Create a vault

Open the New Vault sheet

There are three ways in:

• In the main window, click New Vault at the top right, or press ⌘ N.
• With no vaults yet, the window shows Create Your First Vault.
• In the menu bar panel, click the + button at the bottom left and choose New Vault…. Doghouse opens its main window with the sheet.

Standard Vault or Pocket Vault

The switch at the top of the sheet picks the kind of vault:

• Standard Vault — “An encrypted folder only you can open”. It opens in Finder like a normal folder, only takes up the space of the files inside, and grows up to a limit you set. This page describes a Standard Vault.
• Pocket Vault — “A small encrypted vault that opens inside Doghouse”. A fixed-size file of 1, 5, 25 or 50 MB for notes, photos and PDFs, with its own window. See Pocket Vaults.

Name and location

The Name is what the vault is called in the list, in the file name on disk and, for a Standard Vault, the folder name you see in Finder while it is unlocked. It can’t contain “/” or “:”. Pick something that doesn’t describe the contents if other people see your screen.

Below the name is the folder the vault file goes into. It defaults to your Documents folder; click Choose… to pick another one, including a folder on an external drive or a network share. If a vault with that name already exists in the folder, Doghouse says so and nothing is created.

Two warnings can appear under the password fields, depending on the folder you chose:

• “This location syncs with iCloud — the encrypted vault file would be uploaded.” You chose a folder in iCloud Drive (or Desktop/Documents with iCloud syncing on) and turned Keep out of iCloud off.
• “This folder syncs with Dropbox, which keeps copies of every version. Choose a folder that isn’t synced.” Shown for Pocket Vaults in Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box or Proton Drive folders.

Size limit

Grows up to is the most the vault can ever hold, not the space it takes now. Type a number and pick MB or GB; the default is 10 GB. The minimum is 16 MB and the maximum 4 TB (4000 GB). As the sheet says: “The vault only occupies the space of the files inside — this is the limit it can grow to. You can raise it later.”

Be generous. Raising the limit later is easy (Change Size Limit…) but a vault that is nearly full shows a NEARLY FULL badge and can refuse new files until you do. The capacity bar on the card turns orange above 80 % and red above 95 %.

A locked vault’s card shows the size of the encrypted file on disk, which includes about 14 MB of fixed file-system overhead. An unlocked vault shows what the files inside actually use.

Password and hint

Type the Password twice. It must be at least 6 characters; the strength meter under the fields shows how hard it would be to guess. A long phrase you don’t use anywhere else is the best choice: the encryption is only as strong as the password.

The Password hint is optional. It can be up to 120 characters and can’t be the password itself. It appears under the password field when you unlock. The sheet is blunt about what it is: “Stored as plaintext with the vault file — anyone with the file can read the hint. Does not unlock, recover, or reset the password.” You can add, change or remove the hint later in Vault Settings or when changing the password.

“Remember password in my Keychain”

On by default. Doghouse stores the password in your Mac’s login Keychain, so unlocking takes one click. It is also what makes Require Touch ID to unlock possible: Touch ID stands in front of the saved password.

The trade-off is that anyone using your Mac while you are logged in can unlock the vault with that one click, unless you turn on Touch ID for it in Vault Settings. On a shared Mac, untick the box and type the password each time, or keep it ticked and require Touch ID.

“Keep out of iCloud (never upload this vault)”

On by default. With it on, Doghouse names the vault file Name.nosync instead of Name.sparsebundle and sets Apple’s file-provider ignore attribute. iCloud Drive honours both and never uploads the file, even if it sits in Desktop or Documents. A small cloud_off icon on the vault card reminds you.

Turn it off only if you want the encrypted file in iCloud Drive on purpose. You can change your mind later: lock the vault, right-click it and toggle Keep out of iCloud. Note that this only affects iCloud; Dropbox, Google Drive and similar services upload anything in their folders. Our guide explains how iCloud decides what to sync.

What gets created

Click Create Vault. Doghouse makes an AES-256 encrypted sparse bundle disk image with an APFS file system, using the same engine Disk Utility uses, and adds it to the list as a locked vault. The file is Name.sparsebundle, or Name.nosync when Keep out of iCloud is on, in the folder you chose. Right-click the vault and choose Reveal Vault File in Finder to see it.

Because it is a standard Apple disk image, any Mac can open it with the password, with or without Doghouse. See how to open a Doghouse vault without Doghouse.

Next: unlock the vault and work in it. The first time a vault opens, macOS may ask whether Doghouse can control Finder; that permission is only used to show the vault folder in list view.

Add a vault you already have

Click the small arrow on the New Vault button and choose Add Existing Vault…, or use the same item in the menu bar. Pick a .sparsebundle, .pocketvault or .nosync file. Doghouse reads the size limit from the file and adds it to the list; you type the password at the first unlock and can save it to the Keychain then.

This is how you bring back a vault after Remove from List, move a vault from another Mac, or adopt an encrypted sparse bundle made in Disk Utility or by the old Knox app. Adding counts toward the free version’s one vault, the same as creating. If the file is already in the list, Doghouse tells you.