You can’t use automatic login on a Mac with FileVault.įileVault protects your data at rest, meaning if the Mac is off, sleeping or you are logged out, a password is required to get access. In the future, you’ll have to log into your Mac each time you start it up, and each time you wake it from sleep. And encryption only occurs when the Mac is awake. Your Mac has to be plugged in for the encryption process to advance, so if you have a laptop make sure to connect it to power. You probably won’t notice any performance hit as FileVault encrypts your disk, and, depending on the size of your Mac’s drive, this will take from a few hours to overnight.
Click the padlock to make changes, then click Turn On FileVault….From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.A simple password (“1234,” or “password1,” etc.) is easy to guess and will allow anyone to log in, thus bypassing FileVault protection. It is important to use a strong password to secure your user account, because that password not only gives you access to your account, but it also unlocks your drive. Using FileVault to Encrypt Your Startup DriveįileVault, the built-in full-disk encryption feature in macOS, is a robust way to encrypt the contents of your entire startup drive. But you should also set a password to protect your Mac when the screensaver is active, and you can set a firmware password to prevent someone from starting up your Mac from an external drive.
The best way to prevent unauthorized access to your data is to encrypt your startup drive.
Best of all, you can do this with built-in software and features that are part of macOS. To protect your sensitive data, you should use encryption and password protection wherever possible macOS provides you with a number of ways to implement it.
How To How to Encrypt and Password Protect Files on Your Mac