How to Mount an Amazon S3 Bucket as a Disk on a Mac

Short answer: macOS can't do it on its own. The Finder's Connect to Server (⌘K) speaks file-sharing protocols such as SMB and WebDAV, not S3. To see a bucket as a disk, you need a program that talks to S3 and presents the bucket as a file system. The free way is rclone: its nfsmount command hands the bucket to the NFS client built into macOS, so you need neither macFUSE nor an administrator password. The point-and-click way is a file manager that does the same for you, such as Folia Files.

This guide covers both, for Amazon S3 and for S3-compatible services such as Backblaze B2, Wasabi or MinIO, then what a mounted bucket can and can't do. For SFTP servers, and why macFUSE is worth avoiding, see how to connect to SFTP and S3 on a Mac without macFUSE.

Gather four things first

Whichever way you mount it, S3 asks for the same details:

• An access key ID and a secret key. On AWS, create an access key for an IAM user. On Backblaze B2, create an application key: its keyID is the access key ID, its applicationKey the secret key. A key limited to this one bucket is safer than one that opens your whole account.
• The bucket name, and a folder inside it if you only need part of it.
• The region where the bucket lives, such as eu-west-3 on AWS.
• The endpoint, the address of the service. Amazon S3 doesn't need one; every other provider does, and shows it in its console.

Service	Endpoint	Region
Amazon S3	leave empty	the bucket's region, e.g. eu-west-3
Backblaze B2	s3.eu-central-003.backblazeb2.com	the middle part: eu-central-003
Wasabi	s3.eu-central-1.wasabisys.com	eu-central-1
Scaleway	s3.fr-par.scw.cloud	fr-par
MinIO on your own server	http://nas.local:9000	often empty

The endpoints above are examples: copy yours from your provider, since it depends on where your bucket was created.

Mount a bucket for free with rclone

1. Install rclone

With Homebrew, in Terminal:

brew install rclone

Homebrew's rclone refuses to run rclone mount, which relies on macFUSE or FUSE-T. That's fine: the command you want is rclone nfsmount, which needs neither.

2. Save the bucket as a remote

A remote is a named connection that rclone remembers. For a Backblaze B2 bucket:

rclone config create b2 s3 provider=Other access_key_id=YOUR_KEY_ID secret_access_key=YOUR_SECRET endpoint=s3.eu-central-003.backblazeb2.com region=eu-central-003

For other services, change provider: AWS (and drop the endpoint), Wasabi, Scaleway, Minio, Cloudflare for R2, or Other for a service missing from rclone's list. Running rclone config asks the same questions one by one and keeps the secret out of your shell history. Either way, rclone writes the keys to its configuration file, in plain text unless you set a configuration password.

Check that it works by listing the top of the bucket:

rclone lsd b2:alex-archives

3. Mount it

The mount point must be an empty folder that already exists:

mkdir -p ~/Buckets/archives
rclone nfsmount b2:alex-archives ~/Buckets/archives --vfs-cache-mode writes --volname "B2 archives"

The bucket's files are now in ~/Buckets/archives, as a disk named "B2 archives". The command keeps running in its Terminal window: press ⌃C there to unmount.

• --vfs-cache-mode writes lets apps save normally: what they write goes to a local cache first, then up to the bucket. Without it, an app that opens a file for reading and writing at the same time can't save.
• --read-only instead, if you only want to look at an archive.
• --dir-cache-time 30s if other people or other Macs add files to the bucket: by default, rclone rereads a folder only every five minutes.

Mount a bucket with Folia Files

Folia Files, a file manager for the Mac, mounts S3 with rclone's nfsmount too, but it remembers the connection, keeps the secret key in the macOS Keychain and mounts the bucket when you click it. In the website edition, all it needs is rclone, installed as above.

1. Choose Tools › Connections (Servers and Clouds)… (⌘K), click New Connection, then S3 / compatible. In the sidebar, the + next to Servers goes straight to the list of server types.
2. Type a Display Name: it becomes the name of the disk.
3. Under S3 Storage, pick the Provider: AWS, Scaleway, Wasabi, Minio, DigitalOcean, IDrive, or Other for any other service, such as Backblaze B2. Then fill in Access Key ID, Secret Key, Region, Endpoint (optional) (empty for AWS) and Bucket and folder, such as alex-archives/2026.
4. Under Options, turn on Read-Only for an archive you only browse, and Mount automatically when Folia Files launches for a bucket you use every day.
5. Click Test Connection: Folia Files lists the top of the folder and tells you how many items it found, or shows the error. Then click Save and Mount.

The bucket then sits in the Servers section of the sidebar. A click mounts it if needed and opens it in the pane; once mounted, it's a disk for the whole Mac, so the Finder and other apps see it too. In Folia Files, you can put the bucket in one pane and a folder of your Mac in the other, and drag files between them. In the website edition, a connection set to mount automatically comes back on its own after sleep or when the network returns (Settings › Files and Network, on by default).

The Servers and clouds page lists everything else Folia Files connects to.

What a mounted bucket does and doesn't do

S3 stores objects, not files on a disk. The mount hides most of the difference, but not all of it:

• Nothing is kept for offline use. Files are read from the bucket when you open them. The cache only holds what you save until it's uploaded: Folia Files caps it at 1 GB and sends each file about two seconds after it's closed. Without a connection, the bucket can't be listed or opened. To keep a copy on your Mac, sync a folder of the bucket to a local folder. If offline files are what you need most, Mountain Duck and CloudMounter keep them; this comparison sets out what each app does.
• Each save uploads the whole file. S3 can't change part of an object, so a small edit to a large video sends all of it again.
• Renaming a folder renames every file in it. S3 has no real folders, only names with slashes, so a big folder takes a while to rename or move.
• Empty folders don't last. A folder you create stays in the bucket only once a file is inside it. With rclone on the command line, the --s3-directory-markers option keeps empty folders.
• Browsing can cost money. Listing a folder, opening or previewing a file are requests, and downloads may count as outgoing traffic. Check your provider's prices, and whether the bucket keeps old versions of the files you replace or delete: on Backblaze B2, that's the default setting.

Website edition and Mac App Store edition

S3 goes through rclone, and that's where the two editions of Folia Files differ. The website edition mounts S3 as soon as rclone is installed. In the Mac App Store edition, Apple's sandbox doesn't let the app start rclone, so S3 needs Folia Files Companion, a small free app from foliafiles.com (rclone is still required). Network shares such as SMB and WebDAV work in both editions with nothing to add.

FAQ

Can the Finder connect to Amazon S3? No. Connect to Server doesn't support S3. A bucket only appears in the Finder once a tool such as rclone mounts it.

Do I need macFUSE? No. rclone nfsmount, and Folia Files with it, mount through the NFS client that comes with macOS: no system extension and no administrator password.

Can I mount Cloudflare R2 or another S3-compatible service? With rclone, choose its provider in the list (Cloudflare for R2) or Other with the service's endpoint. In Folia Files, a service missing from the Provider menu goes under Other: run Test Connection before you rely on it.