Eating at the hide is normal gecko behaviour
Before treating this as a fault, look at it from the gecko's side of the glass. Most pet geckos are dusk hunters built around ambush: they wait in or near cover, let the insect come within range, and strike from a position where nothing can sneak up on them. A gecko that feeds only when prey appears in front of its hide is not being stubborn or spoiled — it is hunting exactly the way its instincts describe, in the one spot where it feels covered enough to commit to the strike. Forcing the issue by dragging it into the open usually produces the opposite of appetite.
Feed the ambush, don't fight it
So work with the pattern. Feed at dusk, when a gecko's hunting day naturally starts, and dim the room light. Use tongs to place the insect — or simply drop it — right at the hide entrance, close enough that the movement registers, then step back and stay still. The movement is the trigger; a motionless insect often goes ignored, while one scuttling past the doorway gets taken. Resist the urge to lift the hide to watch: the whole arrangement works because the gecko feels unseen, and peeling its roof away mid-feed teaches it that the doorway is not safe after all. Offer insects one at a time, and remove anything uneaten once the session ends. Loose crickets left overnight can nibble at a sleeping gecko, which is reason enough on its own to keep feeds supervised and drop-point based.
Widen the comfort zone gradually — and audit the setup
Once hide-door feeding is reliable, you can stretch it — slowly, and only if you want to. Every few feeds, set the prey a fraction farther from the hide: a body-length farther out this week, a little more next week. Geckos learn the geography of safe ground, and the circle widens at their pace, not yours. Meanwhile, check the conditions that decide appetite before blaming temperament. Floor warmth on the warm side — around 88 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit under the warm hide for a leopard gecko — drives digestion and hunting motivation, and a cool gecko is an uninterested one. There should be hides at both the warm and cool ends so the gecko is never choosing between safety and temperature, and an enclosure placed in a low-traffic spot asks far less courage of a shy feeder than one beside a busy doorway. Limit handling around feeding days while confidence is being built.
When shyness becomes a vet question
A preference for the hide is fine; a retreat from food altogether is not. If a gecko that reliably ate at its hide stops entirely for more than a couple of weeks, that change deserves attention. In leopard geckos, read the tail: it is the fat store, and visible thinning while the gecko refuses food is the clearest at-home signal that something is wrong. Stuck shed that will not clear, unusual lethargy, or weight loss alongside the refusal all move the question from feeding technique to a vet who treats reptiles. A newly arrived gecko is the exception to the worry — give a new animal a week or two of quiet, hide-door feeding to settle before judging its appetite at all.
Writing the method into KinsLe's Care Teams — the drop point, the dusk timing, the no-lifting-the-hide rule — means a helper feeds your gecko exactly the way it already trusts, instead of improvising a braver routine.