Apple now allows direct encrypted HFS+ to APFS conversion for macOS 28

Apple has not changed the broader policy: encrypted Mac OS Extended volumes, better known as encrypted HFS+, still lose support in macOS 28. The official Apple Support page updated on July 22 continues to say that only unencrypted Mac OS Extended volumes will remain compatible, so affected external drives still need action before that upgrade cycle.

What Apple did change is the migration path. The revised support note now includes a dedicated section called Convert the volume to encrypted APFS. In Disk Utility, the new route is simply to select the volume and choose Edit > Convert to APFS, which means some encrypted HFS+ volumes can move to encrypted APFS without first being manually decrypted.

That is a meaningful simplification for readers who kept older encrypted external disks around because HFS+ once fit spinning drives better than APFS. The old Apple guidance focused on either decrypting the volume or erasing and reformatting it. The new document still tells users to back up first, but it removes the decrypt-then-convert detour for at least one common case.

The change is not universal. Apple still says the solution does not apply to encrypted Time Machine backup disks, and it still warns that any encrypted Mac OS Extended volume showing both Mac OS Extended and Encrypted in Disk Utility will not be compatible with macOS 28 unless it is migrated first. Unencrypted HFS+ remains supported after the macOS 28 transition.

The deprecation closes a very long chapter of Mac history. HFS+, or Mac OS Extended, dates back to the late 1990s and served as the Mac’s default file system for two decades until APFS replaced it with macOS High Sierra in 2017. APFS was designed for the flash-storage era, with native snapshots, space sharing and fast cloning built in; HFS+ predates all of that, and its continued presence in 2026 is largely a story of external drives that simply kept working long after the internal disks moved on.

Encryption is also where the two formats differ most. On HFS+, full-volume encryption was bolted on through Core Storage, a logical volume layer that sits between the disk and the file system. APFS made encryption native, handling encrypted volumes as a built-in capability rather than an added layer. That architectural gap is precisely why the migration story has been awkward: moving an encrypted HFS+ volume to APFS means leaving one encryption architecture for another, which is why Apple’s guidance historically routed users through decryption or a full erase before conversion.

An in-place route changes the calculus for people with large archives. Decrypting a multi-terabyte spinning drive before converting it could take many hours, and it briefly left data unprotected between the decrypt and the re-encrypt. A direct conversion removes both the delay and that exposure window. Apple’s continued back-up-first advice still deserves to be taken literally, though: in-place file system conversion is exactly the kind of operation where a power cut, a loose cable or a failing disk turns an upgrade into a recovery job.

The Time Machine exclusion is worth reading carefully rather than skipping past. Backup disks are, for many households, the oldest storage in use — often formatted once, years ago, and never touched again. Anyone whose encrypted backup drive dates from the HFS+ era will still need to start a fresh backup on a supported format rather than converting the existing one, and should keep the old disk intact until a comfortable amount of new backup history has accumulated.

The episode also fits Apple’s usual deprecation rhythm: announce the cutoff well ahead of the release, publish support documentation, then quietly refine the migration path as the deadline approaches. That the refinement is arriving now suggests Apple expects a meaningful number of users to hit this transition, and would rather they convert cleanly than discover an incompatible drive after upgrading.

The practical advice is straightforward: if you still rely on older encrypted external drives, check their format now instead of waiting for a system upgrade warning. Apple has made the exit path cleaner, but it has not reversed the deprecation.