"What is the best app to password protect pictures on my Photos? I have a MacBook Pro and I need to make sure all my photos on Photos are locked or they cannot be viewed. Thus I may fell rest to lend my Mac to others. Will somebody tell me how to lock these photos or the Photos app with password on Mac to set access restrictions? Do I need look for a photo locker app? " From an anonymous user.
As a Mac user, I always transfer my iPhone photos to Mac for backup, so there are a lot of privacy photos on my Mac. I guess most of Mac users don’t want anyone to open the Photos app to see privacy photos while using his or her Mac. And many users always worry about his or her child deleting photos mistakenly on Mac. Actually, we can move all photos to one folder and use Mac built-in Disk Utility to password protect the folder, but this is tedious. Password protecting the Photos app is a much easier way to satisfy what you need. So is there any way to lock Mac apps like Photos without locking Mac screen or the whole photos folder? In this article, we will show you two ways to password protect Photos app on Mac.
It Is Imperative to Keep Your Photos from Prying Eyes
Approximately 90,000 photos and 9,000 videos were leaked in the form of a massive 13.6 GB file that was then posted on viralpop.com, a site created exclusively to host the cache of personal photos. Much like its namesake, “The Fappening” (which claimed a variety of celebrities as victims) and “the Snappening” (the Snapchat equivalent of photo hacks), these leaks have raised serious concerns regarding personal privacy and corporations’ ability to protect private information. From Attn.
On August 31, 2014, a collection of almost 500 private pictures of various celebrities, mostly women, and with many containing nudity, were posted on the imageboard 4chan, and later disseminated by other users on websites and social networks such as Imgur and Reddit. The images were believed to have been obtained via a breach of Apple's cloud services suite iCloud. Apple later confirmed that the hackers responsible for the leak had obtained the images by phishing iCloud usernames and passwords. From Wikipedia.
After all these photo leakage events happened, many users may not post their photos on various photos websites or platforms that can store photos, they choose to store their photos on Mac. But is it really safe to store photos on Mac? That may not be. Everyone around you can see your photos when using your Mac. So it is imperative to lock your Photos app to keep your Mac photos from prying eyes. When you lock the Photos app, no one can view your photos. You can follow below two methods to lock your Photos app on Mac.
Method 1.Create a password for Photos app with Mac Parental Controls
Mac Parental Controls are Apple's user management system for controlling which system functions and applications are available to a managed user. Using Parental Controls preferences, you can prevent user accounts from accessing inappropriate content on Internet or apps and manage, monitor, control the time the users spend on the Mac, the websites they visit, the apps they access and the people they chat with. So once you set up Parental Controls, you can also set access restrictions on Photos app.
Step 1. Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Parental Controls. Click the lock icon 
to unlock it, then enter your administrator name and password.
Step 2. Select a user, then click Enable Parental Controls. If there is no user in the list, click Add + button , then fill in the name, account, and password information to create a new user.
Step 3. After you select a user, click “Apps” of the tabs along the top. Check “Limit Applications”. And choose the app you want the user to access, so please unselect Photos app when you don’t want to others to see your privacy photos.
Step 4. At last, don’t forget to click 
button to prevent further changes. This can help improve Mac security and privacy.
Mac Parental Controls can not be enabled for administrator accounts. So when you lend your Mac to others, you have to change your user account. If you are working or learning with the administrator account and leave the Mac for a while, there are some possibility that someone can open Photos and view your privacy pictures on your Mac. But don’t worry, there is a more powerful way to lock your Photos app no matter which user account you are using. Just check Method two.
Method 2. Password protect Photos app on Mac with AppCrypt
AppCrypt is one of the best app locker for Mac that will help you to safely lock applications like Photos, Contacts, Google, Quicken, iPhoto, iTunes, Safari, Mail, YouTube, etc. It allows you to set just one password to lock individual, multiple or all apps on your Mac to safeguard them from access by unauthorized users and helps you get information when someone tries to access your locked apps. You can also set a schedule for each app (or all apps) to allow unblocked usage for specific days and times. Download this Photos locker app below and follow below steps to see how it locks Photos app for you.
Download free trial of AppCrypt for Mac!
Step 1. Install and launch AppCrypt on Mac. Then AppCrypt will ask you to set a password which will be used to access the blocked Mac apps and change AppCrypt settings. Just set a password which is easy to remember, for that the AppCrypt password will not be retrieved.
Step 2. AppCrypt will lock four system applications by default. Click OK to confirm and click “Add App” on the top menu bar to add the Photos app. And the Photos app will be listed on the left column. Once you add the Photos app to the block list, all pictures in it will be protected with the AppCrypt password. If you don’t want to lock the Photos app anymore, just click “Remove App” to remove it.
AppCrypt is 100% safe to use and user-friendly. It will not modify any Mac system or application files. You can lock all your apps with one password. By the way, the free trial version of this Photos locker app always allows you to lock one app without expiring date.
7 Responses
I love Cisdem AppCrypt. It makes everything much faster and easier. Hope to develop more features in future.
6 months ago REPLYReally amazing app. Gave me exactly what I wanted. :)
9 months ago REPLYI was going to consider buy the AppCrypt but then I noticed that it's so easy for anybody to just close eject the Appcrypt and then they can by pass typing a password. That's a flaw or am I missing something here
1 years ago REPLYDear Ra God Bz,The only one reason why ejecting AppCrypt without password is that you have removed one of the four system applications which include Activity Monitor, System Preferences, Console and Terminal from the block list.
1 years ago REPLYI noticed that AppCrypt has been updated to v3.0, it is wonderful. I bought this app before, so i can update the app to the new version without any cost. Thanks.
1 years ago REPLYI have many apps that i want to lock. I tried appcrypt, it really worked, i am going to buy one lifetime license.
1 years ago REPLYI have some private photos in my Mac, i really hate someone seeing my photos,but my brother always does so. AppCrypt pulls me out of the dilemma. Thanks.
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