Mount ext4 Drives: ExtendFS

About

ExtendFS is a read-only ext2, ext3, and ext4 driver for macOS, built with Apple's FSKit framework and written in Swift. It lets you access files on Linux-formatted drives, such as external disks, USB sticks, SD cards, and NAS drives, without using the terminal, lowering system security settings, or installing a kernel extension. It supports both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs and requires macOS 15.6 or later. After you enable its file system extension in System Settings, supported ext4 volumes mount automatically and appear in the Finder.

Because it uses FSKit rather than FUSE, ExtendFS needs no third-party downloads such as macFUSE, and it runs in user space as a sandboxed app. The source code is available on GitHub under the GPL license, and the Mac App Store version is offered as a way to support the project. The site notes that compression, encryption, meta block groups, and LVM are not currently supported, and that devices using other formats such as Btrfs are not compatible.

The site also includes a comparison with alternatives such as macFUSE with ext4fuse and Paragon extFS for Mac, covering features like write access, Full Security mode compatibility, automount, and sandboxing. Command-line users can also mount volumes with the system mount command using the ExtendFS type.