Click the padlock to make changes, then click Turn On FileVault….From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.
A simple password (“1234,” or “password1,” etc.) is easy to guess and will allow anyone to log in, thus bypassing FileVault protection. It is important to use a strong password to secure your user account, because that password not only gives you access to your account, but it also unlocks your drive. Using FileVault to Encrypt Your Startup DriveįileVault, the built-in full-disk encryption feature in macOS, is a robust way to encrypt the contents of your entire startup drive. But you should also set a password to protect your Mac when the screensaver is active, and you can set a firmware password to prevent someone from starting up your Mac from an external drive. The best way to prevent unauthorized access to your data is to encrypt your startup drive. Encrypt System Data and Your Startup DriveĮncrypt System Data and Your Startup Drive.This article covers five areas where you can encrypt or password protect files:
Best of all, you can do this with built-in software and features that are part of macOS. To protect your sensitive data, you should use encryption and password protection wherever possible macOS provides you with a number of ways to implement it.
You’re all done.How To How to Encrypt and Password Protect Files on Your Mac Step 2: Click and hold the file and choose Uncompress. Step 1: Click the Files application and locate the file in question. You’ll need to complete a few more steps to uncompress the files on your cellphone or tablet. Swapping files between macOS and iOS devices is tricky but unavoidable. Then, switch your permissions to Read & Write or Read Only and try compressing the file once more. If you’re not an administrator, click the Lock button and log in with administrator credentials. Any other settings may prevent you from compressing the file. Step 3: Check that your specific account is set as an administrator and that your permissions are Read & Write or Read Only. Step 2: Click the arrow beside Sharing & Permissions to open this choice, as displayed above. Step 1: Right-click or select Control + Tap on the file you want, and choose Get Info from the resulting menu. You can change file permissions by following these steps: Perhaps you cannot compress files because file permissions aren’t letting you. MacOS has engineered a handy system of organization in which you can find decompressed files and zip files in the same newly created folder.
Unzipping software like The Unarchiver is also available to use if your computer doesn’t have a set unzipping feature that you can default to.
Your zip file will open automatically with a click of your mouse or touchpad.Īlternatively, right-click or press Control + Tap on a zip file, hover over Open With on the pop-up menu, and then choose Archive Utility.
There’s nothing complicated about unzipping a zip file. This is useful if you need to create multiple zip files or to make it easier for the recipient to know what’s in the archive. Step 3: To rename the default Archive.zip file name, simply right-click or press Control + Tap on the archive and select Rename. As before, the original files remain intact. Step 2: Right-click or press Control + Tap and select Compress on the pop-up menu.Ī new, single archive will appear in the folder. Alternatively, press the Command button while tapping the trackpad or while clicking the mouse button to select specific files. Step 1: Hold down the mouse button or trackpad to draw a box around all the files you want to compress. Right-click or press Control + Tap on a file you want to compress and select Compress on the pop-up menu.Īs shown below, a new zip file appears in the same folder, while the original file remains. How to create a zip file on a MacĬreating a zip file on a Mac is quick and easy, as MacOS includes a built-in tool called Archive Utility for compressing and unzipping files. When you download a compressed file, you will need to extract the contents - or “unzip” them - in order to access them. Another popular form of compressed, or archived, data is RAR. Compression can also permanently remove unnecessary bits, albeit at the cost of a perfect replica (lossy). Compression can temporarily remove redundancies in the files, which can then be re-created (lossless). Zip files are a way to compress your data to make it more compact and quicker to transfer. If you want to secure your zip files with a password, we have a guide for that too.
Thanks to this guide, you’ll become a pro at zipping and unzipping files between your Mac, iPad, and iPhone in no time.