A scribbleMaking a case sensitive folder on MacOS

2025-03-10 · updated 2026-03-23 · history

First we need to figure out which disk to create our new volume on:

Here I’m copying whatever Nix Store is using, but really we just need whatever disk Apple_APFS is on.

REFERENCE_CONTAINER=$(diskutil info "Nix Store" 2>/dev/null | grep "Container:" | awk '{print $3}')

Now we can create a case-insensitive volume:

VOLUME_NAME="OsmTest"
diskutil apfs addVolume $REFERENCE_CONTAINER APFSX "$VOLUME_NAME"

We’ll need the device the volume is mounted at to mount later:

VOLUME_DEVICE=$(diskutil info "$VOLUME_NAME" | grep "Device Node:" | awk '{print $3}')

Next create the folder we want to mount to:

MOUNT_POINT=~/test
mkdir -p "$MOUNT_POINT"

(Why is this a requirement? Not sure)

Now we can mount the folder:

sudo mount -t apfs $VOLUME_DEVICE "$MOUNT_POINT"

We won’t have much luck using it unless we set the user & group:

USER_ID=$(id -u $USER)
GROUP_ID=$(id -g $USER)
sudo chown "$USER_ID:$GROUP_ID" "$MOUNT_POINT"

NOTE: The mount will disappear on reboot (I think) Tbd: fix this with a launchdaemon?

Tags: #devops