Really surprised this basic function is not built into Mac OS. I know I can create a .dmg disk image with encryption, but I mainly deal with Windows users you may freak out about (or may not be able to handle) .dmg files.
Stuffit does not seem to be updating regularly, and I really don't want to send them yet more money.
Anyone know a simple & dependable app for doing this simple job? Thanks in advance!
MacBook
One must open Terminal, and apply the zip [-e | --encrypt] argument to the zip file. The zip utility will prompt for a password, and as you enter it, nothing will echo to the Terminal screen. The --encrypt uses the weaker PKZip 2.0 encryption, but interoperability with Windows.
zip -e foo.zip foo.txt
This results in a password protected zip file containing foo.txt. If you double-click this zip file on macOS, a password challenge will appear before it can be unzipped. On Windows 10 1903, a password challenge window will appear when one attempts to extract this same zip file.
One must open Terminal, and apply the zip [-e | --encrypt] argument to the zip file. The zip utility will prompt for a password, and as you enter it, nothing will echo to the Terminal screen. The --encrypt uses the weaker PKZip 2.0 encryption, but interoperability with Windows.
zip -e foo.zip foo.txt
This results in a password protected zip file containing foo.txt. If you double-click this zip file on macOS, a password challenge will appear before it can be unzipped. On Windows 10 1903, a password challenge window will appear when one attempts to extract this same zip file.
I guess it should be possible to make a little Automator app that uses the command line behind the scenes to do this?
Thanks for the super-quick reply! But that's very unMac-like: Apple should have that super-simple function as an option on the contextual menu.
A quick look at AppleStore showed a few apps that might do it, but they tended to look dodgy/non-maintained...
But again, I appreciate the reply...
Password-protecting a .zip file
