Drive redirection

July 5, 2026 · View on GitHub

Mount the connecting client's local drives as real read-write volumes in Finder (--enable-drive-redirection).

Opt-in with --enable-drive-redirection (off by default). The connecting client redirects its local drive(s) and the Mac mounts each as a real read-write volume in Finder — the inverse of file copy: instead of moving bytes through the clipboard, you browse the client's filesystem live. Enable it on the client too (mstsc: Local Resources → More → Drives; FreeRDP: /drive:NAME,PATH).

Under the hood each redirected drive is served by an in-process NFSv3 server that translates NFS operations into RDPDR (MS-RDPEFS) requests, mounted via the built-in mount_nfsno root, no kext, no FUSE. The kernel drives lazy lookups as you browse, so full subdirectory navigation works, and reads/writes reuse a kept-open handle so large sequential transfers don't re-open per chunk. Reading, editing, creating, mkdir, rename, and delete all work where the redirected Windows user has permission — e.g. write to Users\<you>\Documents, not the C:\ root (which an unelevated mstsc session can't write; that surfaces as a normal "permission denied", not an error). Mounts are torn down when the client disconnects.

macOS-only. Every redirected filesystem device gets its own volume. /Volumes isn't writable without root on a stock Mac, so the mountpoint falls back to a per-session folder under $TMPDIR (it still shows as a volume in Finder).