Participant

Question

Photoshop 27.6.0 does not recognize external APFS disk as scratch disk on macOS Tahoe 26.3.1

Forum|Forum|1 month ago
April 29, 2026
3 replies
99 views

Since updating to Photoshop 27.6.0, external APFS disks no longer appear in Preferences > Scratch Disks. The disk is properly formatted, correctly mounted, and visible in Finder and Disk Utility, but Photoshop does not list it as an available scratch disk option. This worked correctly with previous versions of Photoshop on the same system. Tested on macOS Tahoe 26.3.1 with a 256 GB external SSK SSD formatted as APFS. Reformatting the disk as HFS+ (Mac OS Extended Journaled) via Terminal makes the disk visible in Photoshop scratch disk preferences, but macOS Tahoe unmounts HFS+ external volumes intermittently, making it an unviable workaround.

photoshop_scratch_disk

S

Sunny_amazement3459

Participant

I am experiencing this same problem with Scratch Disc not recognising external hard drive.
I have just followed the steps above and still no joy.
Do you have any other suggestions?

The hard drive model is: Seagate Expansion Desktop SRD0NF2

L

Luis EchánoveAuthor

Participant

Hi @Sameer K . Thank you for answeing. Photoshop has the requiered permission on MacOS (full access) and it is still happening

Sameer K

Community Manager

Thanks for the reply. Please check if the issue happens when you use Photoshop (beta). You can get Photoshop (beta) from the Beta Apps section in the Creative Cloud desktop app.

Also, in macOS Utilities > go to Disk Utility > Reformat, or run First Aid action on the specific drive and check if it helps. More details: https://support.apple.com/en-in/102611

Thanks!
Sameer K

D Fosse

Community Expert

First thing to try is always to reset preferences.

Preferences/settings are vulnerable to corruption because they are rewritten on every application exit, as opposed to read-only program files.

The safest and most complete way is to move the whole Adobe Photoshop 2026 Settings folder to your desktop, so that a new one can be built. This returns the application to clean, out-of-the-box factory state.

L

Luis EchánoveAuthor

Participant

Already tried. Reset preferences via Cmd + Opt + Shift at launch and also removed the Adobe Photoshop 2026 Settings folder manually. No change. The external disk (256 GB SSK SSD) is correctly mounted and visible in Finder and Disk Utility, but does not appear in Photoshop Scratch Disks preferences. Reformatting from APFS to HFS+ via Terminal made it visible, but macOS Tahoe unmounts HFS+ external volumes intermittently, making it unviable. The issue started with 27.6.0 — it worked correctly on the previous version with the same disk and same system.

Sameer K

Community Manager

Hey, @Luis Echánove. I'll help you figure this out.

Just to be sure, ensure Photoshop has the required permissions on the macOS: https://adobe.ly/43zB3AJ

Let us know how it goes. Thanks!

Sameer K

(Type '@' and type my name to mention me when you reply)

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