PCMag reviews products, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Sometime next year, Apple will start using a new file system on all its hardware.

The new Apple File System (APFS) will replace Apple's old HFS+ file system, used on all Macs since 1998 which in turn was based on the archaic HFS, introduced in 1985. APFS is an entirely new system designed for modern hardware and the cloud, and adds encryption, security, and reliability features that don't exist in Apple's older systems. Inevitably, like every other new file system, APFS will lead to compatibility issues, but Apple is giving itself plenty of time to smooth out the tangles before APFS is released to the public. Better Security, Instant Cloning Most users won't notice anything radically different about hardware with APFS on the hard disk, but a lot of subtle differences are hidden below the surface. Most notably, APFS uses integrated encryption instead of the essentially tacked-on encryption technique used by the existing OS X FileVault feature that slowly encrypts or decrypts an entire drive. APFS can encrypt whole disks and individual files with separate keys for the file and its metadata, giving granular control that could, for example, let individual users modify the data in a file without access to a separately encrypted audit trail of the changes. APFS also makes possible instant cloning of folders and drives, and this technology is clearly going to add speed to Sierra's built-in feature that automatically backs up to any files on your Desktop and in your Documents folder.

(Don't worry: you can disable this feature if you want to.) This feature already works with current hardware, but should be faster with APFS disks. Nanosecond Precision, Better Backups Apple's current file system time-stamps files with one-second precision, not enough to keep track of file changes with today's hardware. APFS time-stamps files with one-nanosecond precision, and this feature, combined with the technology used in the new cloning feature makes it easier to store multiple versions of a file in a minimum of space. You can expect Sierra's version of Apple's Time Machine feature to take advantage of the new system for faster performance and more fine-grained backups. Incidentally, Microsoft built similar features into its NTFS technology years ago, and Mac users will now be able to benefit from the same kind of fast 'shadow copy' technology used by Windows backup software. Better Space Allocation Other advantages of APFS disks include flexible space allocation, so that two APFS 'disks' can borrow disk space from each other when they need it, and not be limited by the space allocated to them when they were created.

Google in a blog post that starting Thursday, Drive users will see settings for the Drive File Stream app appear in the Admin console. Google drive file share app for mac.

APFS also builds in support for 'sparse files'—files that don't fill all the allocated space on disk. Why is it asking for usb when creating windows on mac. (Older OS X versions already support sparse files, but in a clunky, developer-only way.) Also, thanks to its fast, built-in file handling, APFS promises sturdier safeguards against losing data in system crashes.