Security Byte: How to password protect sensitive image files on Mac

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Let’s say you have a screenshot of sensitive information on the desktop you want to password-protect. Images such as taxes, banks, wire transfer forms can be easily viewed by anyone who has physical or remote access to the machine, but they don’t know how to protect them. Unfortunately, MacOS Preview doesn’t support file-level password protection, but there’s a quick workaround that downloads things that don’t require third-party software or that don’t already have on your Mac.

Method 1: Overkill using diskutility

This first method can be a bit overkill if you are trying to protect just a handful of graphics files. It includes creating an encrypted virtual disk using discussion. To do this, you can collect screenshots (documents are evenly documented) and place them in a folder. After this, I head to finder > application > Discality. I’ll go with discussion file > New images > image From the folder, select the folder location you want to encrypt.

From here you can title your virtual disk (via DMG file) and choose its location, level of encryption (up to AES-256 encryption), and image format. For the latter, we recommend choosing read/write. This allows you to add or remove files later. The compression selected by default compresses content and saves space, but is read-only. I successfully created an encrypted DMG file containing all my private content. The downside of this method is that you need to mount and mount the virtual disk each time.

Don’t worry. There’s another solution that’s less clicking and can be done in seconds…

Method 2: Quick use of preview

Enter a preview. yes. By converting graphics files to PDF, you can unlock the convenient password feature tacked to your settings and turn the image into an encrypted password protected PDF. This takes just a few seconds.

Below are some important tax information that we use to estimate quarterly taxes: But I don’t want it to sit on my desktop and not have that information clear. Even the preview icons provide sensitive details.

Of course, you can try the old security thru violation trick here and give the file a completely unrelated name Cook-Recipes.pngbut at the end of the day, it is still unsecured. Why take risks? After all, in the rate threat, actors are adopting new AI technologies. Regardless of the name, it’s only a matter of time before you sift through the file.

1. Right-click in preview to open it

Right-click the image you want to password protect, hover with Open and select Preview. Presumably, preview is already the default, so just a double-click and you can open it in Apple’s trusted image viewer. Understood, next…

2. Export the graphic file as a PDF

Next, I’ll go file > Export as PDF.

Then give the file a name, select the machine location, and click detail > authority To provide more options, including those that add passwords to files.

3. Apply the password to the PDF file… Done!

check “A password is required to open a document” Box and enter your password. Additionally, on this screen, you will need to enter the owner’s password even if you do not plan to share the file and your permissions are not checked. You can enter the same password here.

Click (Apply) and then click “Save” to see the new encrypted PDF in the saved location.

that’s it! You can now delete unprotected files and empty the Trash bin.

Next, click on the newly created PDF to view the content and you will be prompted to enter your password.

Unlike Diskutility, which uses AES-256-bit encryption, Preview uses AES-128 when encrypting password-protected PDFs. This does not necessarily mean that the files are so secure here. The AES-128 generates 128-bit key sizes and still offers a huge number of important combinations, making brute force attempts almost impossible. Unless you have a very popular government secret, it’s enough encryption against common threats.

Overall, this method may seem a little long at first, but after doing it a few times, you can create a PDF of these locked, sensitive images in seconds. enjoy.

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