Mounty: The Best Free Tool to Mount NTFS for Mac

Are you looking for the best NTFS for Mac tool? Mounty app lets you mount NTFS disks, drives, volumes, USB sticks on Mac OS. We will explore how you can use Mounty for mounting NTFS drives on Mac very conveniently and for no cost.

Mounty Intro & Compatibility: Best NTFS for Mac 10.9 to 12

Mounty.app is the best free NTFS for Mac tool. It is light utility tool for mounting write-protected NTFS drives under MacOS in read-write mode. Mounty does not need to install any additional kerner drivers. It uses the existing mechanisms provided by MacOS, that is, the Apple kernel drivers. This makes it a superlight utility, and transferring files to any NTFS formatted drive is a breeze. Mounty has been compiled as a universal binary including both x86_64 and arm64 architectures. So it runs natively on both Intel-based Macs and Apple Silicon M1.

Mounty for NTFS works for Mac OS versions 10.9 to 12. This includes Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur and Monterey. Mounty does not currently work for Mac OS 13 Ventura, but the developers are working with Apple to resolve this issue.

Installation and Use of Monty: How to Mount NTFS for Mac

You can install Monty from its official website. Two stable versions are available: one for MacOS Big Sur and Monterey, and another for Mac OS 10.x. Once installed, it works in a very simple manner: if you connect any NTFS-formatted volume to the computer, Monty will notify you. Monty sits as an icon on the menu bar. The icon changes colors to signify the status of the program. There are 5 status modes indicated by 5 different colors: inactive - black (nothing to mount), active - green (available to re-mount), working - orange (mounty is operating), idle - blue (mounted in write mode) , error - red (mount failed).

What friction and repetitive actions do Mounty solve?

Windows uses the NTFS filesystem to read-write files, while the macOS uses the Apple File System (APFS). As a result, there is friction when you are using a USB or portable hard disk between Windows and Mac machines. There needs to be a way to create NTFS Write support for macOS. You can simply open a terminal and issue mount commands to achieve this:

macbook:~ uwe$ sudo umount /Volumes/UNTITLED
macbook:~ uwe$ sudo mount -t ntfs -o rw,auto,nobrowse /dev/disk3s1 ~/ntfs-volume

But this will become a repetitive task that better be automated. This issuance of unmounting and remounting commands at the right time automatically is exactly the purpose of Mounty. The developers created Mounty with this idea, to make mounting of NTFS drives in read-write mode very convenient. When Mounty detects an NTFS volume, it unmounts, remounts, and then opens a Finder window to let you manage the contents of your drive.

Common Issues and their Solutions for Mounty

Issue #1: NTFS drive disappears from Mac

Your NTFS disk will disappear from the Desktop while you are using Mounty. Apple kernel drivers allow read/write mount of NTFS drives in "nobrowse" mode. This causes the mount point to get hidden, and disappear from Desktop and Finder.

Solution for Issue #1:

You can simply click on the Mounty menu and select the "Show in Finder" option to make your NTFS drive visible again!

Issue #2: NTFS volume becomes "not re-mountable" on your Mac

Another issue you can encounter is a pop-up alert saying "Volume not re-mountable". This indicates that you did not clean-unmount the drive earlier. If you just physically unplug the USB stick, the volume gets marked as "not cleanly unmounted" because of dirty sectors. This can prevent MacOS from remounting the volume in read-write mode.

Solution for Issue #2:

To "clean unmount" your NTFS drive, always use the little tray icon to detach the disk cleanly.

Issue #3: Your files suddenly disappear

The improper unmounting described above can also cause your files to disappear suddenly. There is no need to panic as Mounty never automatically deletes your files.

Solution for Issue #3:

You need always "clean unmount" your NTFS drive to avoid this bug. However, if you do encounter it, you can recover your files: on Windows using chkdsk or GetBackData, and on Mac using NTFS partition maintences tools like Paragon HardDisk Manager or Tuxera Disk Manager.

Mounty for NTFS Team & Community Support

A small developer team develops and maintains Mounty. It also has community support, which helps in reporting and fixing bugs, and helping with maintenance and improvements such as localization. Languages supported, other than the default English, include Catalan, Russian, Portuguese, Chinese, Brazilian, Spanish, Korean, Italian, French, Dutch. To add your language localization, you can download the localization.zip file from the official website: this is the Localization Strings File for Mounty. You need to correct or edit it, and send this file back to the developers. And they will integrate your additions to the Mounty app.

Summary

Mounty for NTFS is a very lightweight tool for mounting NTFS drives in read-write mode. It uses the in-built Apple Kernel Drivers. Mounty makes it very easy to transfer files between macOS and any NTFS formatted drive. It is compatible with Intel and Apple Silicon Macs. Mounty works on Mac OSX versions 10.9 through 12, so if you are running Big Sur or Monterey, you will benefit from installing Mounty. Thus, it is a great and free utility for people who need to transfer files regularly between Apple and Windows systems. Let us know in the comments if this article clarified your doubts and made your life better.