100% offlineNo accountNo cloud

An ordinary file outside.
Your private drive inside.

Subfile password-protects photos, documents and videos in an encrypted drive on your Mac. Keep it standalone — or write it into a file you already have. That file still plays, still opens, still looks like what it is, until you type your password.

Buy for Mac — $39 once See how it works

PRIVATE4 items

contracts/12 items

seed-phrase.txt24 words

passport.pdf2.1 MB

id-scan.jpg840 KB

iceland-2025.jpg4.2 MB

Encrypt & hide files on Mac

A vault is a dot in the noise. The carrier still plays.

Two ways to stay private

Create a private vault.
Keep it standalone — or hide it inside an ordinary file.

iceland-2025.mp4

04:12 / 12:07H.264 · 3840×2160 · 4.21 GB4.21 GB

87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5 0f 29 43 6d 87 a1 cb e5

SEALED

The file still opens as itself. Everything else is behind the password. Type any password — this demo has nothing to protect.

Hide inside a file

Turn a photo, a video or an audio file into a private encrypted vault. It still opens, still plays, still looks like what it is — your files are only there once you type the password.

carrier: jpg · png · mp4 · mov · wav · flac
locked: the same file it always was
unlocked: your folders, inside Subfile

How it works

Three steps. No manual.
Password-protect a folder in about thirty seconds.

No volumes, no partitions, no cipher menus. You pick a file, you drop things in, you set a password. That is the entire product.

iceland-2025.mp4

Pick a carrier file

A video, a photo, an audio file or a plain container of your own. Subfile writes the encrypted vault into it and leaves the original playable.

carrier = iceland-2025.mp4 · 4.21 GB · H.264

Contracts

Unreleased

Passports

Drop your files in

Drag folders straight from Finder. Everything is encrypted before it ever touches the carrier — nothing is written in the clear, not even temporarily.

sealed 1 237 files · 0 bytes plaintext on disk

PRIVATEunlocked

Contracts

Unreleased

Passports

Open it in Subfile

Type your password and the vault opens in Subfile’s own file browser. Move things in and out, then close it. Idle for five minutes and it locks itself.

PRIVATE open · 4 folders · auto-lock 5m

Security

Actually,
it is not crackable.
Real file encryption.

Military-grade encryption: XChaCha20-Poly1305 and Argon2id, exactly as designed. A trillion guesses a second still runs past the death of the sun.

servers involved. Turn off networking entirely and every feature still works.

Under the hood

cipher: xchacha20-poly1305
kdf: argon2id · m=128MiB t=4 p=1
integrity: per-block AEAD + blake3 header
keys: derived per vault · never stored

Offline by design

No servers exist. Nothing to breach, nothing to subpoena, nothing to shut down.

No account, ever

No email, no licence server phone-home, no telemetry in the app at all.

Nothing written in the clear

Files are encrypted in memory before they reach disk. No plaintext temp directory.

Open container format

The format is documented, so you are never locked into one app. Opening a vault still takes your password.

No password recovery

There is no backdoor to lose. That is the point, and it is also the risk.

Sandboxed and notarized

Ships through the Mac App Store. No kernel extensions, no installer scripts.

Carriers

What a vault can hide in.
Photo, video, audio or document.

Four carrier families, each tested against the tools that would break them. We tell you the ceiling instead of pretending there isn't one.

MP4MOVMKVBest choice

Nobody questions a 12 GB export. Video is the only carrier where a genuinely large vault still looks completely ordinary.

Plays in QuickTime, VLC and Finder preview, start to finish.

Recommended vault size

Up to 200 GB

Survives

Copy, rename, moveYes
External drives & USBYes
File-level cloud syncYes
Re-export or transcodeNo

Pricing

Pay once. Own it.
$39, every platform. No subscription.

Privacy software you have to keep renting is a strange idea. Buy the app, keep the app.

Subfile for your Mac — and every other one

$39one time

The whole app on every platform, bought once and yours for good. Nothing is held back behind a bigger plan, because there is no bigger plan.

Buy Subfile — $39 once

One licence, one person, every device. Transferable. The key is emailed to you right after payment.

What you get

One licence for every platform you own
Unlimited vaults, unlimited size
All carrier formats — video, photo, audio, container
Decoy vault with a second password
Auto-lock, integrity checks, backups
Browse your files inside Subfile — nothing is mounted
Free updates within 1.x

No subscription

Bought once. It does not expire.

No account

No email, no licence server to phone.

No upsell

There is no bigger tier to sell you.

Ships sandboxed and notarized · macOS 15.4 or later · Apple Silicon and Intel

FAQ

The questions
worth asking.

Is there a subscription?

No. You pay once and the version you bought keeps working, offline, with no licence server to call home to. If a paid 2.0 ever happens, it will be an upgrade you can decline.

What happens if I forget my password?

The vault is unrecoverable. There is no reset link, no recovery key escrow and no support ticket that can help — that absence is exactly what makes the encryption meaningful. Keep the password somewhere you trust and keep a backup of the carrier file.

Can I open a vault without Subfile?

Yes. The container format is documented publicly and a reference command-line reader is open source, so your files never depend on this app continuing to exist.

Does the carrier file still work normally?

Yes — it plays, previews and opens exactly as before, and you can copy, rename, move or back it up freely. What breaks a vault is re-encoding: recompressing a photo, transcoding a video or repacking an archive rewrites the bytes the vault lives in.

How is this different from FileVault?

FileVault encrypts the whole disk, which protects a Mac that is lost, stolen or powered off. Once you log in, every file on it is readable by anyone at the keyboard. Subfile works at the file level: the vault stays sealed while you are logged in and opens only when you type its password. The two are complementary, not alternatives.

Is hiding a folder the same as protecting it?

No. A hidden folder on macOS — a leading dot, or chflags hidden — is revealed by pressing Command-Shift-Period in Finder, and any backup or search tool reads it normally. Hiding changes what is displayed; encryption changes what is readable.

Why macOS only?

macOS shipped first. The core is written in Rust and is portable, so Windows and Linux builds are in progress and are covered by the same licence. Mobile apps come after that.

What do you collect?

The app collects nothing: no account, no email to run it, no telemetry. Turn off networking entirely and every feature still works. This website is a separate matter — it runs Google Analytics, and the privacy page says exactly what that records.

Every file can have
a private side.
Encrypt and hide files on your Mac.

Try it on one of your own files. It takes about thirty seconds to understand.

Buy for Mac$39 once · No account · No subscription

Works fully offline
No account required
Keys stay on your device