At WWDC 2018 macOS 10.14 or macOS Mojave was disclosed. I am currently on macOS Sierra (10.12) and am looking forward to upgrading to macOS Mojave once its released. I was wondering if it will be possible to update to macOS Mojave without converting to APFS, similar to this trick from OS X Daily on how to upgrade to macOS High Sierra (10.13) without converting to APFS with the command /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall --converttoapfs NO.
MacOS – Can you update to macOS 10.14 (Mojave) without converting to APFS
apfsmacosmojave
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Best Answer
Currently it seems very difficult, but doable to upgrade to Mojave, but not directly.
Currently it seems very, very difficult, but doable to update (in) Mojave.
Similar to avoiding APFS conversion on High Sierra upgrade, only this time you need to go the clone route.
But there are a few catches to this.
Mojave will boot from HFS+, once installed on it.
The installer will convert the drive where it is being installed on, no matter what. The command-line option to skip conversion is gone. Apple really wants to enforce APFS adoption.
That means you need to install Mojave on a separate volume, which will then be in APFS format. Then you need to reformat your internal main drive that is the real Mojave target as HFSplus. Now clone the external volume to the target.
Reboot into Mojave –– and keep the external drive as a mule.
Since this is currently the real catch:
App Store app (fromerly Software Update) will currently not work when Mojave is booted from HFSplus. It will launch and update properly when running on APFS.
That means on system updates you need to reboot your APFS mule, update there, then reclone the updated Mojave to your internal work drive (perhaps by inteligently excluding the /Users folder ?).
It is unclear what else might break by this method. It seems to run 'fine' in terms of functionality, and it seems to run even better thanks to HFSplus.
But the procedure is more than cumbersome.
Apple might do two things in the future:
If you care for the latter, like I do, write to Apple that you want that feature. Fast, Urgently, It's Mandatory.