MacOS – Resize APFS (encrypted) container

apfscatalinamacospartition

I am having trouble "attributing" some free space I have available on the Files partition to the volume which contains system files: an APFS encrypted container.

I would like to do this because I am no longer able to update some large application from within the App Store. I have already read some articles addressing the issue concerning resizing APFS containers but they still don't answer my question (or maybe I didn't clearly get the idea). I am running a Macbook Air under Catalina.

I put some screenshots that may give more useful information.

Reduce this volume to 90 GB:

Increase the capacity of the container to 160 GB:

diskutil list:

diskutil resizeVolume disk0s3 limits:

Best Answer

Simply resizing Files (disk0s3) and then expanding the container (disk0s2) while "shifting" disk0s3 won't work.

You have to take this path:

Resize disk0s3 with diskutil:
```
diskutil resizeVolume disk0s3 40g
```
Create a fourth partition Files2 (HFS+) with Disk Utility at the end of the disk
Copy all files from Files to Files2
Remove disk0s3 (Files) with Disk Utility
Rename Files2 to Files
Expand disk0s2 (if not already done automatically in step 4):
```
diskutil ap resizeContainer disk0s2 0
```

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MacOS – APFS Volume Total Shows Less Free Space Than Container and How to Reclaim Space

The results from the math shown below is about 17.3 GB of unallocated space.

 250.0     Total drive space
   -.2907  EFI partition
-190.0     APFS container
   -.1342  Microsoft Reserved
 -42.9     BOOTCAMP
   -.4719  Windows Recovery
_________
  17.2842  Unallocated space

I assume this unallocated space is between the Apple_APFS and Microsoft Reserved partitions. If so, then the correct command to add the free space to the Apple_APFS partition is given below. Before using this command, open the MiniTool application and confirm the free space is between the Apple_APFS and Microsoft Reserved partitions.

sudo diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0

From the information you posted, I am guessing the free space will between the Microsoft Reserved and Microsoft Basic Data partitions. If this is the case, then you will first need to move the Microsoft Reserved partition partition to the end of the free space. Below is an outline of the steps to follow.

The MiniTool can not move this partition. Instead you can make a copy of the partition.
The copy of the Microsoft Reserved partition will have the wrong partition type id. You will need to use the MiniTool application to change this id to Windows - Microsoft Reserved Partition.
The new partition will need to be assigned the GPT_BASIC_DATA_ATTRIBUTE_NO_DRIVE_LETTER attribute bit. Basically, this is bit 0x8000000000000000. Unfortunately, this can to be done using MiniTool. You will have to use the diskpart command from a Administrator Command Prompt window.
After exiting diskpart, you will need to reboot Windows.
Use the MiniTool to remove the original Microsoft Reserved partition.

A final note:

You posted the following question.

That operation successfully executed and as you will see, container for APFS is at 190 GB now. But my Macintosh HD is still occupying 165.4 GB. I tried resizing using (/usr/sbin/diskutil apfs resizeContainer /dev/disk1 0) but to no avail. Does anyone know how I can reclaim the 20 GB space I freed up before and use container to its max capacity?

Answer: Basically, the question makes no sense. The APFS container has a size of 190 GB and the Macintosh HD volume is using 165.4 GB of this container's space. If you enlarge the APFS container, the size of the Macintosh HD volume will not change.

MacOS – APFS partition inaccessible, container missing

Note: Posting images of the output from the Terminal application can often lead to users not posting an answer to a question. You should copy and paste the text to your question. Once pasted, highlight the text, then click on the code sample button {} to format the text.

Your current APFS partition (disk0s2) does not appear to be valid for several reasons. Below are three reasons.

The magic number stored in the header is incorrect. Also, the header defines the block size to be 2,385,839,421 bytes and the APFS container to be 2,777,634,813,198,357 TB in size. The magic number should be BSXN. The block size should be 4096 bytes and the container should be less than or equal to 883,222,061,056 bytes in size.
The APFS partition size of 1,725,043,095 logical sectors is not divisible by 8.
The APFS partition should appear either immediately and soon after the EFI partition (disk0s1). Here, the partition starts 116,773,068,800 bytes after the end of the EFI partition.

It appears that an APFS partition of 960,018,657,280 bytes in size did occur immediately after the EFI partition (disk0s1). The problem is the data stored in the APFS partition was partially overwritten by the data now stored in disk0s3. The type and location of disk0s3 would indicate that macOS Sierra may have been installed close or immediately before disk0s3. If this is true, then additional data stored in the APFS partition may have been overwritten.

Note: The partition entries stored in the GPT are not in ascending order. While this does not create problems for Ubuntu, this condition oftend leads to an incorrectly functioning macOS.

To correct the GPT, you need to remove the second and third entries. The commands are given below.

Note: You must unmount all volumes from disk0 before entering the commands given below.

sudo gpt remove -i 2 /dev/disk0
sudo gpt remove -i 3 /dev/disk0

The command below will add the APFS container to the GPT.

sudo gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 1875036440 -t apfs /dev/disk0

There is no guarantee fixing the GPT will automatically lead to a correctly functioning APFS partition.

When finished, the output from sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0 should appear as shown below.

     start        size  index  contents
         0           1         PMBR
         1           1         Pri GPT header
         2          32         Pri GPT table
        34           6         
        40      409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
    409640  1875036440      2  GPT part - 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
1875446080    78079055         
1953525135          32         Sec GPT table
1953525167           1         Sec GPT header

Best Answer

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