macOS 27 Golden Gate isn’t out of beta testing yet, but Apple is warning that 2027’s macOS 28 will drop support for encrypted Mac OS Extended (HFS+) volumes.
Such external drives will need to be either decrypted or reformatted ahead of the update. In a support document, Apple says that starting with macOS 26, your Mac might notify you that you’re using an encrypted Mac OS Extended disk and that it won’t be compatible with macOS 28 or later.
The notification will identify the volume by name, but if you want to confirm that the volume is using Mac OS Extended format and is encrypted:
- Open Disk Utility, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder. Or use Spotlight to find and open it.
- From the View menu in the menu bar, choose Show Only Volumes.
- In the sidebar of Disk Utility, select the name of the volume.
- Look for the information shown directly under the name of the volume on the right. If you see both “Mac OS Extended” and “Encrypted” for your volume, that volume won’t be compatible with macOS 28 and later. Example:
- CoreStorage Logical Volume • Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled, Encrypted)
macOS 28 and later will continue to support unencrypted volumes that use Mac OS Extended format. Mac OS Extended is also known as HFS Plus (or HFS+).
Mac OS Extended (HFS+) is Apple’s legacy file system, used as the primary Mac format from 1998 until it was largely replaced by APFS in 2017. It’s highly reliable and is primarily recommended today for mechanical hard drives (HDDs) or older external drives that still need to interact with pre-High Sierra Macs.
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Article provided with permission from AppleWorld.Today
