ExpanDrive is a Mac application that mounts cloud storage services — including Google Drive, Dropbox, S3, SFTP, and over a dozen others — as native Finder volumes, letting you read and write remote files without syncing them locally.
What is ExpanDrive?
ExpanDrive turns cloud storage into a mounted disk. Instead of downloading files into a local sync folder the way Dropbox or Google's native clients do, it presents your remote storage directly in Finder's sidebar and every Open/Save dialog on your Mac — exactly as an external hard drive would appear, but backed by the cloud.
The practical upshot is significant: you can open a 4 GB video straight from your S3 bucket in Final Cut Pro, edit a spreadsheet sitting on a remote SFTP server in Numbers, and drag assets between an FTP site and Google Drive — all without touching your local SSD. For anyone working across machines, managing a server, or simply tired of running out of disk space, that is a different category of tool than a sync client.
What does ExpanDrive do best?
Its standout strength is breadth without friction. ExpanDrive supports Google Drive, Google Team Drives, Dropbox, Dropbox Business, OneDrive, SharePoint, Box, Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, Wasabi, SFTP, FTP, WebDAV, and more — all configured through a single clean preference pane and all exposed through the same familiar Finder interface.
The kernel-level volume driver is notably fast for sequential reads. Opening a document from a well-connected SFTP server feels snappy enough that colleagues often don't realise the file isn't local. ExpanDrive also caches aggressively, so re-opening a recently accessed file is nearly instant even over slower connections.
- Finder integration — mounted volumes appear in every standard Open/Save sheet system-wide
- Spotlight indexing — remote files surface in Spotlight searches once indexed
- Multiple connections simultaneously — connect to S3 and SFTP and Google Drive all at once
- CLI access — mounted volumes are accessible from Terminal at their standard mount path
- Reconnect on wake — drives remount automatically after sleep without manual intervention
How much does ExpanDrive cost?
ExpanDrive is a paid application. Licensing is offered on both a one-time perpetual basis and an annual subscription; the subscription tier includes priority support and faster access to major version upgrades. A free trial is available directly from the developer's site so you can verify your specific combination of protocols and storage providers works the way you expect before committing.
For solo developers or sysadmins who live in the terminal and Finder alike, the perpetual license pays for itself quickly compared to the cost of the extra local storage you no longer need to provision.
Who should use ExpanDrive?
ExpanDrive is most valuable to three groups. First, developers and sysadmins who regularly work with remote servers over SFTP — the ability to edit config files in VS Code or BBEdit as if they were local, without deploying, is genuinely transformative. Second, creative professionals whose project libraries outgrow their local drive; mounting S3 or Backblaze B2 directly means assets are accessible on demand rather than pre-downloaded. Third, teams that span multiple cloud storage providers — if your organisation has files split across SharePoint and Box and a legacy FTP server, ExpanDrive unifies them behind a single UI.
It is not the right tool if your primary need is real-time collaboration with version conflict resolution — for that, the native Google Drive or Dropbox clients still handle multi-user edits more gracefully. ExpanDrive shines on read-heavy and one-writer workflows.
How does ExpanDrive compare to Cyberduck and Mountain Duck?
Cyberduck is free and excellent as a file-transfer browser, but it does not mount drives — you always work through its own interface, never through Finder's Open dialog. Mountain Duck (from the same Cyberduck team) does mount drives and is ExpanDrive's closest direct competitor; its protocol support is comparable and it also offers a perpetual license. In my experience ExpanDrive's Finder integration feels slightly smoother on Apple Silicon, and its UI for managing multiple simultaneous connections is cleaner. Mountain Duck edges ahead on WebDAV compatibility with niche servers. Both are worth trialling if you rely on a less common protocol.
What are the best ExpanDrive alternatives?
Beyond Mountain Duck, consider Transmit 5 from Panic if you want the most polished SFTP/S3 experience on the Mac — it does not mount as a system volume but its Finder Sync extension and Panic Sync integration are best-in-class. rclone with a FUSE layer is a powerful free option for technical users comfortable with the command line. For pure Google Drive or OneDrive needs, the respective first-party clients remain the safer choice for collaborative document editing.
