SFTP on Linux, as a real drive letter.
sshfs, lftp, and curlftpfs are command-line tools, not desktop drives — and they break in ways that take half a day to diagnose. ExpanDrive mounts any SFTP or SSH server as a native filesystem on Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, RHEL, Rocky, and AlmaLinux, with signed apt and yum repositories, on-demand streaming, and every Linux app reading and writing remote files like local ones.
— What you get
Every SSH server, mounted properly.
Native .deb and .rpm packages.
Signed apt and yum repositories for automatic updates. Install through your package manager on Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, RHEL, CentOS Stream, Rocky Linux, and AlmaLinux. No tarballs, no compiling, no DKMS, no maintainer who disappeared in 2019.
Standard Linux mount point.
SFTP servers appear at a standard FUSE mount path under your home directory. GNOME Files, Dolphin, Thunar, Vim, VS Code, rsync, Git, the shell — every Linux tool sees the remote tree as the local filesystem.
Stream on demand.
No full mirror of the remote tree on disk. ExpanDrive streams files when you open them and caches what you actually use. Long-running uploads and downloads resume after network drops. Pin folders for offline access when you need them.
ssh-agent integration.
Same SSH keys ssh, scp, and rsync use — ExpanDrive reads from the system ssh-agent. No separate keychain, no passphrase re-entry across sessions, no key duplication. Password auth and OpenSSH-format key files work too.
— Power features
Built for how SSH actually gets used on Linux.
Three auth methods.
Password (with keyboard-interactive MFA prompts at connect time for TOTP, push, or hardware tokens), OpenSSH-format key files, or ssh-agent — whichever your environment already standardizes on.
Custom ports and remote path scoping.
Default port 22 or any custom port your servers use. Mount the whole server, or scope the mount to /home/user/project — useful for compliance-restricted accounts or for hiding deep paths from end users.
Multiple servers, side by side.
Mount as many SSH servers as you have credentials for — production, staging, the partner box, the legacy financial endpoint — each at its own mount point, all visible at once.
— vs the Linux alternatives
Where sshfs and the rest break down.
Linux SFTP access has historically been a graveyard of half-maintained FUSE projects and command-line tools. Here's where ExpanDrive fits.
- sshfs is unmaintained. The reference Linux SFTP mount tool. Last meaningful release in 2022; the upstream maintainer has stepped back and the project is in a holding pattern. Works on small trees, struggles on large ones, has known cache coherency issues, and offers no offline pinning or modern UX.
- lftp and the FTP-family CLIs aren't mounts.They're transfer clients — useful for scripted batch copies, not as a daily desktop mount. No filesystem interface, no integration with desktop apps, no Finder-equivalent UX.
- GNOME Online Accounts is shallow. GOA exposes SFTP in GNOME Files via GVFS, but with limited app coverage, no offline mode, and path formats that break half of the CLI workflows that should be the entire point of running on Linux in the first place.
- VS Code Remote-SSH is a different use case. Remote-SSH runs a server inside your remote box and edits files there — not a filesystem mount. ExpanDrive is the right tool when you want a real drive that every desktop app and command-line tool can see.
— Related protocols on Linux
Other protocol mounts, same Linux build.
ExpanDrive's Linux client mounts every protocol the rest of the product supports. Most teams running SFTP also have an FTP endpoint and an S3 bucket somewhere — one install handles all three.
FTP
Mount any FTP or FTPS server as a network drive on macOS, Windows, and Linux - full TLS support for legacy systems that haven't migrated to SFTP.
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.
WebDAV
Connect to any WebDAV server directly from your desktop - mapped as a network drive with full file access on Mac, Windows, or Linux.
— Common questions
Common questions about SFTP on Linux.
Distros, kernels, ssh-agent integration, headless boxes, and the question of when sshfs is actually fine.
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.