/rclone_mount

title: "rclone mount"
description: "Mount the remote as file system on a mountpoint."
versionIntroduced: v1.33
# autogenerated - DO NOT EDIT, instead edit the source code in cmd/mount/ and as part of making a release run "make commanddocs"

> **Official documentation:** [https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_mount/](https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_mount/)

rclone mount

Mount the remote as file system on a mountpoint.

Synopsis

Rclone mount allows Linux, FreeBSD, macOS and Windows to mount any of Rclone's cloud storage systems as a file system with FUSE.

First set up your remote using `rclone config`. Check it works with `rclone ls` etc.

On Linux and macOS, you can run mount in either foreground or background (aka daemon) mode. Mount runs in foreground mode by default. Use the `--daemon` flag to force background mode. On Windows you can run mount in foreground only, the flag is ignored.

In background mode rclone acts as a generic Unix mount program: the main program starts, spawns background rclone process to setup and maintain the mount, waits until success or timeout and exits with appropriate code (killing the child process if it fails).

On Linux/macOS/FreeBSD start the mount like this, where `/path/to/local/mount` is an **empty** **existing** directory:

rclone mount remote:path/to/files /path/to/local/mount

On Windows you can start a mount in different ways. See [below](#mounting-modes-on-windows) for details. If foreground mount is used interactively from a console window, rclone will serve the mount and occupy the console so another window should be used to work with the mount until rclone is interrupted e.g. by pressing Ctrl-C.

The following examples will mount to an automatically assigned drive, to specific drive letter `X:`, to path `C:\path\parent\mount` (where parent directory or drive must exist, and mount must **not** exist, and is not supported when [mounting as a network drive](#mounting-modes-on-windows)), and the last example will mount as network share `\\cloud\remote` and map it to an automatically assigned drive:

rclone mount remote:path/to/files *
rclone mount remote:path/to/files X:
rclone mount remote:path/to/files C:\path\parent\mount
rclone mount remote:path/to/files \\cloud\remote

When the program ends while in foreground mode, either via Ctrl+C or receiving a SIGINT or SIGTERM signal, the mount should be automatically stopped.

When running in background mode the user will have to stop the mount manually:

# Linux
fusermount -u /path/to/local/mount
#... or on some systems
fusermount3 -u /path/to/local/mount
# OS X or Linux when using nfsmount
umount /path/to/local/mount

The umount operation can fail, for example when the mountpoint is busy. When that happens, it is the user's responsibility to stop the mount manually.

The size of the mounted file system will be set according to information retrieved from the remote, the same as returned by the [rclone about](https://rclone.org/commands/rclone_about/) command. Remotes with unlimited storage may report the used size only, then an additional 1 PiB of free space is assumed. If the remote does not [support](https://rclone.org/overview/#optional-features) the about feature at all, then 1 PiB is set as both the total and the free size.

Installing on Windows

To run `rclone mount on Windows`, you will need to download and install [WinFsp](https://winfsp.dev).

[WinFsp](https://github.com/winfsp/winfsp) is an open-source Windows File System Proxy which makes it easy to write user space file systems for Windows. It provides a FUSE emulation layer which rclone uses combination with [cgofuse](https://github.com/winfsp/cgofuse). Both of these packages are by Bill Zissimopoulos who was very helpful during the implementation of rclone mount for Windows.

Mounting modes on windows

Unlike other operating systems, Microsoft Windows provides a different filesystem type for network and fixed drives. It optimises access on the assumption fixed disk drives are fast and reliable, while network drives have relatively high latency and less reliability. Some settings can also be differentiated between the two types, for example that Windows Explorer should just display icons and not create preview thumbnails for image and video files on network drives.

In most cases, rclone will mount the remote as a normal, fixed disk drive by default. However, you can also choose to mount it as a remote network drive, often described as a network share. If you mount an rclone remote using the default, fixed drive mode and experience unexpected program errors, freezes or other issues, consider mounting as a network drive instead.

When mounting as a fixed disk drive you can either mount to an unused drive letter, or to a path representing a **nonexistent** subdirectory of an **existing** parent directory or drive. Using the special value `*` will tell rclone to automatically assign the next available drive letter, starting with Z: and moving backward. Examples:

rclone mount remote:path/to/files *
rclone mount remote:path/to/files X:
rclone mount remote:path/to/files C:\path\parent\mount
rclone mount remote:path/to/files X:

Option `--volname` can be used to set a custom volume name for the mounted file system. The default is to use the remote name and path.

To mount as network drive, you can add option `--network-mode` to your mount command. Mounting to a directory path is not supported in this mode, it is a limitation Windows imposes on junctions, so the remote must always be mounted to a drive letter.

rclone mount remote:path/to/files X: --network-mode

A volume name specified with `--volname` will be used to create the network share path. A complete UNC path, such as `\\cloud\remote`, optionally with path `\\cloud\remote\madeup\path`, will be used as is. Any other string will be used as the share part, after a default prefix `\\server\`.