I tried to upgrade my ssd with Mojae to Catalina. However, Catalina refuses to upgrade because my ssd has not an APFS format. How to convert my ssd tot APFS without losing my data and apps?

After a several hours of trial and error, and piecing together everyone's suggestion, here's what worked for me without having to reformat/erase drive.

My setup:

• iMac with Internal Samsung SSD (named My SSD)
• Mojave OS
• Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
• Scheme: GUID Partition Map

1. Downloaded Catalina
2. Restart in Internet Recovery Mode (Command+Option+R after restart)
3. macOS Utilities -> Disk Utility
4. Select "My SSD" volume and Unmount
5. Edit -> Convert to APFS
6. Quit Disk Utility
7. macOS Utilities -> Reinstall macOS
8. Install macOS Catalina

Hope that helps.

If it helps, here are the exact steps I took. Might work for you guys or give you ideas:

1. Make a backup! Time Machine or bootable clone or whatever. (I made two backups because I'm uptight lol)
2. I created a bootable clone and booted from it. I used Super Duper and a 256GB thumb drive.
3. On the clone, I opened Disk Utility, selected my hard drive, and then unmount. Right-click on the drive and select “Convert to APFS…” . This updated my drive without losing any data. This took 3-4 minutes. (This may also be possible using Recovery Mode/Disk Utility, but I was having issues with that)
4. At this point, however, I couldn’t use my now-APFS drive as a startup disk. I got a "bless tool" error, and I tried a bunch of fixes but none worked.
5. I downloaded and ran the Mojave installer. This updated my Mojave from 10.14.5 to 10.14.6 AND it fixed the "bless tool" error. It did take a while, though, because I was running off of the bootable clone.

Same issue here. Catalina macOS installer makes it seem like APFS is required on the drive the OS it to be upgraded on:

That's a blocker. I've been upgrading Apple operating systems diligently and am trying to upgrade Mojave (10.14.5). What's going on?

Thanks. Okay...

Previous upgrades of the operating system on my Late 2016 and earlier models of MacBook Pro proceeded along the following broad steps:

1. Receive a notification of an upgrade available for my laptop via App Store or System Preferences
2. Click to initiate a download of the new OS, wait for gigs of data to end up on my machine
3. Start the Installer, agree to Terms, choose a disk
4. Installation proceeds unattended, with sufficient confidence of success

Here's what this time is like:

1. Receive a notification of Catalina available for my laptop via App Store and System Preferences
2. Click to initiate a download of the new OS, wait for gigs of data
3. Start the Installer, agree to Terms
4. Halt to full stop at the notice that install won't happen because APFS is needed (no suggestion on what to do about that)
5. Browse forums, discover dozens of other puzzled loyal Apple users
6. Find unofficial suggestions that I should engage in kung fu involving Recovery Tools, main laptop drive formatting/partitioning and full Time Machine restore taking half a day or more, all the while keeping fingers crossed that NOTHING BAD WILL HAPPEN IN THE PROCESS to mess up years of precious disk content

This is a major Apple fail in macOS upgrade experience, and though I'm technically capable of performing the above, I think I'll wait for Apple to state what they think the way to proceed is here.

@wayne-o I'm glad to hear you found a way but it can't POSSIBLY be an update path Apple had had in mind for those users who, like me, are on Mac OS Extended filesystems.

I will, however, upgrade my macOS to 10.14.6 which you clued me in on and which I don't remember being notified of by Sys Prefs.

Yes Catalina requires APFS. It was an option (I Think) to convert when installing 10.14. My advice to you would be to run a copy of your files, docs etc off onto an external drive and then Format in APFS for a clean Catalina install. There are a few reports of Time machine back ups not writing back to APFS correctly floating around, and mine failed too, so I'm skeptical of using it in these cases.

I was able to use the “Convert to APFS…” command in Disk Utility without losing any data. Just have to do it from a bootable clone or possibly in Recovery Mode.

The issue I had is that after converting to APFS, I couldn’t use my now-APFS drive as a startup disk. I got a "bless tool" error, and I tried a bunch of fixes but none worked. Grr.

Finally, what worked was re-downloading and running the Mojave installer. This updated my Mojave from 10.14.5 to 10.14.6, AND it fixed the "bless tool" error. Maybe running the Catalina installer will also fix the ‘bless tool’ error. 

Now my computer is APFS and all my files are intact. Everything seems to be good.

joscm wrote:

I tried to upgrade my ssd with Mojae to Catalina.

However, Catalina refuses to upgrade because my ssd has not an APFS format.

How to convert my ssd tot APFS without losing my data and apps?

The current ssd format is MacOS extended journaled?

The go to way is convert to APFS on the fly using the DiskUtility.app>Edit> Convert to APFS.

This is a surprising fast conversion within 3-4 minutes.

You have to boot to Recovery to utilize the built in feature:

Recovery http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718

I think what happened in my case, and maybe it's the same with others, is that at one point in the past I swapped out my HDD with an SSD. During that, I suspect I cloned my drive to an HFS external drive, and then cloned it back onto the SSD. So I think that's how I ended up with Mojave and Mac Extended together on my drive. So yeah, I think I fell off of Apple's path.

I'm guessing that you weren't notified about 10.14.6 (same for me) because your machine isn't APFS. Convert to APFS first before you try the 10.14.6 update.

Be sure to make backups first!

It's too hilarious: this is trying to upgrade 10.14.5 to 10.14.6: