Either use Terminal for quick results, or employ ff_md5drop if you prefer a UI

Mar 7, 2014 14:10 GMT  ·  By

The MD5 hash, or checksum, works like a compact digital fingerprint of a file, giving you a good way to compare a bogus app to a legitimate app, for instance.

Unless they have been specifically created to have the same hash, it is highly unlikely that any two non-identical files will have the same MD5 hash, therefore checking the MD5 Sum of a file allows a user to know if what they have is what the developer promised.

How to Check MD5 Sum on Mac OS X

Probably the easiest way to do a checksum is to:

1. Launch Terminal app on your Mac 2. Type in “md5” (without the quotes) followed by a Space 3. Drag & drop the file you want to check into the Terminal window 4. Terminal will return the MD5 Sum for your respective file

Note that the time allotted for the task is directly proportional to the size of your actual file, so if it’s a big one, give it some time.

An alternative way to do a checksum is to employ a dedicated app. Using ff_md5drop (freeware) for example also gives you an actual interface to work with, which includes a progress indicator that tells you how much time it’s going to take for the app to do the checksum.

Another key advantage to using the ff_md5drop app is that you can carry out a multi-checksum in one session, by just dragging in multiple files at once.

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