FTP client for Mac, mounted in Finder.
Cyberduck, FileZilla, and Transmit put the server in a transfer window. ExpanDrive puts it in Finder, where every app on your Mac opens the files directly. ExpanDrive mounts any FTP or FTPS server as a drive on macOS through Apple’s File Provider extension: plain FTP, FTPS-explicit, and FTPS-implicit, active or passive mode, streamed on demand. Free for personal use, Apple Silicon native, no kernel extension.
The FTP client that is a drive, not a window.
A volume in Finder.
The server appears in the Finder sidebar and under ~/Library/CloudStorage, the same place iCloud Drive lives. Browse it, tag it, Quick Look it, drag files onto it. Nothing to sync first.
Every Mac app opens the server directly.
Photoshop, Excel, VS Code, Final Cut, the terminal: each one reads and writes files on the server as if they were local. No download, edit, re-upload cycle, and no copy on your Mac to fall out of date.
Plain FTP and FTPS, both modes.
Plain FTP for the legacy endpoint with no TLS, FTPS-explicit for everything modern, FTPS-implicit for the financial and government servers that still mandate it. Pick the mode the server supports.
Streams on demand.
Only the files you open transfer, and they are cached locally so the second open is fast. A 400 GB server takes seconds to mount, not hours to download.
What the Finder mount gets right.
The details that decide whether an FTP mount is a tool you trust or a thing you fight.
Apple File Provider, no kernel extension.
ExpanDrive uses the same sandboxed extension model iCloud Drive uses. No kext, no Recovery Mode approval, nothing that breaks on the next macOS release. Apple Silicon native.
Active and passive modes.
Passive by default, which is what NAT and most firewalls want. Active mode is a toggle in the connection setup for the legacy servers that require it.
Credentials in the macOS Keychain.
Passwords live in the Keychain, never on disk in plaintext, and never in a bookmarks file you have to remember to protect.
Where the classic Mac FTP clients stop short.
Good tools, all of them. The gap is the same in each: a transfer window is not a drive.
- Cyberduck and FileZilla are transfer windows.Free and capable, and every file still downloads before an app can open it and uploads after you save. Cyberduck's external-editor feature hides one file's round trip; a folder of them is still a folder of round trips.
- Transmit dropped its mount. Transmit Disk put servers in Finder in earlier versions; Transmit 5 removed it. Today Transmit is a polished transfer client, and a Mac-only one.
- Finder's own FTP is read-only. Connect to Server accepts an ftp:// address and mounts the server, but you cannot write to it, and it does not speak FTPS.
- macFUSE plus curlftpfs is the do-it-yourself route. A kernel extension that needs reduced security on Apple Silicon, and a FUSE filesystem whose last upstream activity is years old.
The same Mac app mounts the destinations FTP teams move to.
One install covers the protocol you have today and the ones you are moving toward.
SFTP
Mount any SFTP or SSH server as a local drive on Mac or Windows - browse and edit remote files without syncing.
WebDAV
Connect to any WebDAV server directly from your desktop - mapped as a network drive with full file access on Mac, Windows, or Linux.
Amazon S3
Connect to Amazon S3 or any S3-compatible storage as a network drive — multi-threaded transfers and full bucket browsing on Mac, Windows, and Linux.
Questions about FTP on a Mac.
Free clients, Finder, security modes, what downloads, and where the server side comes from.
Need a File Orchestration Platform, not just a drive?
The cloud connectors mounting your drive on macOS, Windows, and Linux are the same ones that run on Files.com's high-performance cloud File Orchestration Platform — used by 4,000+ businesses including Equifax, Rag & Bone, Cognizant, and Michelin. If you need automations, audit logs, SFTP / AS2 servers, or compliance reporting on top of your file estate, that lives there.
Try it free.
Mount everything.
Free for personal use. Runs on every Mac, PC, and Linux box built in the last decade.