هذه الوثيقة متاحة باللغتين الإنجليزية والأوكرانية.
How to password-protect an archive on Windows and Mac
Built-in tools can’t properly protect an archive with a password. Here’s why — and how to do it right with strong encryption.
What your system can do
- Windows. File Explorer creates ZIP and 7z archives, but without a password.
- macOS. Terminal has
zip -e -r archive.zip folder. It sets a password, but uses the old ZipCrypto encryption, which can be broken.
How to protect an archive properly
Choose modern 256-bit encryption — without the password the archive can’t be opened. Peak Zip encrypts archives with a 256-bit key (XChaCha20-Poly1305).
- Select your files and create an archive in Peak Zip.
- Set a password.
- Check that the archive opens with that password.
Password tips
- A long phrase of several words is stronger than a short complex password.
- Send the password through a different channel than the archive: the archive by email, the password by messenger.
- Keep the password in a password manager. Without it, nobody can recover the archive — not you, not us.