WebDAV mount on macOS: readonly setup guide

WebDAV is a protocol used to access remote files over the internet. It allows you to mount a remote server as a local file system on your Mac. This can be useful for accessing files from a remote server as if they were on your local machine. In this guide, we will show you how to mount a WebDAV server on macOS in a read-only setup. This means that you will be able to view and download files from the server, but you will not be able to make changes or upload files. This is useful for accessing files from a server that you do not have permission to modify.

Before we begin, you will need the following:

• A WebDAV server to connect to
• The URL of the WebDAV server
• Your WebDAV username and password
• macOS 10.15 or later

Step 1: Install the WebDAV client

To connect to a WebDAV server, you will need a client application. macOS comes with a built-in client called webdavfs, which we will use in this guide. If you are using an older version of macOS, you may need to install a third-party client.

To check if webdavfs is installed, open the Terminal application and run the following command:

webdavfs -h

If the command is not found, you will need to install webdavfs using a package manager like Homebrew.

To install Homebrew, open the Terminal application and run the following command:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Once Homebrew is installed, you can install webdavfs by running the following command:

brew install webdavfs

Step 2: Create a mount point

Next, you will need to create a mount point for the WebDAV server. This is a directory on your local machine where the remote server will be mounted. You can choose any location on your file system, but we recommend creating a new directory for this purpose.

To create a mount point, open the Terminal application and run the following command, replacing /path/to/mount with the location where you want to create the mount point:

mkdir /path/to/mount

Step 3: Mount the WebDAV server

Now you are ready to mount the WebDAV server. To do this, you will use the webdavfs command with the following syntax:

webdavfs [options]  

Replace [options] with any options that you want to use (we will not be using any in this guide), url with the URL of the WebDAV server, and mount-point with the location of the mount point that you created in step 2.

To mount the WebDAV server in read-only mode, you will need to use the -o ro option. The final command will look like this:

webdavfs -o ro  

For example, if your WebDAV server is located at https://example.com/webdav and you created a mount point at /Volumes/WebDAV, you would run the following command:

webdavfs -o ro https://example.com/webdav /Volumes/WebDAV

You will be prompted to enter your WebDAV username and password. Once you have entered your credentials, the WebDAV server will be mounted on your local machine.

Step 4: Access the WebDAV server

You can now access the WebDAV server as if it were a local directory on your Mac. You can open the mount point in the Finder by clicking on the Go menu and selecting Go to Folder. Enter the path to the mount point and click Go.

You can also access the mount point from the Terminal application by changing to the mount point directory:

cd /path/to/mount

You can now view and download files from the WebDAV server. However, you will not be able to make changes or upload files, as the mount is read-only. To unmount the WebDAV server, run the following command:

umount /path/to/mount

In this guide, we have shown you how to mount a WebDAV server on macOS in a read-only setup. This allows you to view and download files from the server, but not make changes or upload files. This is useful for accessing files from a server that you do not have permission to modify. We hope that this guide has been helpful and that you are now able to mount WebDAV servers on your Mac.