IS FAT32 Possible ON macOS Ventura 13.5?

theconstantgardener wrote:

Thanks for the suggestion, but as you can see from the attachment that accompanies my post, it does NOT give the options you're suggesting; it only gives APFS options.

You don’t have show all devices selected. Yes, the partition tab will work because it works at the device level, not the volume level. If you said it to show all devices, you can then erase the device.

You are better off formatting it on the device where you are using it.

To format it with Disk Utility, select Show all Devices from the View popup menu, then erase the card. Use MBR partition map and MS-DOS format.

theconstantgardener wrote:

In trying to password protect my flash drive, I used the only format available to me on my macOS Ventura 13.5, APFS (Encrypt). Now I cannot use my flash drive with memory zone on my Android phone; neither can I reformat the drive in anything else. Please, what can I do?

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/d48fdde5-d207-4989-8002-3a2aea68f5e3

You can try reformatting in a camera or some other device if giving you an issue...

What I see on a USB

ref: Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac

Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support

If you are using this drive on your Android phone, then you would need an app on your phone to encrypt & decrypt the drive. That drive may only be usable on your Android phone using that software. If that app is available for other operating systems, or if that app uses an open form of encryption, then you may be able to access the data on the drive using other devices. Be extremely cautious of any third party apps you install to your phone or other devices...many of them may not be safe or even reliable....do diligent research beyond app rankings.

FYI, APFS is an Apple only, Apple specific file system. While there may be third party drivers available for accessing an APFS volume using other devices, I would not want to rely on them. Apple only recently released technical details on the APFS file system...so I would still be wary of using any third party apps to write to an APFS volume. I'm doubtful a third party app would be able to access an encrypted APFS volume.

theconstantgardener wrote:

It always has Show all devices checked off under view. Is there a way to password protect a flash drive that is FAT32 formatted?

Not natively with macOS. The only way to protect it would be encryption and then your device wouldn’t be able to use it.

Encryption and password protection are not features of FAT32. If you have some application to encrypt and decrypt data, you could use it with files stored on a FAT32 drive, but such an application may be platform-specific.

I suspect that encryption is not a feature of the FAT32 file system. (A Google search confirms this.)

Yes, FAT is available:

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