mouNTFS (pronounced "maun-tee-ef-es") helps you write to NTFS (pronounced "en-tee-ef-es") drives on your Mac. No more "read-only" frustration! Just select your drive, provide your password to confirm, and you're ready to go - with native macOS dialogs that feel right at home.
Currently, mouNTFS is just one simple shell script that does one thing well - mounting NTFS drives with write access. We keep it clean and focused.
🤝 This project is an experiment in human-AI collaboration, co-developed with AI buddies. 🤖 All code is written by AI, with 👤 humans focusing on design, review, and direction - no direct human coding. 🥳 This must be a fun ride, and let's see where it goes.
- 🤖 Co-developed with AI buddies
- 📁 Native file picker for volume selection
- 🔐 Secure password handling through system dialog
- 📊 Detailed volume information:
- Volume name and device path
- Current usage and total size
- File system and mount status
- 🔄 Automatic fallback between mount methods
- ✅ Write access verification
The script safely handles NTFS mounting by first unmounting the volume, then trying the mount_ntfs with read-write option. If that fails, it falls back to the more reliable ntfs-3g. After mounting, it verifies write access and uses native macOS dialogs throughout the process.
- macOS - so that you lose NTFS read-write access
- Homebrew - to install macFUSE and ntfs-3g, and a lot of cool stuff for macOS 🍺
- macFUSE - FUSE file system support for macOS
- ntfs-3g - NTFS driver with write support (macOS version)
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Make sure you have Homebrew installed.
-
Install macFUSE and ntfs-3g-mac:
brew install --cask macfuse
brew install gromgit/fuse/ntfs-3g-mac- Download
mountfs.sh:
cd ~/Downloads # or any directory you won't get lost
curl -L -o mountfs.sh https://get.mountfs.sh
chmod +x mountfs.sh- Configure security settings:
- Trust macFUSE library in Settings → Privacy & Security (signed by "Benjamin Fleischer")
- macFUSE needs a kernel extension to be enabled, which requires a system restart
- Grant disk access when prompted
Note: These security settings are required by macOS to allow third-party file system drivers. They only need to be configured once, unless you uninstall or reinstall the drivers.
Refer to macFUSE wiki for more details.
-
Launch:
- Double-click
mountfs.shin Finder, OR - Run in terminal
./mountfs.sh
- Double-click
-
Select Volume:
- Choose your NTFS volume in the native file picker
- Non-NTFS volumes will be automatically rejected
-
Review & Confirm:
- Check volume information
- Confirm the mount operation
-
Authenticate:
- Enter administrator password in the popup dialog
- Requires administrator privileges for mounting
- Performs safe unmount before remounting
- Verifies write access after mounting
- Uses the best available mount method
If mounting fails:
- Ensure the volume is NTFS formatted
- Check macFUSE and ntfs-3g installation
- Try safely ejecting and reconnecting
- Check system logs for errors
- Mounty - Popular free GUI app for NTFS mounting
- NTFS for Mac by Paragon - Commercial solution with full NTFS support
- Tuxera NTFS - Another commercial driver with high performance
- Feel free to explore other alternatives!
mouNTFS focuses on simplicity and native macOS integration while remaining free and open source. We ❤️ open source!
- GUI interface with native macOS look and feel
- Better error messages and recovery options
- System tray integration for quick access
- Volume monitoring for automatic mounting
- Localization support for multiple languages
Contributions and suggestions are welcome! Feel free to open issues or pull requests.
As a human-AI collaboration project:
- For code contributions, please bring your AI buddy and keep the no-direct-human-coding spirit
- For other contributions (docs, testing, reviews, etc.), both humans and AI buddies are more than welcome!
Given wide-spread AI concerns, safety review is welcome.
| 🤖 AI | 👤 Humans |
|---|---|
| 🦾 Claude (3.5 Sonnet, via Cursor) 🧠 GPT (GPT-4o) |
🐰 guoquan |
MIT License © 2024 Quan Guo