Apple is committed to privacy and security. Also on your Mac, you have many ways to keep your computer safe, including the ability to encrypt individual files and folders. This prevents others from accessing your files without a password and that is a safe idea. How can you encrypt your folders and files on your Mac? In this article we explain it for you.
You can use FileVault to encrypt the data on your Mac. If you have bought a new Mac, Apple will ask you immediately during installation if you want to use it to encrypt your entire startup disk. If you enable FileVault, your Mac will always ensure that your files are safely stored in the background.
When enabling FileVault, enter a password on, which you’ll always use when you restart your Mac or wake it from sleep. If you ever lose this password, you’ll need to enter the recovery code you get when you set up FileVault. If your Mac is running OS X Yosemite or later, you can use your iCloud account and password instead of the recovery key. So make sure you save at least one of both: if you lose the recovery key or iCloud data, you won’t be able to access your encrypted files again.
If you didn’t enable FileVault when you installed your Mac, you can always do this by going to System Preferences to go and then Security and Privacy to click. Here you can enable or disable FileVault. There could be several reasons why you’d rather have FileVault turned off, such as fear of ever losing your credentials or FileVault always running in the background. The latter can unnecessarily slow down older Macs in particular.
Encrypt folders
If you don’t want to encrypt your entire Mac, but only individual folders, you can. Make sure you have all the relevant files in your folder and go to Disk Utility from Utilities in the map apps. Choose Archive, New disk image and after that Disk copy of folder. Find a folder here to encrypt, put Coding at 128 or 256 bits and password protect the folder.
Encrypt files
It is also possible to lock individual files. This is only possible in Apple apps, such as Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Reports, spreadsheets and presentations can be protected by clicking . in the relevant tool Archive click and then choose Set password.
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