PGP for Windows, MacOS and linux. Desktop application to encrypt and decrypt PGP files. It's free and easy to use. OpenPGP compatible. You are here: Home / Mac / Using PGP Email Encryption on macOS. With macOS using PGP and send encrypted emails with Mail.app or any other email client. Open source project based on Pretty Good Privacy or PGP.

As the corporate use of private data grows, consumers are more and more interested in protecting the content of their sensitive communications. Many messenger apps offer end-to-end communication, but email remains the most popular method of communication. It’s also the most resilient to being shut down: while Iran is able to shut down Telegram country-wide, shutting down email would be both extremely difficult and prohibitively heavy-handed. Email encryption keeps messages safe from prying eyes.

For countries with heavy internal surveillance, email encryption is a necessity. Without email encryption, your emails can be spied on by any interested observer. They are sent completely unencrypted, and without additional encryption along the pathway of the message, nothing will be hidden. This article will show how you can encrypt your emails with macOS using PGP and send encrypted emails with Mail.app or any other email client.

Download and Install GPGTools

Download and install GPG Suite from the GPG Tools website. GPG Tools is a long-running open source project based on Pretty Good Privacy or PGP. It’s a reliable source, but you can see for yourself by reviewing the code on their GitHub page.

Generate Your Key Pair

A key pair includes a public and private key. The public key is shared with people who want to contact you. Use your private key to “unlock” received emails. Keep the private key private to ensure your encrypted communications stay secure.

1. The first time you open GPG Suite, you’ll be prompted to generate a key pair. You can also click the “New” icon in the toolbar to start the key pair creation process.

2. Type in the name and email address associated with the email saved in your Mac’s Mail.app. If you’re not using Mail, type in the email address that you’ll use in another client.

3. Create a complex passphrase. You’ll type your passphrase to decrypt encrypted communication. You can use online tools to generate a random passphrase if you can’t think of a good one. Click “Generate Key” when you’re ready.

4. To help GPG create a random key pair, move your mouse around the screen to generate entropy.

Get Public Keys

Before you can send encrypted email to anyone, you’ll need a copy of their public key. With a public key, you can encrypt your email so that only the mathematically associated private key can decrypt it. It’s a two-part process, and you’ll need the public part.

Search public keyservers for shared public keys

1. Click the “GPG Keychain” menu in the menubar and choose “Preferences.”

2. Click the drop-down menu to select a keyserver. This menu can be a little buggy, unfortunately, meaning you may need to select the keyserver multiple times to get it to “go through” properly.

3. Now that you’ve set a keyserver to search, click “Lookup Key” in GPG Keychain or press Command + F to search by recipient name.

4. Check the box next to the most recent recipient key, or the one associated with the email address you want to use. Then click “Retrieve Key” to add that recipient’s public key to your keychain.

Send encrypted e-mails in Mail

With the recipient’s email addresses saved in your GPG Keychain, you can now send them encrypted emails in Mail without much more fuss.

1. Open Mail.app and Compose a new email. Look for the green icon in the upper right. That indicates that OpenPGP is installed and functional within the application.

2. In the “To:” field, type in an email address associated with a public key in your GPG Keychain.

3. Make sure the lock icon turns blue to indicate encryption is functional.

If it doesn’t change, click the icon. If it still doesn’t change, make sure you’ve typed the email address correctly and that you have that specific email address and domain saved in your GPG Keychain.

The check icon next to the lock indicates that you signed the email with your public key. This verifies that the email came from you and was not altered in transit.

Using Other Apps

You can also use other applications to send an email. Encrypt the text of the email with GPG in a text editor, then send that encrypted block in your preferred email client.

Setting up your context menu

1. Open Keyboard in System Preferences and click the “Shortcuts” tab.

2. Click on “Services” in the menu on the left.

3. Scroll down to the “Text” section of the services menu, and look for the services prefixed by OpenPGP. They’re in alphabetical order. Airbeamtv license key.

4. Tick the boxes next to the following:

• OpenPGP: Decrypt Selection
• OpenPGP: Encrypt Selection
• OpenPGP: Sign Selection

You can turn off the other OpenPGP services to keep your context menu tidy.

Composing and Encrypting Email

Before you begin, make sure you have your recipient’s PGP key downloaded in GPG Keychain.

1. Write the text of your email in your email client or text editing window.

2. Select the text of your email. Right-click and choose “OpenPGP: Sign Selection” from the “Services” menu.

3. Select everything, including the PGP key at the bottom of your email. Right-click and choose “OpenPGP: Encrypt Selection” from the “Services” menu.

4. Choose the recipient from your keychain.

5. Send the entire text block to the recipient.

Decrypting Emails

Decrypt emails outside Mail with GPGTools’ context menu tools.

1. Copy the encrypted text into a plain text editor like TextEdit.

2. Select the entire text of the encrypted email, including —BEGIN PGP MESSAGE— and —END PGP MESSAGE—.

3. Right-click on the encrypted text and choose “OpenPGP: Decrypt Selection” from the “Services” menu.

4. Enter your passphrase to decrypt the email.

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Encryption and Security go hand in hand for any system. If you’re concerned about your mac security or want to save yourself from Advertisers who are always trying to target you with annoying ads, it’s necessary to have a mac encryption software of service but there are different services for different needs.
How to choose the right one for yourself. Today, we will be helping you in choosing the best Mac Encryption software suited to your needs.

Best Mac Encryption Software:

• MD5 for Mac:

MD5 for Mac lets you create an MD5 checksum for files that you want to encrypt. It is fairly easy to use software that lets you create checksums by Graphical User Interface instead of complicated commands.

When working with single files you can get the checksum from a file, you can compare the file with the checksum, or you can compare a couple of files. Under the hood, MD5 uses Mac OS X’s md5 command line utility.

• SurfEasy VPN

Surfeasy VPN supports 5 simultaneous connections for browsing or sending sensitive information over the internet. The software is a full proof solution to hide your identity and data from your ISP and hackers.

You can access the blocked websites and content while on the VPN and provides Wifi Hotspot protection. You can surf the web anonymously without being targeted for advertisements.

• LockDown

Lockdown is a file encryption software for your privacy on Mac. It was developed by Northern Softworks and offers all necessary options for protection of your data and information. This mac encryption software is available for free and has a very clean interface to work on.

You can set triggers for specific functions and the software triggers and alarm if any of the triggers is turned off. It locks down your keyboard, Touchpad and other function in case of discrepancy and you can take a picture using the iSight Camera.

• No More Cookies

Cookies are the files that are left by a website on your browser to track your usage. The Websites leave cookies in the text file format and cookies can help monitor websites your behaviour and usage to serve you ads. While cookies are good in some cases, mostly they are intruders trying to access your privacy to provide you targeted ads.

No more cookies is a free software trying to solve this problem for you. It lets you create roles for the cookies and wipes them according to rules. It gives you data for when cookies were left on your browser and the time they are accessed at. It doesn’t block cookies from being installed in the first place, though.

• Tunnel Bear

Tunnel Bear is a VPN client for your Mac that encrypts all the connections getting out from your Mac to give you a private browsing experience. The encryption safeguards you from data breaches and other things.

The TunnelBear adds up as an icon in your Finder bar and you can turn it on and off as you like. You can select the country that you’d like to choose while browsing and it does the rest of the job. Free model of Tunnel Bear gives you up to 500 MB of data while you can stream unlimited data on the paid version.

• GPG Suite

GPG Suite is a free package for your Mac with the aim of providing you secure communication protocols. You can use GPG Suite to encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify files or messages. GPG Suite contains Plugins for your mail, keychain, and all other major applications.

You can use the GPG services for increasing the security of any app on your Mac. GPG is powered by the MacGPG suite. You can use the suite to the fullest if you can garner the power of command line in the terminal on your Mac.

• PGP for Mac OS X

PGP or Pretty Good Privacy for Mac is a way to protect your email communications from falling in the wrong hands. You have to install an agent to use the software and it encrypts all your mails sent to the user.

You get a key and digital signature on getting the tool which you will use to decrypt the emails received by the other user and signature to prove your identity. In order to use the software, both the sender and receiver of the email should have the email client installed on their Mac.

• FileVis

FileVis for Mac is a paid software that helps you hide your files and folders from others on your Mac. You can simply use the software to make your files invisible on a Mac with the help of a password and you can access the files again by visiting the software and choosing the files to make visible.

• Data Guardian for Mac

Data Guardian allows you to secure all your passwords, documents, files, credit card information and allotted crucial data inside a database that’s strongly encrypted. A floating window follows you to let you fill password in the fields required. The database is flexible and you can use it interchangeably for Windows and Mac both.

Your database is automatically saved every few seconds to prevent in case of a crash on your Mac. Data Guardian uses blowfish 448 encryption to save all your data.

• Encrypt this:

Encrypt This is a Universal Binary AppleScript application for Mac OS X that takes all the files and folders you drag onto the Encrypt This icon and creates an AES 128-bit encrypted .dmg disk image file which contains those files and folders. You are asked to create a passphrase which is then used to encrypt the files and only the passphrase can decrypt files in the future.

• MacFort

All the data for applications is stored inside application folder on your Mac. The folder is crucial for your data and so is its security. MacFort scans your Mac for all such files and then ask you which files you want to lock. It can also help you free up space on your Mac by moving your iTunes and iPhone file to an external drive.