hdiutil is deprecated in macOS 27 Golden Gate
- ID
- 17028
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 23 Aug 2026, 3:04 AM
- Fetched
- 23 Aug 2026, 11:19 PM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/8/7.html
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 5.0
- Created
- 23 Aug 2026, 11:21 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developers
What happened
Apple is deprecating the `hdiutil` command-line tool in macOS 27 Golden Gate, replacing it with `diskutil image` for all disk image operations. The author compared the two and found that most options are preserved under different names, but several are missing, including `-puppetstrings` (machine-parseable progress output) and multiple `-srcfolder` flags like `-crossdev`, `-scrub`, `-anyowners`, `-skipunreadable`, `-atomic`, and `-copyuid`.
Why it matters
If you have macOS automation scripts or CI pipelines that call `hdiutil` for creating, attaching, or resizing disk images, you need to audit and migrate them to `diskutil image` before upgrading to macOS 27. Pay particular attention to any use of `-puppetstrings` for progress parsing or the missing `-srcfolder` options, as there are no documented replacements yet.
Discussion angle
Which of the missing hdiutil options (especially -puppetstrings for programmatic progress) are likely to break existing packaging or backup scripts, and what workarounds exist.