5 Facts About FileVault and Performance on Modern Macs

FileVault slowdown is negligible on modern Macs Apple Silicon and T2-equipped Intel Macs have dedicated AES hardware that encrypts and decrypts data with no noticeable performance cost.

You won’t feel it in everyday tasks Browsing, editing documents, watching video, and light coding all run normally with FileVault enabled.

Initial encryption takes a few hours The only slowdown happens when FileVault first encrypts your drive. Let it run overnight and you’re done.

Pre-2018 Intel Macs may see a slight hit Older Macs without the T2 chip can experience minor slowdowns during heavy disk writes, like copying large files.

The performance trade-off is worth it FileVault protects your data if your Mac is lost or stolen, and the performance cost is essentially zero on modern hardware.