Until Apple introduced APFS, the normal structure of our Mac’s disks and volumes was relatively simple. What we saw in the Finder and in Disk Utility was reasonably close to what we needed to use, and wasn’t too far from what you’d find using the diskutil command in Terminal.
Then came High Sierra and Mojave with APFS, which complicated that with features like containers, and the simple illusion offered in the Finder didn’t bear much resemblance to what Disk Utility shows, and is further removed from Terminal’s shell. Now with Catalina and its strange paired System and Data volumes, it just seems a bewildering mess. This article aims to unravel that so that you can better understand the Finder, Disk Utility, and the command line across each recent version of macOS.
There are three different ways of looking at the disks and volumes on your Mac, which don’t always precisely match:
- The Finder shows you a simplified view which you need for everyday handling of documents, apps, etc. You can always make it a bit more literal by pressing Command-Shift-. (period or full stop) to show hidden items, but that is at best a temporary measure, and still doesn’t reveal full detail.
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