When you ask a photographer his biggest wish, he would say « Well, being invisible ? » And yes, i think it is possible, at least for me.
So i will explain how i manage to take pictures in the streets without any confrontation or issue.

The answer : hip shooting.

I think hip shooting was mainly popularized by Daniel Arnold.
As he explains, the key is to not look into the viewfinder and shoot from the hip, belly.

Legendary photographers such as Robert Frank did this years ago, hip shooting is useful to capture a pure moment, without alarming your subject to your camera, because they don’t notice it.

In the video below, you have a concrete example of hip shooting in the streets of New-York.

How to Achieve hip shooting.

It is essentially to have a wide lens, such as 28 or 35 mm. Why ? Because it allows you to get a lot of information in the frame, so you can be confident about capturing what you see.

Paris subway, ricoh gr III.
i was very close, looking away from her and shooting from my chest.
The 28mm allows me to capture my subject with dept of field, meanwhile being close .

So the key is to not disturb your subject(s).
You don’t want to look at your subject while taking the picture, and avoid eye contact to capture a pure moment.

Forget camera settings and focus on shooting.

I highly recommend shooting in P mode or manual mode to zone focus. You can also work with autofocus.
So i recommend a point and shoot such as ricoh gr III which has a 28 mm, snap focus option and is absolutely silent. In my opinion it is the best digital camera for hip shooting. But i did it with many autofocus point and shoots and it worked well (picture below)

Hip shooting shot, with an autofocus point and shoot.

The limits of hip shooting.

I think the only issue is that your compositions will become more randoms.
In fact, you can’t really have control on composition and it is harder to compose because you don’t look in the viewfinder.
You really need a lot of practice to master hip shooting. To know exactly the right timing to press the shutter with a correct distance between your camera and your subjects to compose correctly.

My advices.

So my advice would be to switch between hip shooting and looking in the viewfinder depending on the situation.
If you feel like your subjects would potentially badly react or would ruin the moment by looking in the viewfinder, shoot from the hip.

Shot from the hip, because the 1 sec movement to look in the viewfinder would have ruined the scene.

Otherwise, if you see that your subjects are in a good mood, pretty receptive or they don’t notice you just look in the viewfinder to have control on composition.

Finally, to master Hip shooting i suggest to practice a lot, you can for example photograph subjects from different distances to evaluate the perfect moment to press the shutter and have a complete frame.

My gallery available here was shot mainly from the hip.