FreeMount is an open-source macOS app that shows cloud storage in Finder. It is built with SwiftUI, Apple's File Provider framework and rclone. It needs no FUSE-T, macFUSE or NFS mounts.
I wanted my servers and buckets in Finder like normal disks. Many of my servers have no open ports, so I need to reach them through tunnels. I built FreeMount so SFTP works that way. CloudMounter inspired the idea.
FreeMount connects SFTP through the access path you already trust:
- Cloudflare Tunnel (
cloudflared access ssh), so no inbound port is open - Jump host / bastion (
ProxyJump) - Custom
ProxyCommandfor anything else (SOCKS proxy,ncat, ...)
It is also open source and free, and uses Apple's native File Provider rather than a third-party filesystem extension. Files appear in Finder under Locations, are downloaded on demand and are managed by macOS.
| Provider | Status |
|---|---|
| Google Drive | Working |
| Google Cloud Storage | OAuth and Service Account keys, one bucket per connection. Live validation pending. |
| SFTP, WebDAV | Working. SFTP supports Cloudflare Tunnel, jump hosts and custom ProxyCommand. WebDAV Digest-only servers are unsupported. |
| SMB, FTP/FTPS | Implemented. Live validation on real servers pending. |
| S3 | Planned |
Connections appear in Finder under Locations (~/Library/CloudStorage). Credentials stay in the macOS Keychain; nothing sensitive is written to disk in plaintext.
FreeMount menu bar app
├── Keychain: cloud credentials
├── rclone rcd: remote file operations and telemetry
└── File Provider domain registration
└── FreeMountFileProvider.appex
└── Finder Locations / CloudStorage
The app starts an authenticated local rclone rcd, then registers File Provider domains. The extension reads a non-secret descriptor from the shared App Group, loads credentials from the shared Keychain access group and calls the local RC API. macOS manages downloaded copies.
Requires macOS 14+, Xcode and XcodeGen. A free Apple ID is enough to build and run it locally.
cp Configs/Secrets.xcconfig.example Configs/Secrets.xcconfig # add your Team ID and OAuth client
xcodegen generate
xcodebuild -project FreeMount.xcodeproj -scheme FreeMount -configuration Debug -allowProvisioningUpdates build
swift testDetails: docs/building.md.
There are no public downloads yet, and there will not be until the app can be signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized. The app relies on App Groups, shared Keychain access groups and a sandboxed File Provider extension — entitlements that require a signing identity, so ad-hoc or unsigned builds do not launch on other Macs. Building from source with your own free Apple ID is the supported way to run it today.
See docs/: architecture, security, adding a provider.
GCS uses standard rclone operations with best-effort metadata checks. It does not protect against concurrent external writers, and hydration is not pinned to an object revision.
MIT. Bundled rclone is also MIT-licensed.