How to Open BitLocker Encrypted Hard Drive/USB/SD Card on macOS & Mac OS X – 6 steps
This article is about how to Open BitLocker Encrypted Hard Drive/USB/SD Card on macOS & Mac OS X. If you’re reading this article, you probably have a BitLocker-encrypted USB drive and are having trouble opening it on your Mac device.
You are now in the right place. We show you how to unlock an encrypted hard drive/USB/SD with BitLocker on macOS.
Actually, BitLocker Drive Encryption is a disk encryption software developed by Microsoft for Windows operating system, it is not supported on macOS/OS X.
Therefore, you cannot unlock BitLocker encrypted drives on Mac devices. Of course, you can use Windows tools to disable BitLocker on this drive so that it can be opened on macOS.
But what if you don’t have a Windows device nearby? Don’t worry, this issue can be easily solved by using the BitLocker Reader tool.
How to Unlock Hard Drive/USB/SD Card Encrypted with BitLocker on macOS
BitLocker Reader for Mac is a simple and easy-to-use application for those who want to open BitLocker-encrypted drives, such as external hard drives, USB drives, SD cards, etc., on Mac OS devices.
Follow the simple steps.
Step 1: Install the BitLocker reader on your Mac computer. If you get a warning dialog saying “The disk you inserted is not readable by this computer”, just click Ignore to close it.
Step 2: Download BitLocker Reader for Mac and install it on your Mac computer.
When the installation is complete, start this process.
Step 3: You can see the display of BitLocker reader installed in iSumsoft BitLocker Reader for Mac window. Select your BitLocker drive and click the Unlock button.
select the BitLocker drive
Step 4: A dialog box will appear asking for a password or recovery file to unlock the drive.
Enter the correct password for your BitLocker disk and click Mount.
enter the password for the BitLocker reader
Tip: If you’ve forgotten your BitLocker password, choose to use your recovery key file to unlock the drive.
Step 5: A few seconds later, the BitLocker encrypted drive is unlocked on the Mac.
You will see the disk icon appear on the macOS desktop.
BitLocker drive is unlocked
Step 6: You can now open BitLocker Reader and access, read and modify the files in it.
You can also transfer files freely between BitLocker Reader and Mac.
Tip: The opening sequence is fine. You don’t have to worry about breaking your BitLocker drive security because it will always be encrypted.
When moving it to another computer (Windows or macOS), it still needs to open before you open it.