How to encrypt a file on mac os x

There are many tools to encrypt files in OS X. GUI applications that do this can be priced quite high. Unfortunately, OS X itself doesn't have many ways to encrypt a file, but there are two native ways of doing this.

Method: Encrypted DMG file or. A DMG file, which is short for "disk image", can be used as a container to store one or more files. It uses AES-256 encryption which is considered very strong.

To encrypt a DMG file in OS X, you must go to the following path: / Applications / Utilities / Disk Utility.app.

Open the Disk Utility application

Go to the app's File menu and select New Image> Empty Image.

In the pop-up that appears, choose a name for the file and in the encryption category choose 256-bit AES encryption.

As soon as you choose encryption, you will be asked to enter a password. Try to have at least 12 characters.

After selecting the volume size, you can leave the rest of the elements as is.

Click save. On your desktop you will see the DMG file and also the mounted volume that you have created. You will be able to drag the files you want encrypted on this volume, and then unmount it.

To access the encrypted data, double-click the DMG file, enter the password and the volume will be unmounted, giving you access to your original files.

Remember not to check the box for the system to save your password because then anyone with access to your Mac can easily decrypt the DMG with a double click.

We recommend reading our tutorials for Windows and computing.