Write NTFS And Read NTFS on Mac in Three Ways (macOS Sequoia & Earlier)

Cross-platform incompatibility has been a huge roadblock for Mac users who have to move back and forth between Windows and Mac computers, especially when sharing files between Windows and macOS using an NTFS(stands for NT File System) drive.

Ways to use NTFS drives in read-write mode on Mac:

Want to read and write to NTFS drive on Mac with ease? Free download iBoysoft NTFS for Mac!

Also, you can follow this video guide: How to Use NTFS drives on Mac? 

How to write NTFS drive on Mac?

This part talks about how to enable Mac NTFS write support. Each method has pros and cons. You can choose the best method that suits your case to enable NTFS write on Mac. 

Option 1. Write NTFS on Mac with an easy-to-use NTFS driver

Using a commercial third-party app is the easiest and fastest way to enable NTFS write support on Mac without formatting NTFS drives to a compatible file system. Although costing a little money, it offers high reliability, fast write speed, excellent compatibility, and free technical support. These benefits you probably won't get from free NTFS drivers for Mac.

iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is one of the best. It provides fast macOS NTFS write and file transferring speed. You won't feel any difference between using a Microsoft NTFS drive on Mac and other macOS-supported formats. And now, it also supports writing to NTFS on Mac with Apple silicon M1 or M2 chips. Without it, you can read and write NTFS on macOS Sonoma, the latest macOS version. Download iBoysoft NTFS for Mac to fully read and write the NTFS drive on Mac now!

There is a tutorial video about how to read NTFS on Mac and gain Mac NTFS write access with iBoysoft NTFS for Mac. This video tutorial can also help you fix the USB drive is read only Mac problem.

Steps to read and write to NTFS on Mac:

1. Free download and install iBoysoft NTFS for Mac on Mac.

2. Connect your NTFS drive to your Mac computer.

3. After your drive is mounted successfully, you can access NTFS disk on Mac and read/write NTFS files. If necessary, you'll be asked to install an NTFS driver by iBoysoft and enable System Extensions to gain full disk access.

There is a free-trail version of iBoysoft NTFS for Mac. Don't lose this chance to experience its excellent performance to write to NTFS on macOS for free.

This wonderful software is also available for any other NTFS hard drive, for example, the WD My Passport NTFS drive, as long as you install a wonderful iBoysoft WD NTFS driver for Mac on your device.

Option 2. Gain Mac NTFS support via a free NTFS driver

If you don't want to use a commercial NTFS driver for Mac or format NTFS, there are some free NTFS for Mac you can choose from. For example, you can use an open-source project called FUSE for macOS. It can mount the Microsoft NTFS drive in read-write mode.

Although they are free to use, the process is very complicated and technical, involving so many command lines and rebooting the Mac. If you want to try such a free program, please follow the guide very carefully and all attempts are at your own risk.

Step 1. Download and install Xcode.

Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Terminal and run the following command: xcode-select --installThen, click "install" when you are asked to install Apple's command line developer tools.

Step 2. Download and install Homebrew.

Go to the Terminal window and run the following command:

[/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Then, Hit Enter to install it (provide the password when prompted).

Step 3. Download and install FUSE for macOS.

Use default options when installing it.

Step 4. Install NTFS-3G.

Go to Terminal window and run the following command: brew install homebrew/fuse/ntfs-3g

Step 5. Disable SIP (System Integrity Protection).

SIP exists to protect the operating systems from unauthorized changes.

Step 6. Read and write to NTFS on Mac.

Other than FUSE for macOS, Mounty for Mac, NTFS-3G, SL-NTFS are other free NTFS for Mac. They are free, but all of them require a good bit of work to install and use.

Option 3. Help Mac write to NTFS drive using Terminal

I bet most Mac users don't know that the macOS includes the experimental NTFS write support, but it is disabled by default. You can run some command lines in Terminal to enable macOS NTFS write support.

However, Apple hasn't officially supported NTFS-writing ability yet. It is proven to be unstable and risky. It may cause disk corruption and permanent data loss. In case you couldn't access your NTFS drives or lost data from them, try iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery to recover important files.

This solution is not recommended, but if you are curious about how to enable write support for specific Microsoft Windows disks using macOS Terminal, follow the steps below:

1. Go to the Applications > Utilities > Terminal to launch the Terminal program.

2. Input "sudo nano /etc/fstab" to edit the fstab file (provide your password when prompted). No letters will show up when you type in password.

3. Type "LABEL=DISKNAME none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse" in the editor window for the fstab file and press "Control + O" to write. (Be sure to change the word DISKNAME to the name of your NTFS drive)

4. Hit Enter and press "Control + C" and then "Control + X" to exit.

5. Re-connected the NTFS drive to the Mac.

6. Click "Go" at the top left menu bar and choose "Go to Folder".

7. Type in /Volomes and hit Enter.

8. Find the NTFS volume or drive and drag it to the sidebar for easy access.

A lot of users reported that the set of commands above didn't work on macOS Monterey. Please find another set of commands below. They are more complicated.

1. Open Terminal and input the command sudo umount Volumes/DISKNAME and hit the Return key to unmount your disk. Replace the DISKNAME with the name of your device.

2. Run the command sudo mkdir /Volumes/1 to create a mount point for your NTFS volume.

3. Run command sudo mount -t ntfs -o rw, auto, nobrowse /dev/disk2s2 /Volumes/1 to mount the NTFS on Mac computer in read and write mode. The "disk2s2" is the Device info of the NTFS drive in Disk Utility. Yours might be different.  

4. Quit the Terminal and open NTFS volume on Mac for use.

Does NTFS work on Mac?

Generally, when we connect an external drive to a Mac, we want to read and write to it. Therefore, you may ask questions like can Mac read NTFS and can Mac write to NTFS. 

NTFS is a Windows-exclusive file system, it is not supported by macOS all the time even on the latest macOS versions. Mac can read NTFS-formatted USB flash drives, SD cards, memory sticks, and external hard drives without any problem, you can open the NTFS drive just like you open other macOS-compatible disks and view the files/folders.

However, Mac can't write to NTFS by default, you couldn't edit, rename, paste, delete, create, or move files to the NTFS drive on Mac. Of course, you can directly format the NTFS drive for Mac, it will erase data. Besides, there are some workarounds to read and write NTFS on Mac without reformatting.

Conclusion

Letting Mac read NTFS and write to NTFS files is possible. In addition to changing the file system by formatting which erases all the contents, you have several options to choose from - free NTFS drivers, cost-effective NTFS drivers, and Apple's native NTFS support.

Free NTFS drivers for Mac and Apple's NTFS support are free but takes an extra amount of work to mount NTFS drive on Mac in read-write mode. They are risky and very unstable. Even though iBoysoft NTFS for Mac is not completely free, it saves you a lot of time and effort with its excellent reliability and ease of use.

If you need to use the external drive for file transferring between Windows computers and Mac computers frequently, it is a good idea to convert NTFS to FAT32 or exFAT in macOS Disk Utility. If you will use this Windows NTFS drive on Mac later, you can also choose to convert NTFS to APFS.

Also read:

How to Read and Write NTFS on Mac Catalina?