Filevault on Mac

Hey guys, is Mack heads in the one with the video on something called File Vault?

If you don't already know, File Vault is a feature on the Mac that allows you to protect everything you do on your Mac using encryption. That way, the only way to access it is by using your password.

So first of all, let me go over what encryption is. Some of you may know that it's very hard to actually protect your data on the Mac because if you hold Command + S while turning on the Mac, then it'll go into single-user mode. If you take out the hard drive, then you can have a hard drive and put it into another computer and see the files on it. So it's hard to actually securely protect your data on the back. But not really, actually.

What encryption is, is basically it's a way of encoding data. The physically only way of getting the data back is by using the password. File Vault is Apple's system of what it does exactly. When you log into the user that's protected with File Vault, it decrypts everything. It uses your password that you type in in the login window to essentially put all your files there. Then when you log out, it re-encrypts your files so they're no longer there.

So let me show you how to enable File Vault and how to create a user that specifically uses File Vault. File Vault may slow down your computer. If you're a big terminal user, you might not like it that much. So I don't intend on turning it on this way. You can just go into System Preferences, click Security, File Vault, and then check Turn on File Vault. I don't suggest doing it that way.

You might also want to set your master password that you'll need an admin account to even set in the first place. Your master password is the password that will essentially be able to be a backdoor into the encryption. So say your brother also uses this computer and it's impossible to get to his files because he has File Vault on. If you know the master password, you will still be able to get his files.

So there we go. It says File Vault protection is on for this account, but on other accounts, it's not necessarily on. Here's what I did. I have another account on my computer, Alex Nichol. That's the one I normally use and it doesn't have File Vault enabled. So what you might want to do is create a new user and check Turn on File Vault protection when you're creating a new user. Then you'll be able to log in as that new user and have everything you do password protected.

This doesn't mean you can't have an account that you do stuff like, say you're buying someone a birthday present and you want there to be no trace of what you've done. You can use File Vault.

So let's take a look at how File Vault works under the hood. Right here, my home directory is /Users/Viable. Confront Terminal while I'm logged in to this user and I type ls, it'll give me things like documents, downloads, movies, etc. But here's how it actually works. Basically, all these files are really stored in something called a sparse bundle.

A sparse bundle is kind of like a DMG, and you know how you can encrypt a DMG? That's pretty much exactly like File Vault. So if I log out, then all that will be in /Users/File Vault is a sparse bundle. That will get mounted when I log back in.

You can see my little user icon right here. If I zoom in on it, it's a little safe thing that basically means that this user has File Vault on it. In my opinion, File Vault is just one of the greatest things that I've ever used. Because with File Vault, you can really protect your stuff and it's harder to get to.

Let's say you're a big programmer for a big company and you don't want anyone else getting the company's source code that you're typing. That's what you use File Vault for.

So anyway, this is how to use File Vault. Thanks for watching, back hands, and subscribe and get back.