19:03Machine-translated from Azerbaijani by AIRead in Azerbaijani
One of macOS's oldest Terminal tools is being retired
Apple is preparing to retire hdiutil, a Terminal tool that has been part of the macOS operating system for many years. Used to create, mount, resize and manage disk images, the command has officially been marked as deprecated in macOS Golden Gate. hdiutil has been part of macOS since the early days of Mac OS X. Although most ordinary users do not interact with the tool directly, various disk management, backup and system utilities use it in the background. Starting with macOS 27.0, Apple recommends that users and software developers switch from hdiutil to the diskutil image tool. The new tool supports mounting, creating and resizing disk images, along with other core operations.
This does not mean that hdiutil will be removed from macOS Golden Gate immediately. The tool will continue to work for now, but Apple has confirmed that it will be removed entirely from a future version of macOS. Developers of applications that use hdiutil will therefore have to adapt their software to work with diskutil image. In some cases, the transition cannot be handled simply by changing the command's name. According to developer Jeff Johnson, there are certain differences in how the two tools behave. For example, hdiutil may request authentication when it encounters a file owned by the root user during a backup process. In the same situation, diskutil image may stop the operation with a generic error message instead of displaying an authentication prompt. Apple's decision may also be related to security. In a security update released for macOS Sonoma on October 15, 2025, the company disclosed that one of the hdiutil commands contained a vulnerability that could unexpectedly allow malicious code to run. Apple resolved the issue by removing the vulnerable code from the system.
This does not mean that hdiutil will be removed from macOS Golden Gate immediately. The tool will continue to work for now, but Apple has confirmed that it will be removed entirely from a future version of macOS. Developers of applications that use hdiutil will therefore have to adapt their software to work with diskutil image. In some cases, the transition cannot be handled simply by changing the command's name. According to developer Jeff Johnson, there are certain differences in how the two tools behave. For example, hdiutil may request authentication when it encounters a file owned by the root user during a backup process. In the same situation, diskutil image may stop the operation with a generic error message instead of displaying an authentication prompt. Apple's decision may also be related to security. In a security update released for macOS Sonoma on October 15, 2025, the company disclosed that one of the hdiutil commands contained a vulnerability that could unexpectedly allow malicious code to run. Apple resolved the issue by removing the vulnerable code from the system.