Mountain Duck and CloudMounter alternative
Servers and clouds as disks — with a file manager around them
Mountain Duck and CloudMounter put your servers and cloud storage in the Finder as disks. Folia Files mounts them too — your NAS, SFTP, WebDAV, S3, your clouds — and gives you a complete file manager to work in them, for one price.
7 days free with every feature, no account, no card. Then $49.99 once for up to 3 Macs, every future update included — no subscription.
In short
Mountain Duck ($49 per user for one major version, or a subscription on the Mac App Store) and CloudMounter (from $29 a year, or $74 for life on one Mac) mount servers and cloud storage as disks in the Finder and keep files for offline use. Folia Files ($49.99 once, up to 3 Macs, every update included) mounts SMB, WebDAV, FTP, AFP and NFS shares through macOS, and SFTP, S3 and clouds through rclone, a free tool — then lets you work in them from a full file manager, where a frozen server never freezes the window and interrupted copies resume. Choose Mountain Duck or CloudMounter for offline files and nothing else to install; choose Folia Files to get the disks and the file manager in one app, without a subscription.
Servers and clouds
| Feature | Folia Files | Mountain Duck | CloudMounter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Servers and clouds mounted as disks | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SMB shares (NAS, Windows) | YesWith AFP and NFS, mounted by macOS | YesSince version 5 | Not stated |
| SFTP | YesThrough rclone (free) | Yes | Yes |
| WebDAV and FTP | YesFTP read-only, as macOS mounts it | Yes | Yes |
| Amazon S3 and compatible storage | YesThrough rclone | YesAlso Azure, Google Cloud Storage, Swift | YesAlso Backblaze B2, Swift |
| Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box | YesThrough their apps, or directly with rclone | YesAlso SharePoint | YesAlso pCloud, MEGA |
| Files kept for offline use | NoMounted servers are read live | YesSmart Synchronization | Yes |
| Nothing else to install | Partlyrclone for SFTP, S3 and direct clouds | Yes | Yes |
| A file manager to work in them | YesPanes, tabs, search, sync, tools | NoWorks through the Finder | NoWorks through the Finder |
| Windows version | No | Yes | Yes |
| On the Mac App Store | Coming soon | YesSubscription: $5.99 a month or $59.99 a year | YesAlso on Setapp |
| Price | $49.99 once, up to 3 Macs, updates included | $49 per user, valid for one major version | $29 a year, or $74 for life on one Mac |
| Free trial | 7 days | 14 days | 7 days |
What Mountain Duck and CloudMounter do better
Both keep files for offline use. Mountain Duck's Smart Synchronization downloads a file when you open it, keeps it on the Mac and uploads your changes in the background once the connection is back; CloudMounter also lets you work on cloud files offline. Mountain Duck adds file locking for Office documents, sharing links, previous versions of files and sync status in the Finder.
Everything is built in, with nothing else to install, and both also run on Windows. If you edit server files on the train, keep one of them — Folia Files works next to both.
What you get with Folia Files
Add a connection once — SMB, WebDAV, FTP, AFP or NFS through macOS itself; SFTP, S3, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, pCloud or Box through rclone — and it mounts like a disk. iCloud Drive and the clouds installed with their own app appear in the sidebar with nothing to set up.
Then you work in them from a complete file manager: panes side by side, tabs, search, sync and backups to your NAS, an undo history.
- Passwords in the Keychain
- Reconnects on its own after sleep or when the network comes back
- Open a server file in any app: each save goes back after a check that nobody changed it there
A frozen server never freezes the window
Everything on a network disk is read in the background — whether Folia Files mounted it or not. When a server stops answering, only its pane waits: the window, the other panes and your other copies carry on.
A copy cut by a lost connection waits for the server to come back (two minutes by default) and resumes where it stopped, big files from the last bytes written. Each copied file can be read back and checked byte for byte.
Website edition and Mac App Store
Network shares (SMB, AFP, NFS, WebDAV, FTP) and the clouds installed with their own app work in both editions. SFTP, S3 and direct cloud connections rely on rclone (brew install rclone): in the website edition they work right away; in the Mac App Store edition they go through Folia Files Companion, a small free app, because Apple's sandbox does not let an app start rclone.
Questions
No. Mounted servers are read live, so you need the connection. To keep a copy on your Mac, a sync job can copy or mirror a server folder to a local folder, on demand or on a schedule (in the Mac App Store edition, with Folia Files Companion).
No. SMB, WebDAV, FTP, AFP and NFS are mounted by macOS itself, and rclone mounts through the NFS client built into macOS: no kernel extension, no administrator password.
Yes. What they mount shows up in Folia Files like any other disk or cloud folder, and you browse it in panes like the rest of your Mac.
No. Folia Files is $49.99 once for up to 3 Macs at a time, after a 7-day trial with every feature.
See for yourself, free for 7 days
Every feature, no account, no credit card. Then $49.99, once, every future update included — no subscription.
Prices and features checked on 5 October 2026, on the makers' websites, documentation, the Mac App Store and Setapp.