How to mount remote SFTP (SSH) file system on your Mac

August 18, 2015 Steve Talley Mac 5

Have you ever wanted to have direct access to an SFTP (SSH) file system directly in the Finder on your Mac? With the help of OS X Fuse and SSHFS, you can!
STEP 1: Download and install the latest versions of OS X FUSE and SSHFS from this site: http://osxfuse.github.io/
STEP 2: Create a mount point on your file system. In Terminal, run a command like this, customizing it for your environment:
mkdir ~/SFTP/ServerName
STEP 3: Use Terminal to mount the remote server. Note that in order to ensure that read-write access works correctly, you should add the “defer_permissions” as shown below. Additionally, the “noappledouble” option greatly speeds up SSHFS file system acccess on Macs.
sshfs -o IdentityFile=~/ssh/id_rsa -o defer_permissions -o noappledouble login@servername.com:/path/on/remote/server ~/SFTP/ServerName
That’s it! You should now have access to the SFTP share in the Finder.

5 Comments

  1. An old post, but still works on OSX 10.14.5 (Mojave), although os prompts that FUSE will not be compatible in future updates…
    Thank you Steve!!

    Reply

  3. Thanks

    I used home homebrew for the installation.

    If not ready installed, install homebrew:

    1) Open the terminal and paste the following command:

    /bin/bash -c “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)”

    2) After the installation of homebrew install osxfuse by pasting the following command in the terminal:

    brew cask install osxfuse

    3) After the installation of osxfuse install SSHFS by pasting the following command in the terminal:

    brew install sshfs

    4) After the installation of SSHFS create a folder where the remote server will be mounted e.g.:

    mkdir ~/SSHFS/remoteserver

    5) When the folder is created use the following example to mount the server:

    sshfs -o IdentityFile=~/ssh/id_rsa -o defer_permissions -o noappledouble -o volname=REMOTE_SERVER usernamel@servername.net:/var/www ~/SFTP/remoteserver -C

    When the server is behind your router and you have defined port forwarding form WAN to LAN you must set your port e.g. by adding -p xxxxx (xxxxx = your wan port number)

    Good luck!

    Reply

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