I’ve been managing files across Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive for remote collaboration with colleagues in China and the UK, and constantly switching between browser tabs and native sync apps became frustrating. As someone working across multiple cloud storage accounts on my Mac Mini M4, I wanted a unified way to access everything without eating up local storage space with redundant synced copies.
CloudMounter is a cloud storage manager that mounts your cloud drives and remote servers as local volumes directly in Finder. Instead of opening separate applications or browser interfaces, all your connected cloud services appear as standard drives alongside your internal storage. The app supports major cloud providers including Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, pCloud, Box, and remote protocols like FTP, SFTP, and WebDAV.
The key advantage is that CloudMounter streams files on-demand rather than syncing everything locally. When you browse a mounted cloud drive in Finder, you see all your files and folders, but data only downloads when you actually open a file. This approach saves considerable local disk space, which is particularly valuable on my MacBook Air M2 with limited SSD capacity. For frequently accessed files, CloudMounter offers optional local caching to improve performance.
What distinguishes CloudMounter from native sync clients is the ability to transfer files directly between different cloud services through simple drag-and-drop in Finder. Moving a large video file from Google Drive to Dropbox happens server-to-server without downloading to your Mac first, which saves both time and bandwidth. The app also includes AES-256 encryption for protecting sensitive files stored in the cloud, with the encryption key stored securely in macOS Keychain.
I tested CloudMounter’s connection setup process, which varies by service but generally involves OAuth authentication for consumer cloud providers and credential entry for FTP/SFTP servers. For SFTP connections, the app supports hardware authentication keys like YubiKey and two-factor authentication for enhanced security. Once connected, you can mount as many cloud accounts as needed, and CloudMounter remembers credentials for automatic reconnection at launch.
The interface is clean and system-integrated. CloudMounter adds a menu bar icon where connected drives are listed with one-click mounting and unmounting. There’s a preferences window for managing connections, encryption settings, and startup behavior, but most interaction happens directly through Finder once drives are mounted. In my usage on macOS Sonoma, system resource impact has been minimal, with roughly 60-80MB of memory usage and negligible CPU activity during idle periods.
The main limitation is that CloudMounter requires an active internet connection to access cloud files, which is expected for any cloud mounting solution but worth noting for offline work scenarios. The app also doesn’t provide automatic background synchronization like Dropbox or iCloud Drive, which some users might prefer for critical files. Advanced SFTP features like changing file permissions are not supported through the Finder interface.
CloudMounter is available for both Mac and Windows, with the Mac version supporting macOS 10.15.4 Catalina or later. Pricing starts at $29.99 per year for a personal license, or the app is included with Setapp subscription. A 7-day free trial is available to test compatibility with your cloud services before purchasing. For users managing multiple cloud storage accounts or needing to work with remote servers through Finder, CloudMounter provides practical consolidation without the storage overhead of traditional sync clients.
