# FileVault

8 Hacker News commenters recommended FileVault and 9 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Built-in macOS disk encryption that people find dependable for years, with the account password unlocking the disk. Critics object to recovery keys being escrowed with Apple and stored in plaintext when turned off.

## Why people recommend it

- Strong security, keys kept local (3 comments): "Filevault for MacOS (which is wonderful and never sends your key to be kept somewhere else)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48764268)) "I do think that Apple have some better security defaults for FileVault" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48137313)) "Nobody is going to bypass LUKS or FileVault like this." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48131550))
- Unlocks with account password (2 comments): "In MacOS it's literally your account password, which follows along with your in-OS account credentials" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48764453)) "the obvious thing that FileVault does and use the user's password as an additional wrapper" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48137163))
- Works reliably for years in fleets (2 comments): "Managing an Apple fleet is similarly fine, and that includes using any of the MDM tooling that also does key escrow on enterprise Filevault devices." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48764353)) "It sure works fine for a about a decade." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46746546))

## What people warn about

- Recovery keys escrowed to Apple or iCloud (4 comments): "the FileVault key you (optionally) escrow with Apple is stored in the iCloud Keychain" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46737703)) "FileVault Full Disk Encryption (FDE) recovery keys are, by default, sent to Apple if the user requests them." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48764560)) "Others report Filevault keys are also being backed to iCloud since September and they didn't tell anyone" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46743981))
- Frequent problems, worse than BitLocker (3 comments): "it's really common to have it fail to follow the logged-in user's credentials" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48764690)) "We have more issues with FileVault than we do with BitLocker" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48765505)) "FileVault is a nightmare in this scenario" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48765942))
- Key stored in plaintext when off (2 comments): "Apple placing the encryption key for Filevault as plaintext on disk when it is turned off (the default)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750662)) "placing the encryption key for Filevault as plaintext on disk when it is turned off" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46747370))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [VeraCrypt](https://hackerapproved.com/p/veracrypt.md): 45 recommend
- [Microsoft BitLocker](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bitlocker.md): 45 recommend
- [LUKS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/luks.md): 32 recommend
- [TrueCrypt](https://hackerapproved.com/p/truecrypt.md): 9 recommend
- [systemd-cryptenroll](https://hackerapproved.com/p/systemd-cryptenroll.md): 7 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "FileVault", https://hackerapproved.com/p/filevault/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).