hdiutil is deprecated in macOS 27 Golden Gate
The macOS command-line tool 'hdiutil' has been deprecated in the macOS 27 Golden Gate beta, with Apple recommending 'diskutil' as its replacement. Testing shows that while 'diskutil' is faster and produces smaller files, it lacks some legacy features and behaves differently regarding authentication.
Why it matters
System administrators and power users must adapt their workflows to new command-line tools as Apple phases out legacy utilities in future OS versions.
The macOS command-line tool hdiutil is used to manipulate disk images. From the WHAT'S NEW section of man hdiutil on the latest macOS 27 Golden Gate beta:
There’s also a DEPRECATION NOTICE at the top of the man page that lists the diskutil replacements for hdiutil subcommands.
The majority of options from hdiutil appear to be preserved in diskutil , though under different names. However, some hdiutil options are missing, for example -puppetstrings :
Also missing are some options specific to hdiutil create -srcfolder :
-[no]crossdev -[no]scrub -[no]anyowners -skipunreadable -[no]atomic -copyuid I attempted to compare hdiutil and diskutil on Golden Gate by performing a backup of the user home folder, something I do daily on my MacBook Pro with macOS Sequoia. First:
This took around 110 to 115 seconds on average.
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