Download Mountain Duck for macOS

Before you begin

Mountain Duck runs on any Mac with macOS 13 (Ventura) or newer. It is a universal app, so it works on Apple Silicon and Intel machines without a separate download.

Set up the connection

1. Open the downloaded disk image and drag Mountain Duck to your Applications folder.
2. Launch it from Launchpad. The helper appears in your menu bar.
3. Click the menu bar icon and pick a protocol — FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, SMB, or a cloud service like Backblaze B2, Google Drive, or Dropbox.
4. Enter your server details and bookmark. If Cyberduck is already installed, Mountain Duck shares its bookmarks automatically.
5. Finder shows the remote volume as a local disk. Drag files, open them in any app, and save normally.

What happens next

Files you open are cached on your local disk so you can keep working offline. When a connection is available again, Mountain Duck uploads your changes in the background. Version 5 also adds Integrated Connect Mode, SMB support, and storage-independent file versioning. If you use Cryptomator vaults, the app can handle encryption at rest without extra steps.

A different feel from ExpanDrive and CloudMounter

Plenty of Mac users looking for a mountain duck mac solution are also eyeing ExpanDrive and CloudMounter. They all mount remote storage as a Finder volume, but the feel is different once you live with each one.

ExpanDrive goes heavy on cloud services and maps them as network drives. The interface leans busier, and background sync can feel more aggressive on battery. Mountain Duck keeps things quieter — menu bar helper, shared Cyberduck bookmarks, and a smarter cache that doesn’t hoover up disk space unless you actually open a file.

CloudMounter aims for a similar minimal footprint, but its protocol support is narrower. Mountain Duck covers FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, SMB, and a long list of object storage backends. If your workflow stretches across a self-hosted SFTP server and an S3 bucket, CloudMounter makes you bridge that gap with other tools.

Another quiet strength is the Cryptomator integration. ExpanDrive bundles its own encryption, CloudMounter doesn’t touch it. With Mountain Duck, you point it at a Cryptomator vault and get transparent encryption at rest, no extra apps floating in the menu bar.

Treating a mounted volume like a sync folder

Most early stumbles come from treating a mounted volume like a sync folder. A few common ones to dodge:

• Dragging huge folders straight to Finder and walking away. Mountain Duck fetches files on demand, not ahead of time. If you copy 200 GB of raw video to the mounted drive and close the lid, those transfers queue up in the background. A dropped connection mid-copy leaves you with partial files. Better to stage large batches, watch the menu bar indicator, and stay connected until it finishes.
• Assuming everything is offline by default. Files you haven’t opened yet live only on the remote server. Mark folders you travel with as “keep offline” so they sit on your local disk before you board a plane.
• Ignoring the cache location. The local cache grows as you open files. On a Mac with a small internal drive, that can sneak up on you. Point the cache to an external volume in preferences if you work with large media.
• Editing the same file from two Macs at once. Mountain Duck doesn’t do real-time collaboration locking. If two people open the same remote spreadsheet, the last save wins. This trips up small teams sharing QuickBooks files or markdown notes across machines.

Finder-shaped door, not a backup tool

Mountain Duck makes the most sense when you treat it as a Finder-shaped door to remote storage, not a backup tool. Pair it with a few macOS features and the seams disappear.

Spotlight and Quick Look. Once a volume is mounted, Spotlight can index it. Press the spacebar on a remote PDF or PSD and Quick Look shows a preview without launching an app. This alone saves people who keep project briefs and design assets on a team SFTP server.

Automator and Shortcuts. Because the volume looks like any other disk, folder actions and Shortcuts work on it. A photography team I know runs an Automator script that watches a “ready for retouch” folder on their S3-backed volume, then opens each new file in Photoshop automatically.

Cyberduck tandem. If Cyberduck is installed, bookmarks stay in sync between the two. You can browse and transfer files with Cyberduck’s two-pane interface when you want more control, then mount the same server with Mountain Duck when you just need to open and edit. The two apps share a preferences file, so you configure a connection once.

Time Machine exclusion. The local cache folder isn’t meant for long-term storage. Exclude it from Time Machine so backups don’t balloon with temporary file copies. The remote server is the source of truth; the cache is just performance. A clean separation keeps your Mac happy and your backup sizes honest.

• macOS 13 or later
• Apple Silicon or Intel Mac