your Secure Folder

You can rename and restyle the icon for more security

By default, when you turn on Secure Folder, you’ll have a new app in your app drawer called “Secure Folder” which might raise suspicion. We can do two things to hide the folder so that no one has to know that you have it, both of which I’ll cover below. The first thing we can do is to customize the name and look of the icon to whatever you want so that it doesn’t stand out. Second you can hide Secure Folder entirely from your app tray.

Customize the icon

To customize the look of the Secure Folder icon, open it, then tap the three dots and tap Customize. From here, you can rename it to whatever you want, plus pick from a variety of icon styles and colors.

Hide secure folder from your app tray entirely

Another option is that you can hide the icon entirely from the app drawer if you want to go to an even greater length to hide the fact that you have multiple versions of the same app.

To do this, open the tool, tap the three dots and tap “Hide Secure Folder.” Doing this will remove the icon from your app drawer, but you must then take the second step to add it to your notification shade. To do this, swipe open your notification shade with two fingers, tap the pencil icon, tap Edit on your quick settings, then look for Secure Folder in the Available buttons, and add it.

Take full advantage of Samsung’s security features

Whether you have something to hide (we aren’t judging), or you just want to maintain multiple instances of the same app for a variety of reasons, Samsung’s Secure Folder tool gives you this ability all while being backed by Samsung’s hardware-level encryption (which is more secure than end-to-end encryption).