Overview
- Apple published a support document on Wednesday that says macOS 28 will only mount Mac OS Extended (HFS+) volumes that are not encrypted, so encrypted HFS+ disks will cease to work after the update.
- The company says macOS 26 may begin warning users about named volumes that won’t be compatible with macOS 28 to give people time to act before the change takes effect.
- Affected users have two paths: decrypt an HFS+ volume to preserve its data or back up and erase the drive to reformat it as APFS or APFS (Encrypted), with Disk Utility steps provided by Apple.
- Decrypting keeps data but can take a long time on large drives and does not apply to encrypted Time Machine backup disks, while reformatting erases all data and requires a prior backup.
- HFS+ dates to 1998 and has been superseded by APFS, which became the macOS default in 2017 and includes native encryption; Apple’s change is widely read as part of retiring legacy HFS+ in favor of APFS.