Home Forums Mac Software Mac Operating Systems from HFS to APFS and back again

I found myself needing to convert groups of computers from APFS to HFS, and the later to convert others from HFS to APFS. Just look around online and try to find how to do that without doing things like backing up and reformatting the hard drive. (hint: nobody knows how to, all instructions start with "open disk utility and erase your hard drive"... SERIOUSLY!)

Anyway, it took a chunk of yesterday to get the script working to convert from APFS back to the more sane HFS, and I just finished figuring out the obscenely complicated process of converting back to APFS. (without reinstalling the os!)

If anyone is interested in how this works, let me know. It's enough to make people comfortable with terminal wince, and AFAIK nobody seems to have figured this out previously, at least not that they've said online.

Same as you, the only option I've ever seen, including in Apple's own instructions, for converting from APFS back to HFS+ involves reformatting your drive, but "Convert [HFS+] to APFS" is an option in Disk Utility.

Thanks for the offer, but no thanks.

I cloned my APFS volume to an external drive, and the external was MacOS Extended (Journaled). Assuming that this is the same as HFS (and I don't know that), it might be possible to clone back to convert the internal to HFS.

Just a suggestion...