Apple is Killing the 'hdiutil' Terminal Command in macOS Golden Gate

Apple is officially retiring one of the oldest and most relied-upon Terminal commands for managing disk images on the Mac. Starting with the beta releases of macOS Golden Gate, the hdiutil command is officially deprecated, forcing developers and power users to transition to a newer alternative before it is permanently removed from the operating system.

Developer Jeff Johnson first spotted the deprecation warning. Users who type man hdiutil into the Terminal app in macOS 27.0 are now greeted with a clear caution message indicating the tool's impending removal. While the command remains functional for now, Apple is directing all users to adopt the diskutil image command for future disk image operations.

In macOS 27.0, hdiutil is deprecated. Use diskutil image instead for all disk image operations. diskutil image provides subcommands for attach, create, resize, info, and chpass.

- Apple Terminal Manual (macOS Golden Gate)

The transition may be rooted in system security. On October 15, 2025, Apple issued a security update for macOS Sonoma to address a vulnerability where running an hdiutil command could unexpectedly execute arbitrary code. Apple resolved that specific issue by stripping out the vulnerable code entirely rather than replacing it, signaling the beginning of the end for the legacy utility.

Apple's diskutil image tool duplicates most of the legacy functions, but it operates differently in ways that could break existing backup scripts and disk repair utilities. Developers must update their background processes to avoid silent failures.

• To view the manual for the new tool, use the following command:

man diskutil

• The new command exclusively supports the Apple Sparse Image Format (ASIF), a feature that hdiutil can no longer handle.
• Authentication handling has fundamentally changed. When a file is owned by the root user, hdiutil triggers an authentication prompt. In contrast, diskutil image simply fails with a generic error message, requiring users to manually adjust file permissions or run scripts with elevated privileges.

The deprecation of hdiutil follows the recent removal of the Apple Filing Protocol in macOS Sequoia 15.5, highlighting Apple's aggressive push to modernize its underlying architecture. While the average Mac user will never notice this change, the ripple effects will be felt across the developer community. Disk repair apps, backup utilities, and automated deployment scripts that have relied on hdiutil for decades will silently break if not updated.

The fact that diskutil image fails without an authentication prompt for root-owned files suggests Apple is prioritizing strict security boundaries over developer convenience. By removing interactive password prompts from background terminal commands, Apple is forcing utility creators to rewrite their error-handling protocols from scratch, ensuring that apps cannot easily bypass system-level permissions before macOS 28 arrives.