How To

How to Password Protect a Folder on Mac

Written by John

Keeping files and folders in protected mode may not be pleasing to your relatives, but it is vital to secure sensitive information. Securing information keeps it away from unauthorized access and offers a safe way to send confidential information through the net. There are many ways to password protect a folder on Mac but, we prefer using disk utility.

Password Protect a folder with Disk Utility

Disk utility is a built-in feature in a mac that offers the most efficient free way to protect folders on your Mac by use of passwords. The following are step-by-step directions on how to password protect folders on Mac

1. To open the Disk Utility, go to “Applications” - “Utilities” folder. Double click on “Disk Utility” to launch it.

2. When it opens, click on “File” then click on “New Image” and then click on “Image from Folder”.

3. A window opens up prompting you to select the folder which you want to protect. Select your preferred folder then click on “Open” button.

4. When another window opens, click image format as "read/write" and the encryption as "128-bit AES".

5. Type in your password and verify. When you click on okay, the disk utility creates an encrypted disk image.

To open a protected image, locate the secure image on your Mac and double click on it. Enter the password and then click okay. Once you are through, unmount the disk image so that the files can go back to being password protected.

It is important to delete the original folder after creating the disk image since there is no automatic way of doing it. It is also important to use a secure and memorable password to lock a folder on Mac since once you lose it, you cannot retrieve it and can lead to loss of information.

Third Party Apps

Disk utility offers minimum protection making you miss out on a lot of features from more advanced programs. Hider 2 is a pay program that offers impressive features considering its low cost of $20. It encrypts files within a short period using AES-256 encryption mode. It is capable of securing data from both local and external storage. This is a very efficient system for anyone with storage limitation on their Mac.

Once the installation process of the program on your Mac ends, launch it. It requires one to create a vault whereby you set the password for encrypted file vaults. Once you are through, click on create vault button and your Hider 2 will be ready to use.

Hider 2 has a friendly user interface that makes using it easy to use. By using a single password for the vault, one can access all the encrypted files. It also allows users to categorize files and folders for easy access. It has a search option that lets users search for documents using the file name. In case you want to delete files permanently from your device, you can use the file shredder option offered by Hider 2.

Both disk utility and Hider 2 are vital ways of password protecting files and folders. However, Disk utility is free and does not require any software to secure the data. One disadvantage of using disk utility is that it does not offer any backup options for storing the password. This is different with hider since it allows files and folders to remain in constant size after encryption or decryption. It has an auto lock feature that allows users to set the standby time. Once the set time elapses, the software locks down. One major drawback of hider is that it decrypts files at a slow pace.

Leave a Comment