Mountain Duck 5.3.2 — macOS

Mountain Duck runs on any Mac with Apple Silicon or an Intel processor, as long as you are on macOS 13 Ventura or later. It works the same way on both architectures — no special setup needed.

Version 5 brought storage-independent file versioning and Integrated Connect Mode. You still mount FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, S3, Google Drive, Dropbox, and a dozen other services as ordinary disks in Finder. Files you work with stay cached locally; everything else downloads only when needed. Bookmarks are shared with Cyberduck if you have it installed, and uploads happen in the background whenever a connection is available. The interface is available in over thirty languages, including Russian, English, German, Arabic, and Japanese.

Sits in the Finder sidebar like any mounted volume

Mountain Duck sits in the Finder sidebar like any mounted volume. That means you do not need to learn a separate file manager or a proprietary interface. Spotlight indexes the content of mounted volumes when they are connected, so you can find files by name or content the same way you search a local drive. Quick Look works too — select a remote file and press the space bar to preview it without downloading the whole thing.

Because the volumes appear as standard disks, any application that opens or saves files through macOS dialog boxes can work with them directly. A designer saving a layout from Affinity Publisher, a writer editing a manuscript in Ulysses, or a developer committing code from a terminal — all of them can point to a Mountain Duck mount without extra steps. Time Machine backs up the local cache if the volume is included in the backup set, though the remote source itself is not backed up by Time Machine.

If you already use Cyberduck, the shared bookmarks feature saves setup time. Add a server or cloud account in either app, and it shows up in the other. No need to enter credentials twice. The version 5 SMB support means Windows file shares in mixed environments connect the same way as FTP or cloud storage.

Three-person Denver firm stops copying files from the NAS

A three-person architecture office in Denver keeps project files on a Synology NAS at the office and uses Dropbox for client reviews. Before Mountain Duck, the workflow was: open a Finder window to the NAS, copy files locally, edit them in Vectorworks, upload results to Dropbox via the web interface. Two people often had slightly different copies.

With Mountain Duck, both the NAS (mounted over SMB) and the Dropbox account appear as disks on each Mac. The architect opens a Vectorworks file directly from the NAS mount, edits it, and saves. Mountain Duck uploads the changed file to the NAS in the background. When the file is ready for the client, a copy is dragged to the Dropbox mount. No manual uploading, no confusion about which version is current. The third team member, who works remotely, mounts the same NAS over SFTP and sees the same files.

The firm uses the "keep offline" feature for the active project folder. That way, files are available on a laptop even when the office network is down. Changes sync back when the connection returns.

Click a menu-bar bookmark to open a remote folder

You launch Mountain Duck from Launchpad or your Applications folder. It runs as a menu bar icon — no window opens. Click the icon and you see a list of bookmarks you have set up.

You click a bookmark for a Google Drive account. A few seconds later, a volume named "Google Drive" appears in the Finder sidebar and on the desktop. Inside it, the folder structure is exactly what you see on the web or in the Drive app.

You open a spreadsheet from that volume by double-clicking it. Numbers launches. The file opens at about the same speed as a local file because Mountain Duck caches it as you read. You make changes and save. The app uploads the updated file in the background — you can keep working while it does.

Later, you need a folder of reference photos for a project. You Control-click the folder in the mounted volume and choose "Keep offline." Mountain Duck downloads the whole folder to your local cache. From then on, those photos are available even if you are disconnected from the internet.

At the end of the session, you drag the mounted volume to the Eject icon in the Finder sidebar, or you right-click the bookmark in the Mountain Duck menu and choose Disconnect.

Test one bookmark at a time with your most-used service

Set up your bookmarks one at a time. Start with the service you use most — Google Drive or Dropbox, for instance. Test that you can open files, edit them, and see changes reflected on the web. Once that works, add the next bookmark.

Let the app finish its initial sync before you start working. The first time you browse a large cloud account, Mountain Duck builds its cache. Give it a few minutes so browsing feels normal.

Use the "keep offline" option sparingly at first. Mark only the folders you actually need when disconnected. Over-marking fills your local drive with files you might not open.

If you work with a team, check the versioning settings early. Version 5 lets you enable file versioning per bookmark. Decide how many versions to keep based on how often files change and how much storage you have.

Open Mountain Duck preferences once and look at the "General" and "Bandwidth" tabs. The defaults work for most people, but it is good to know where the throttling and connection options live before you need them.

Finally, if you have Cyberduck already installed, Mountain Duck picks up its bookmarks automatically. Check that the shared bookmarks match what you expect before you delete the old ones from Cyberduck.

• macOS 13 or later
• Apple Silicon or Intel processor