Best NTFS Drivers for Mac

The short answer. macOS can read NTFS volumes and cannot write to them, and everything in this category exists to work around that one sentence. Mounty does it by remounting the volume read-write, which costs nothing and is the first thing to try. Paragon NTFS and Tuxera NTFS are the paid kernel-level drivers that make the volume behave like any other disk. ExtendFS is a different problem — read-only access to Linux ext2, ext3 and ext4 volumes, which is what you need when the drive came from a Linux machine rather than a Windows one. The dividing question is whether the volume is a one-off transfer or a disk you will use every day, because the free remount is fine for the first and genuinely unpleasant for the second.

This guide covers 4 ntfs drivers for macOS. Every fact below is drawn from the same verified records that back each app’s own page. The recommendations are our editorial judgment, not payment.

Quick comparison

What actually decides this

• Which filesystem is actually on the disk. NTFS is Windows; ext2, ext3 and ext4 are Linux. They look identical in Disk Utility and need different software. Reading the volume label or checking on the machine that formatted it takes ten seconds and prevents buying the wrong driver.
• Read-only or read-write. Read-only access is often enough to rescue files and never enough to work from the disk. Every tool here states which it provides, and the free options are honest about the limit.
• Kernel extension or user-space workaround. A remount trick uses what macOS already has. A driver installs a kernel extension, which is a deeper commitment: it can require a restart, a security approval, and it is the kind of software that outlives the drive it was installed for.
• What happens after a macOS upgrade. Kernel-level storage drivers are the first software to break on a major OS release. A paid driver with a support contract is partly a promise about the next upgrade, which is a different product from a free remount.
• Whether the disk has to be ejected safely. Write support changes the answer. A read-only mount can be pulled; a writable one has a cache. If the drive is going to be unplugged without warning, the free read-only route is the safer one regardless of convenience.
• Whether the volume is internal or external. An internal NTFS partition is usually a Boot Camp install that macOS is not supposed to write to, and forcing it is a different risk from writing to a USB stick. A tool that treats both the same has not thought about what happens when the write corrupts a system volume.
• What the driver does at login. A storage driver that loads at boot is present whether or not a matching disk is connected. That is convenient for a docked drive and unnecessary surface for a laptop that only occasionally reads one.

Our picks

• Mounty — Its record describes re-mounting write-protected NTFS volumes in read-write mode, which is the no-install case. Choose it when you need to copy a few files off a Windows drive once.
• Paragon NTFS — Its record describes read and write access to NTFS, which is the daily-driver case. Choose it when the NTFS disk is going to be a working disk.
• Tuxera NTFS — Its record describes full read-write compatibility with NTFS-formatted drives, which is the same case from a different vendor. Choose it when you want full read-write compatibility from a long-standing driver.
• ExtendFS — Its record describes read-only access to Linux ext2, ext3 and ext4 without a kernel extension, which is the Linux-volume case. Choose it when the disk came from a Linux machine.

The apps

ExtendFS

ExtendFS is a system tool for macOS. Read-only access to Linux ext2/3/4 in macOS Sequoia and later without a kernel extension. It is released under GPL-3.0.

What it does. Download a read-only ext4, ext3, and ext2 file system driver for Macs using FSKit that is easy to use and doesn’t reduce system security to access Linux files.

ExtendFS is listed with current version 1.2.1.

Full profile and verified facts for ExtendFS →

Mounty

Mounty is a system tool for macOS. Tiny tool to re-mount write-protected NTFS volumes under Mac OS X 10.9+ in read-write mode. It is free.

What it does. Mounty for NTFS - a tiny tool for macOS to re-mount NTFS volumes in read-write mode. Supports macOS 10.9 up to latest versions.

Mounty is listed with current version 2.4.

Full profile and verified facts for Mounty →

Paragon NTFS

Paragon NTFS is a system tool for macOS. Read/write access to NTFS in macOS Sierra. Its pricing is not published.

What it does. Boost Your Mac with Paragon File System Link. Read/write Microsoft NTFS files on your Mac for free.

Paragon NTFS is listed with current version 17.0.488.

Full profile and verified facts for Paragon NTFS →

Tuxera NTFS

Tuxera NTFS is a system tool for macOS. Full read-write compatibility with NTFS-formatted drives on a Mac. Its pricing is not published.

Tuxera NTFS is listed with current version 27.

Full profile and verified facts for Tuxera NTFS →

How to choose

• Free of charge. Mounty — no payment is required.
• No licence fee, source available. ExtendFS — the source can be read and, under the terms of each licence, reused.
• Pricing not published in our data. Paragon NTFS and Tuxera NTFS — check the developer’s own site before assuming anything about cost.

Open source: ExtendFS (1 of 4).

Common mistakes

• Buying an NTFS driver for a Linux-formatted disk. The filesystem is the decision, not the operating system the disk came from.
• Assuming read-only means useless. For a rescue copy it is the whole job.
• Unplugging a writable volume without ejecting it, then blaming the driver for the corruption.
• Installing a kernel extension for a one-time transfer and leaving it loaded for years.
• Forcing write access to a Boot Camp partition to move one file. The safe path is to copy from the Windows side or from a backup.

How this guide was put together

Each app’s facts come from its own record: the developer’s own pages and repository, the App Store listing where one exists, and the documentation, each with a source grade and an access date. Where a fact rests on the developer’s own statement rather than on something we verified independently, the sentence says so. Where our data has no value for something, the guide says “not published” instead of guessing.

A price appears here only where the record carries one from a stated source; the guide never estimates one, and it records the pricing model alongside so the two can be read together. Prices change and vary by region, so each app links to its own page for the current detail.

The facts and the recommendations are kept apart on purpose. Everything in the app entries, the comparison table and the answers above is composed from the records. The short answer, the criteria and the picks are our editorial judgment: they reflect what we would choose and why, and they are not paid for. Where we make a recommendation we name the condition it applies under, because we do not call anything “the best” without explaining the criteria.