If you're on Windows, you might think, but why?
Well, Mac doesn't offer a GUI interface for password protecting zips.
Yes, bizarre, right?
We can right-click a file/folder and compress it into a zip.
But we can, by using our best friend The Terminal password, protect our zip files!
Using terminal to password protect zip files on Mac
So let's open our favourite terminal program (mine is iTerm2) and enter the following command.
zip -er ~/Desktop/super_secure.zip ~/Desktop/secure.csv
The parameters are as follows:
-
zip- The actual zip command -
-er- Encrypt Recursive -
~/Desktop/super_secure.zip- Output zip name -
~/Desktop/secure.csv- Input file/folder
Once we run this, we get prompted to type a password.
You don't see any input on these password fields!
Press enter, and you need to verify the password.
We now created a secure zip.
If we try to open this zip, we see the following prompt.
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Top comments (7)
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That seems like more steps, and mac runs unix so I even think these commands will work
Yes, it was a bit of a "mac bad linux good" joke. GPG-Signed tarballs aren't exactly user-friendly anyway, though they come with their own advantages (like signing, optional asymmetric cryptography, etc.)
Yup, on Windows I just normally use 7zip for this 😉
Yep way easier on Windows 🤦♂️
Does Windows provide a built-in archiver with password protection?
I know there external apps that do it, but there are a couple for MacOS as well (even a free one, Keka: keka.io/en/)
I thought it came default, but to be honest not 100% sure?
Indeed there are third-party apps that do the same.