Photos, tax documents, personal files, and other similar items are perfect candidates for encryption on Mac.Īrchiver and BetterZip are two great apps that do an amazing job of encrypting and compressing files in a wide range of formats. It is one of the best ways to safeguard important documents that you will not need to access often and sensitive personal information that may be stored on an external drive. It is important to compress and encrypt files or folders on your Mac. If changes were made, simply select “Save” at the top left of the BetterZip window to re-save the zipped file or folder.If you are making modifications, such as renaming the file, make the modifications you want.If you are viewing files, just double click the file in the zipped folder to view.In the BetterZip window, select the zip file you want to view or edit.As long as you use BetterZip, you can perform many functions without messing with the compression, and the app has a 'save' feature if you edit documents. The app allows you to view and edit files within a zipped folder or zipped files themselves. BetterZip does not alter the compression of your folder or file. Do not use parentheses.ĭouble-clicking on a folder or file and Terminal are both destructive to their compression, which means that the encrypted file is decompressed after it is opened.

Note: You will need to replace (password) with the password of the encrypted file and (destination folder) should be the folder where the file was saved. Enter this command in Terminal: unzip -P (password) -d (destination folder).Use the 'cd' command mentioned above to change the directory where your zip file is located.If you know the password and just need to view a file, double-click it and enter the password to open the file and unzip it. There are a few key ways to open a password-protected file on your Mac. That's all it takes to create an encrypted and compressed file with Archiver. Enter and verify your password for the zip file.Select the type of archive you want to create.

Select “Archive” at the bottom of the window.

Drag a file or folder to the Archiver application window.While file compression definitely saves you space, Archiver also encrypts and password-protects files.

Password protect zip file mac