How To Password Protect Files On Mac.
If you store any sensitive files on your Mac, it is highly recommended that you add password protection to your files so that unauthorized users cannot access them. Password protection becomes more useful when other people have access to your Mac.
Your Mac provides you with an easy way to add password protection to your files. There are built-in tools that make it especially easy to password protect your files from prying eyes. Once your files are secured, they need a password before they can be accessed by anyone.
However, remember that if you ever forget the password for your files, you will no longer be able to access them. There is simply no recovery method for these blocking tools.
Password protect Mac files with Disk Utility
Disk Utility actually helps you play around with Mac disks. However, it does have the ability to block files to help you add a password level to your files.
To protect files with a password using this tool, you need to create an image file containing your files and then add a password to it. This locks your files and these files can only be unlocked by entering the correct password.
Make sure to put all the files you want to lock into one folder on your Mac.
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- Click Launchpad in the Dock, search for and click Disk Utility and the tool will launch.
- When the tool runs, click the File menu at the top and select the New Image option and then Image from Folder.
- Go to the folder that contains the files you want to lock, select the folder and click Select.
- A dialog box will appear asking you to enter information for your new image file. Enter a name for the image file and select AES 128-bit encryption (recommended) from the Encryption drop-down menu.
A new dialog box will appear asking you to enter a password for the image file. Here enter the password you want to protect your files with and click “Select”.
You will be returned to the first dialog box. Click the dropdown menu for the aspect ratio and select the value that says read / write. This will allow you to add new files to the password protected image file later. Click the Save button to save the image file.
You will find the locked image file at the location indicated in the dialog.
All files placed in this image will be encrypted with a password.
However, remember that this procedure did not change any of your original files, and they are still unprotected. You can safely remove them from your Mac as they are now available in your locked image file.
How to access password-protected files
To access password protected files, all you have to do is double-click the image file.
You will be prompted for a password. Do this and click OK. It will be installed as a mass storage device in the Finder and you can access it as well as add new files to it.
When you’re done, right-click on the mounted image file and select Extract to re-lock it.
If you ever want to delete these locked files, you can delete the image file and all files in it will be removed from your Mac.
If you ever want to delete these locked files, you can do so by deleting the image file. It will delete all files contained in the image.
Password protect Mac files using Terminal
We talk quite a bit about the Mac Terminal app here on this website and that’s really because of all the great features it provides. Terminal allows you to easily access recent items from the dock and helps you with a variety of other activities.
You can also use it to password protect files. It works like this: you create a zip file containing all your files, and then add a password to that zip file. You don’t need to download anything, and all it takes is a few commands from the Terminal application to lock the files.
- Launch the Terminal application any way you like on your Mac.
- Type the following command and press Enter. Replace the destination with the one where you want to save the resulting ZIP file and the source with the folder you want to lock.
zip -er destination source
- You will be prompted for the password that you want to add to the ZIP file. Enter your password and press Enter.
- You will be prompted to enter your password again. Do this and press Enter.
- Your files in the folder have now been added to a password protected ZIP archive.
Now you can delete the original folder from your computer.
How to access a password protected ZIP archive
To access files inside your archive, simply double-click the archive and you will be prompted for a password.
After that, you can unpack the archive and view the files in it.
How to access the ZIP archive from the terminal
You can also extract a password protected archive from the Terminal by executing the following command in it. Make sure to replace lock.zip with your real ZIP file.
unzip lock.zip
Your files will be extracted and available for use.
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