Okay, so I've just discovered a very nice macOS app called CloudMounter. Actually, I'd discovered it before, but bought directly from the developer it's rather expensive. BUT... there's an app store version that's much cheaper (USD 9.99 / GBP 9.99) and works just as well, with one reservation.

CloudMounter allows you to mount any number of remote drives on your Mac file system, from various kinds of FTP through Amazon S3 to Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive and webDAV drives. It works fast and well, despite some early negative reviews. It's a good deal more robust than e.g. MountainDuck, with which I have a somewhat turbulent relationship.

The only downside of buying from the App Store is that you can't mount drives in the Finder sidebar. Doesn't mean they're not mounted, just that you won't see them in the sidebar. You see them in the file system, you see them on the desktop, but for some reason they're ignored by Finder in any other view. It has a little menu in the Menu Bar from which you can access drives directly, or else you can do so from the actual desktop (the drives don't show up on the Desktop in Finder windows, amusingly enough - that's not true if you buy CloudMounter directly from the developer).

It's very simply but completely transformed my relationship with various remote drives I use on a regular basis.

Cheers,
Bill

Thanks for this, Bill. (I learnt of this app a few weeks ago, I'm not sure how, and then forgot about it. Your post has given me the chance for a re-evaluation. Also intrigued by your "turbulent relationship" with MountainDuck!)

How is it different from Odrive?

Ha! Sometime I'll tell you all about MountainDuck! Having said which, I've still got it on my system just in case an update sorts out the various issues (ranging through to extreme system instability) I've had to contend with.

As for odrive - well, I've had a good look at the latter, and it appears to be an online aggregation service based on a subscription (quite a high subscription, too, at USD 8.25 pcm). All the best features (including encryption, automatic release of disk space etc.) are reserved for the premium (paying) version, whereas CloudMounter has all these things built-in. CloudMounter is a single, one-off payment for a simple concept - the ability to mount all your online services on your desktop - but also has some nice extras, including encryption if you want it.

Given that you're most likely already subscribing to several of these services (e.g. OneDrive as part of Office365), I don't see why you should subscribe to yet another service just to be able to aggregate your remote drives. So impressive as odrive looks, it's not for me. Having said that, I'm sure there are many people who find it extremely useful. For me, it resembles all those aggregating e-mail services that claim to manage your multiple e-mail accounts, although there are any number of very good desktop/mobile e-mail clients that do exactly the same thing.

Beware online service providers bearing gifts! (to paraphrase Laocoon's "timeo Danaos et dona ferentis"); in my experience, an awful lot of them are looking to make money by offering you a very enticing business/personal management proposition that you don't really need.

Cheers,
Bill

I don't understand much about disk mounting, but it seems to me that one of the drawbacks of using a service like CloudMounter would be that your, say, Dropbox files would not be available to you from your iPad or Windows PC. Is that the case?

Steve Z.

No, that's not the case. CloudMounter spoofs the Mac file system into thinking Dropbox is an external volume, therefore eliminating the need to sync copies of files between Dropbox and your Mac. But your iOS and/or Windows machines that access the same Dropbox account would see no difference -- nor would your Mac apps see a difference when they access the Dropbox files.

The end result is similar to using a Synology NAS, which is mounted to your local Mac as an external volume. With the proper setup on Synology and the DS Files app on your iOS device, you can also access those files through iOS Document Provider / Document Picker.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

I don't understand much about disk mounting, but it seems to me that one
of the drawbacks of using a service like CloudMounter would be that
your, say, Dropbox files would not be available to you from your iPad or
Windows PC. Is that the case?

Steve Z.

Thank you for the clarification, Paul!

Steve Z.

Steve.

The only problem I see with syncing between various OSses: If you use the file encryption feature of CloudMounter, you won't be able to open the files on Windows or the iPad.

Franz

Thanks, Franz. That makes sense.

Steve Z.

Transmit, one of the best SFTP clients on macOS also now lets you mount discs in the finder. From their web page:

"With the new Transmit Disk feature, you can now mount any of your favorites in the Finder itself, even if Transmit's not running. These volumes are real: drag files to your SFTP server, save a small graphic to your Amazon S3 bucket directly from Photoshop, or roll your own iDisk-like backup volume. It’s all possible in T4."

https://panic.com/transmit/

I've used ExpanDrive ( http://www.expandrive.com/ ) for several years for this kind of thing.

ExpanDrive is similar to CloudMounter, but works on both Windows and Mac, and they have a Linux version in beta.

One nice thing about ExpanDrive is their licensing policy. It is licensed per user and a single license allows installation on all of that user's computers, regardless of platform, so if you have both Windows and Mac, you only need one license for both.

I agree on the encryption issue - I haven't switched encryption on, yet, although I've noted that CloudMounter apparently allows you to apply encryption selectively, e.g. to single folders. But I haven't had time to play with that yet.

ExpanDrive is interesting, but even more expensive than CloudMounter. However, the cross-platform options are a major plus.

CloudMounter also supports SFTP (in fact, that was one of the first protocols I set up, so I could access our various FTP sites directly).

Cheers!
Bill