Scope of Private Access Modifier in Java

The scope of the private modifier lies with in the class. Members that are declared private cannot be accessed outside the class.

Private access modifier is the most restrictive access level. Class and interfaces cannot be private.

Variables that are declared private can be accessed outside the class, if public getter methods are present in the class.

Using the private modifier is the main way that an object encapsulates itself and hides data from the outside world.

Example

The following class uses private access control

public class Logger {
   private String format;
   
   public String getFormat() {
      return this.format;
   }
   public void setFormat(String format) {
      this.format = format;
   }
}

Here, the format variable of the Logger class is private, so there's no way for other classes to retrieve or set its value directly.

So, to make this variable available to the outside world, we defined two public methods: getFormat(), which returns the value of format, and setFormat(String), which sets its value.