System Preferences problem when enabling FileVault 2 using an IRK is fixed in macOS Sierra

Starting in OS X Yosemite 10.10.x, I noticed an issue when enabling FileVault 2 via System Preferences when using an institutional recovery key.

In Mavericks and earlier versions of OS X, the behavior of System Preferences looked like this:

1. Click the lock to unlock the FileVault preference pane
2. Click the Turn on FileVault… button
3. A list of users that can be enabled for FileVault 2 is displayed. The logged-in user account is marked with the green checkbox that shows that the account is enabled.
4. A message is displayed that a recovery key has been set by a company, school or institution.
5. A message prompting the user to restart is displayed.
6. Once the Restart button has been clicked, the FileVault 2 initialization process continues and restarts the Mac.
7. The Mac restarts to the FileVault 2 pre-boot login screen.

To illustrate, I’ve made a video showing the described behavior.

In OS X Yosemite and OS X El Capitan, the behavior of System Preferences looks like this:

1. Click the lock to unlock the FileVault preference pane
2. Click the Turn on FileVault… button
3. A message is displayed that a recovery key has been set by a company, school or institution.
4. System Preferences then displays no additional messages and will appear to hang for up to two minutes.
5. The Mac restarts without further input from the user.
6. The Mac restarts to the FileVault 2 pre-boot login screen.

To illustrate, I’ve made a video showing the described behavior.

I had filed a bug report on the problem, which has now been closed as fixed after I was able to verify that the problem was resolved in macOS Sierra 10.12.0.

As of macOS Sierra 10.12.0, the behavior of System Preferences has returned to approximating the pre-Yosemite behavior. The process now looks like this:

1. Click the lock to unlock the FileVault preference pane
2. Click the Turn on FileVault… button
3. A message is displayed that a recovery key has been set by a company, school or institution.
4. A list of users that can be enabled for FileVault 2 is displayed. The logged-in user account is marked with the green checkbox that shows that the account is enabled.
5. A message prompting the user to restart is displayed.
6. Once the Restart button has been clicked, the FileVault 2 initialization process continues and restarts the Mac.
7. The Mac restarts to the FileVault 2 pre-boot login screen.

To illustrate, I’ve made a video showing the described behavior.