Apple has announced that starting with macOS 28, users will need to decrypt or reformat certain storage volumes to keep using them. Here are the details.
Change is set to take effect on next year’s macOS
In a new support document, Apple explains that starting with macOS 28, “the Mac OS Extended file system format will be supported only for volumes (disks and other storage devices) that aren’t encrypted.”
In practice, this means users who currently rely on encrypted HFS+ external drives or other encrypted legacy Mac-formatted volumes will need to “either decrypt or reformat any encrypted Mac OS Extended volumes.”
Apple doesn’t explain the reason for the change. Still, the move appears to be another step in Apple’s transition to APFS, its file system with built-in encryption support, which replaced Mac OS Extended as the default Mac file system in macOS High Sierra.
