Support

Questions, setup help, and how to reach us.

Need help with PolyDrive, found a bug, or have a feature request? Email [email protected] — we read every message.

Something not working — an error adding a drive to Finder, a location stuck on “Loading…”? Start with the Troubleshooting guide; it covers the most common installation problems and their fixes.

Setting up your first drive

  1. Open PolyDrive. It lives in the menu bar — the cloud icon at the top right of your screen. Click it and choose Open PolyDrive….
  2. Add the drive. Press + Add Cloud Drive and pick your service. Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, Box and Tencent Weiyun sign you in on their own site in your browser. Object storage asks for an endpoint, an access key and a bucket. A WebDAV, SFTP or FTP server asks for its address and your login. Nothing is sent anywhere else — the details go straight into your Mac's Keychain.
  3. Open it in Finder. The drive appears in Finder's sidebar under Locations and behaves like any other folder: open, edit, save, drag things in and out.

If the drive doesn't turn up in the sidebar, macOS has not enabled the extension yet — System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions, where PolyDrive should be on under File Providers (cloud drives) and File System Extensions (local Linux disks). The Troubleshooting guide walks through it.

SMB network shares, Android phones and Linux disks have their own sections further down the same window. None of them count against the two free cloud drives.

Frequently asked questions

The basics

Do I need to create a PolyDrive account?
No. PolyDrive has no account system of its own. Every drive you add uses your existing account with that storage provider (or, for local disks, no account at all).
Which Macs does PolyDrive support?
Any Mac (Apple Silicon or Intel) running macOS 15.4 or later.
Why doesn't a drive I just added show up in Finder?
Open System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions → File System Extensions and make sure PolyDrive is enabled. New drives appear under Finder's Locations sidebar once the extension is on.
Do I have to leave PolyDrive running?
Cloud drives keep working after you quit it: macOS starts PolyDrive's file-provider extension whenever Finder asks for something, whether or not the app itself is open. Two things do need the app — an Android phone, because PolyDrive holds the USB connection to it, and SMB shares, which PolyDrive re-mounts at login and again whenever the network drops them.
Can I mount more than one drive at a time?
Yes. Two cloud drives are free, and a single in-app purchase removes the limit, so you can connect as many cloud drives as you need. Local connections are never counted — mount as many SMB network shares, Android phones and local Linux disks as you like on either tier.
Does PolyDrive work with self-hosted storage?
Yes. WebDAV, SFTP, FTP/FTPS, Seafile, and any S3-compatible endpoint (including MinIO) are supported alongside the named cloud vendors.

Files, space and speed

Does PolyDrive sync my files, or copy them all to my Mac?
Neither. There is no sync folder and no initial download. File contents are fetched on demand, in ranges, so opening one 4 GB video out of a bucket does not pull down 4 GB first, and a drive with a terabyte in it costs you nothing on disk until you open something.
How do I get disk space back?
Anything you open leaves a copy behind so that reopening it is instant. Each drive's … menu in PolyDrive has Remove All Local Copies…, which throws those copies away and leaves the drive itself untouched. Files you have deliberately kept offline are not affected — those stay until you turn the pin off.
Why is copying thousands of small files through Finder so slow?
Finder creates remote files one at a time and gives PolyDrive roughly five at once no matter how fast your connection is, which puts a hard ceiling of about twenty files a second on any copy you drag. PolyDrive's own Transfer a Folder section works around it: Upload Folder… and Download Folder… move a whole tree with as many parallel transfers as the service will accept — up to about seven times faster where it allows it — and a run you stop can be resumed later.
Can I move a folder straight from one cloud drive to another?
Yes. Use Upload Folder… and pick a folder that lives inside another drive's Finder location: PolyDrive notices, and streams the files from one service to the other without materialising them on your Mac on the way through.
Can I open my files with no internet connection?
Yes, for anything you have asked PolyDrive to keep. Right-click a file or a folder in Finder and choose Keep Available Offline: its contents are downloaded and kept on your Mac, and a folder brings everything inside it. Kept items carry a pin badge in Finder so you can see at a glance what is available offline. Stop Keeping Offline reverses it and gives the disk space back. Files you have not kept are downloaded when you open them, so they need a connection.
What do the badges on my files in Finder mean?
A pin means the file or folder is being kept available offline. An orange warning triangle means the last change you made to that item did not reach the server — usually a full account, a permission the server refused, or a connection that dropped mid-upload. The badge clears itself as soon as a later save succeeds. macOS draws its own cloud and progress icons for downloads separately.
Where can I see what PolyDrive has been doing?
The menu-bar icon has an Activity item. It opens a window listing what actually happened — files uploaded and downloaded, drives connected, shares mounted, and anything that failed, with the reason the service gave. Failures that nobody was watching are counted on the menu itself, so a botched overnight upload is visible the next morning instead of silent.

Sharing and encryption

Can I send someone a link to a file?
Right-click it in Finder and choose Copy Sharing Link. On Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, Nextcloud, Seafile, Yandex Disk, Jottacloud and Koofr, PolyDrive asks the service for the same link its own website would create, so the recipient needs nothing installed. On S3-compatible buckets it signs a temporary link instead, valid for up to seven days. Services with no sharing API of their own simply do not offer the menu item.
Can PolyDrive open an encrypted Cryptomator vault?
Yes, for reading and writing. Point PolyDrive at the vault, unlock it with the vault password, and it appears in Finder like any other drive. File names and contents are decrypted on your Mac only — the storage provider holding the vault sees ciphertext, exactly as it does with Cryptomator's own app.
How does PolyDrive handle SFTP host keys?
It pins the server's key the first time you connect and refuses to continue quietly if that key ever changes, which is the moment worth noticing. You are told what changed rather than asked to approve a fingerprint you have no way to check.

Privacy and security

Is my data safe?
PolyDrive stores connection settings and credentials only in your Mac's Keychain, never on our servers — because we don't run any. File contents stream directly between Finder and the provider you chose. See the Privacy Policy for details.
What does PolyDrive send back to you?
Nothing. There is no analytics, no crash reporting to us, no licence server and no telemetry of any kind — the app has no code that talks to a PolyDrive server, because there is no PolyDrive server. If you email us with a problem, whatever you paste into that mail is the only thing we ever see.
What happens to my credentials if I delete a drive?
Removing a drive deletes its Keychain entry along with it, and the drive disappears from Finder. Files on the service are never touched — removing a drive in PolyDrive is not a delete.

Buying PolyDrive

Is PolyDrive free, and what does the purchase unlock?
PolyDrive is free to download, and free to keep using with two cloud drives and unlimited SMB shares, Android phones and local Linux disks. One in-app purchase — US$19.99, shown in your own currency on the App Store — removes the limit, so you can connect as many cloud drives as you need. It is paid once, not a subscription, and future updates cost nothing extra. A 7-day trial unlocks everything first and asks for no payment method.
Do I have to buy it again on my other Mac?
No. The purchase belongs to your Apple Account, so install PolyDrive on the second Mac, open the purchase screen and press Restore Purchases. Your drives themselves are not transferred — they are configured per Mac, and their credentials never leave the Keychain of the Mac you entered them on.
What happens to my drives if the trial ends and I don't buy?
Nothing is deleted and nothing is locked. The two oldest cloud drives keep working exactly as before; the rest stay configured in PolyDrive and stop being registered with Finder until you unlock. Every SMB share, phone and local disk keeps working, because those were never limited.
How do I ask for a refund?
Purchases go through Apple, so refunds do too: reportaproblem.apple.com, with the Apple Account you bought it on. We never see your payment details and cannot issue the refund ourselves, but do email us about what went wrong — most refund requests we hear about turn out to be a fixable setup problem.

Network shares, phones and local disks

Can PolyDrive mount an SMB share from my NAS?
Yes. Add the share's host name, share name and password in PolyDrive, and macOS mounts it — at login, and again whenever the network drops it. The password is checked before mounting, so a typo is a message in PolyDrive rather than a system dialog. Shares are never counted against the cloud-drive limit.
I don't know my NAS's address. Can PolyDrive find it?
Often, yes. When you add an SMB share, Nearby… lists the file servers announcing themselves on your network and fills the address in for you. Only servers that advertise themselves appear, and macOS asks your permission to look the first time; typing the address by hand always works.
Can I browse an Android phone on my Mac with PolyDrive?
Yes. Plug the phone in over USB, unlock it and choose “File transfer” in the phone's USB notification, then add it in PolyDrive. It appears in Finder over MTP: copy files both ways, rename, delete, and play a video straight off the phone without downloading it first. Phones are never counted against the cloud-drive limit.
Can PolyDrive write to a local ext2/ext3/ext4 disk?
Not yet — local Linux disks currently mount read-only.
How do I remove PolyDrive completely?
Quit it from the menu bar, drag PolyDrive out of your Applications folder and empty the Trash. Its Finder locations disappear with it and any local copies go with them; nothing is left running and no system files were ever installed. The saved passwords are the one exception — search for PolyDrive in Keychain Access if you want those gone too.