MountWell

MountWell connects your Mac to the network drives (SMB shares) at work or at home as soon as their server can be reached, in the office or over VPN. When you leave, it disconnects them again, so Finder never hangs on a drive that is gone.

You add each drive once. After that MountWell works in the background: open your laptop in the office or start the VPN, and the drives are there.

It needs macOS 14 or later and runs on Apple silicon and Intel Macs. MountWell shows itself in English or German, following your Mac's language.

Install

1. Open the latest release and click MountWell-….pkg under Assets to download it.
2. Double-click the downloaded file in your Downloads folder and follow the installer. It asks for your Mac password at the end.
3. MountWell opens by itself. From now on it also sits in the menu bar at the top of the screen.

With Homebrew, install it in Terminal instead:

brew tap moetiker/mountwell https://github.com/moetiker/MountWell
brew trust moetiker/mountwell
brew install --cask mountwell

MountWell updates itself; Homebrew leaves that to the app.

Add a drive

1. Click + in the MountWell window.
2. Enter the address of the drive, for example smb://fileserver.example.com/team. Your IT department or the person who set up the server can tell you the address. A Windows address such as \\fileserver\team works too: MountWell offers to convert it.
3. Optionally give the drive a name of your own under Alias, such as "Team Drive".
4. Click Save.

While you type, MountWell checks the address and explains what is wrong, for example a missing server name or a server that cannot be reached right now.

Save the password once. Click the chain button on the drive (shown when you move the mouse over it). Finder asks for your user name and password: tick Remember this password in my keychain and click Connect. Without this step MountWell cannot connect the drive on its own.

Drives you already use

If you already connected drives in Finder, click the MountWell icon in the menu bar and choose Import Mounted Shares…. MountWell lists every connected drive it does not know yet; untick the ones you do not want and click Import.

Everyday use

• The menu bar icon shows whether drives are connected. Its menu lists your drives; each can be shown in Finder, ejected or connected from there.
• Eject a drive with the eject button on the drive or in the menu bar. MountWell then leaves it alone until you connect it again or leave the network. Ejecting in Finder is not enough: MountWell would connect it again within a minute.
• Switch a drive off without removing it: right-click it and untick Mount Automatically. It stays in the list, greyed out.
• Start at login: choose MountWell → Settings… and turn on Run at Login. With Show Window at Login the window opens too; otherwise MountWell waits in the menu bar.
• Updates: MountWell tells you when a new version is out. Click Install and enter your Mac password.

When something does not work

• Click ? in the window for help on addresses, passwords and networks.
• View → Show Log shows what MountWell did and why.
• A red dot at the bottom left means the background service is not running: click Load.
• A drive that says Unreachable cannot be reached from where you are. Start the VPN or go to the network the drive belongs to.

Uninstall

Open the Terminal app, paste this line, press Return and enter your Mac password:

sudo "/Applications/MountWell.app/Contents/Resources/uninstall.sh"

Your list of drives stays in ~/Library/Application Support/MountWell, in case you install MountWell again.

Installed with Homebrew: brew uninstall --cask mountwell, or with --zap to remove the list of drives and the log as well.

For administrators

Install without the window:

sudo installer -pkg MountWell-<version>.pkg -target /

The drives are kept in ~/Library/Application Support/MountWell/shares.conf, one per line, with an optional list of IP prefixes and an optional alias after #. A leading ! switches a drive off:

smb://fileserver.example.com/team
smb://nas.example.com/photos 192.168.10. # Photos at home
!smb://fileserver.example.com/archive

While a server name resolves, the background service remembers the server's IP address, network and SMB server ID in servers.yaml in the same folder. If the name later stops resolving, for example when the VPN's DNS breaks, it connects via that address, from the same network only and only if the same server answers. Connect once via the address (right-click the drive) so its password is in the keychain too.

The log is ~/Library/Logs/mountwell.log. Releases are signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple; the app installs only updates signed by the same developer.

Development

./build.sh             # tests, then build/MountWell-<version>.pkg
tools/screenshot.sh    # the pictures in docs/, from the real views

tools/test-vm installs MountWell unattended in a throwaway macOS VM and checks the installer, the background service, Gatekeeper and the uninstall. It needs Tart; docs/testing.md describes setup and a run.

• docs/spec.md: what MountWell must do
• docs/programming-guide.md: architecture, conventions, translation, tests, releases
• docs/maintainer-notes.md: pitfalls and the reasons behind decisions

License

MIT, see LICENSE. Created by Manuel Oetiker.