How to Password-Protect Files or Folders on a Mac

Sometimes you may be working on sensitive documents and other files that you don’t want to see with the naked eye. The best way to prevent other users from accessing your files on your computer is to password protect them.

Shutterstock Password Protect Documents FoldersPassword protect individual documents or groups of folders with built-in Mac features | shutter

Many people don’t know this, but it’s possible to password protect individual documents and larger groups of files on your Mac (and on other platforms). Individual documents can be password-protected with the hide feature in Pages, while a bunch of files can reside in a password-protected drive stored right on your Mac. That’s right, these features are available without any software or purchase.

Protect personal documents with pages

If you don’t care about password protection for large groups of files or anything beyond standard documents, you can use Apple’s Pages app to get the job done for individual files. Pages is Apple’s word processor that comes with every Mac, so there’s no need to spend money on software like Microsoft Word.

Page Add Password Document

In Pages, simply start a new document or open an existing one. Before you are about to close or save it, click Document in the menu bar. Then mouse down Set password… and click it.

Password setting page Save

This will prompt you to create a password for this document. Enter the same password in Verification field. While this is only an option, you should also offer a password hint in case you forget your password. Once you’re done, you won’t be able to return to this document without knowing the password.

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Password Document Open Page

When you’re ready, click Set password. You’ll notice after saving the document and locating it in the Finder, the icon now has a lock on it to indicate that it’s password protected. When you try to open it in the future, you will be prompted for the password you set.

Note: Without the document password, no one can view or change your document with one exception. You can rename documents in Finder without a password. The document’s contents continue to be inaccessible even after renaming, but note that the document title itself can always be changed.

Create a password-protected disk image

To password protect large groups of files, different file types, or multiple folders, you’re better off just creating a large password-protected disk image to store everything in. This is essentially the same as creating a virtual hard drive that works on your actual. Hard Drive. No need to plug in any external devices.

Note: Make sure you have some free space left for the disk image before creating it. The number you need depends on how many files you want to store. If you just need to store documents, think megabytes. In general, around 100MB should do the trick. If you need to protect groups of images or videos with a password, 1 GB or 2 GB storage might be an alternative.

New Image drive utility

To create a password protected image you will need to use Disk Utility app on your Mac. Open it from Applications in Finder or just search for it using Spotlight. From here, click Document in the menu bar, New image And after that Blank image… This will create a blank image from scratch.

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Disk utility image details

Name your disk image and choose a location to store it. Then below the main fields you have options to customize it. Enter the size in the appropriate field. (If you’re not sure about the size, try 100MB now and see how it works for you.) Keep the format to default. OS X Extended (Journaled).

For encryption type, select 128-bit AES encryption (recommended) select. You’ll be prompted to set your password here, so choose a password that’s secure but easy enough to remember.

Disk image password

Then keep everything else as is: “Single partition – GUID Partition Map” for partition and “read/write disk image” for Image format.

Disk image prompt

Now, you’ll want to open your disk image by double-clicking on Finder and entering your password. Move any files or folders you want to protect to a disk image. Click Push out in the Finder sidebar when you’re done.

Safe enough?

The next time you want to access these files, the disk image will ask you to enter the password first. Join us in the forums if you have questions.

Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/

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