Lock files, folders, and even apps behind one master password. Custodia stores them as an AES-256 encrypted vault — invisible to Finder, Spotlight, and Terminal until you unlock it. 100% offline. No cloud. No accounts.
Version 1.0.0 · ~750 KB · Apple silicon (M1 or later) · macOS 13 Ventura or later
AES-256 powered by Apple's own disk technology — the same standard trusted by banks and governments.
Locked files — and even apps — vanish from Finder, Spotlight, and Terminal. No one knows they exist.
Seal everything instantly with ⌘L, or let auto-lock handle it after 1, 5, or 15 minutes idle.
Files, folders, and desktop apps. Open them straight from the unlocked vault, then restore to their exact origin.
100% offline. No cloud sync, no accounts, no tracking. Nothing ever leaves your Mac.
Built with SwiftUI. Fast, tiny, no bloat. One portable encrypted backup, exportable any time.
Vault is an AES-256 encrypted sparsebundle created via Apple's hdiutil — sparse, so it only uses the disk space it actually holds.
Your master password is passed to hdiutil over stdin — never via command-line args, never written to disk.
Unlocked, it mounts at /Volumes/CustodiaVault, hidden from the Finder sidebar. Locked, only an opaque blob remains.
Back up to a single compressed, encrypted .dmg protected by your same password — restore by double-clicking it, no Custodia required.
Free download. Runs on Apple silicon Macs (M1 or later) with macOS 13 Ventura or later.
Download Custodia 1.0.0.zip · ~750 KB · Apple silicon
Double-click the downloaded .zip, then drag Custodia.app into your Applications folder.
Custodia is a free, independently-built app and isn't signed with a paid Apple Developer certificate, so macOS asks you to confirm on first launch. Right-click (or Control-click) Custodia → Open → Open. You only do this once.
Pick a password of at least 8 characters. This unlocks everything in your vault.
On recent macOS, if right-click → Open doesn't show an Open button, go to:
System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to the Security section, and click "Open Anyway" next to the Custodia message.
Advanced users can instead clear the quarantine flag in Terminal:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Custodia.appYour master password is the only key — there is no reset, no backdoor, no "forgot password." If you lose it, the vault's contents are unrecoverable. That's the point. Keep it somewhere safe.