# AllDrives — every cloud drive you own, in the macOS Finder

> AllDrives is a native macOS app that mounts cloud object storage and remote
> servers directly in Finder: Amazon S3, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive,
> Backblaze B2, SFTP, WebDAV, a NAS, and around sixty more. Files stay in the
> cloud until opened. There is no AllDrives account and no server in the middle —
> the Mac connects straight to the user's own storage with the user's own
> credentials. Free during the public beta; afterwards a one-time payment, never
> a subscription. Made by an independent developer.

## Who writes this
- Author: Abhishek Agarwal — independent software engineer, sole maker of AllDrives, trading as noob LLP. Also makes NoobQA (https://noobqa.com).
- Expertise basis: built AllDrives on macOS's NSFileProviderReplicatedExtension, the same mechanism iCloud Drive uses; the app's encrypted drives, cross-cloud duplicate detection and MCP server are original work.
- Contact and corrections: tech.noobqa@gmail.com

## Key facts
- Platform: macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or later. Apple silicon. Signed and notarised.
- Get it: https://noobqa.com/alldrives/
- Price: free during beta; afterwards one-time, no subscription. Beta users get an early-bird discount.
- Status: public beta, version 0.9.0.
- Not open source. Third-party components are listed in the app under About → Legal Notices.

## What it does
- **Mounts storage in Finder.** Drives appear in Finder's sidebar and behave like ordinary folders — searchable, draggable, usable from any app's Open dialog.
- **Files on demand.** Everything is a placeholder until opened, so a drive holding a terabyte occupies no local disk. "Free up space" turns downloaded files back into placeholders.
- **Search across every cloud at once.** One field spanning all connected providers. Finder cannot do this because Finder does not know the drives are related.
- **Duplicate detection across providers.** Finds the same file in two different clouds by size and name, then confirms it by fetching a content hash from each provider before anything is deleted.
- **Encrypted drives.** A folder on a cloud you already use, encrypted on the Mac before upload. The provider stores ciphertext and, optionally, encrypted filenames. No recovery: losing the passphrase means losing the files, by design.
- **Move files between clouds** without downloading and re-uploading by hand.
- **Spotlight.** ⌘Space finds files that live in a cloud and have never been downloaded. Off until enabled.
- **An MCP server.** AI assistants (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or any Model Context Protocol client) can search, list, read and — with separate permission — write across connected drives.

## Privacy
- The app has no account, no sign-up and no server holding user data. Cloud credentials go from the Mac directly to the provider.
- Stored locally: credentials in an encrypted configuration unlocked by the login Keychain; an index of file names, sizes and dates for browsed folders (never file contents); files the user has opened.
- The app makes exactly one network request of its own: a check for a newer version. It carries no identifier, no account and nothing about the user's drives or files.
- No analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting in the app. The website (noobqa.com) does use Microsoft Clarity and Vercel analytics; the app does not.
- Honest limit: any network request reveals an IP address and that someone is running AllDrives. That is true of every application that can update itself.
- Full policy: https://noobqa.com/alldrives/privacy.html

## Assistant access, in detail
- Nothing is shared by default. Access is granted one drive at a time, and reading is a separate permission from writing.
- Writes and transfers record how to reverse themselves, so the user can undo what an assistant did.
- Write tools accept a dry run, so an assistant can present a whole change set before anything moves.
- There is a per-session ceiling on bytes transferred, because providers bill for downloads.
- Moving a file between drives requires write access on both, because a move deletes the original.

## How it compares
- Unlike Mountain Duck, CloudMounter and ExpanDrive, AllDrives is free during beta and is priced one-time afterwards rather than by subscription.
- Unlike a provider's own desktop app (Google Drive for desktop, Dropbox), AllDrives puts many providers in one place and never syncs a full local copy unless asked.
- Unlike a plain rclone GUI, it integrates with Finder through macOS's file provider mechanism rather than mounting a virtual disk, and adds cross-cloud search, duplicate detection and assistant access.

## Pages
- [AllDrives](https://noobqa.com/alldrives/): what it is, how it works, encryption, assistants, privacy and pricing.
- [Privacy policy](https://noobqa.com/alldrives/privacy.html): what the app stores, what it sends, and what the website collects — described separately, because they differ.
- [Support](https://noobqa.com/alldrives/support.html): connecting drives, Finder troubleshooting, encryption, assistants, and removing the app.
- [Terms](https://noobqa.com/alldrives/terms.html): beta terms, licence, and the limits of liability.

## What it is not
- Not a backup tool. It gives access to storage; it does not keep versioned copies for you.
- Not a sync client. Nothing is mirrored to the Mac unless opened.
- Not open source, though it is built on open-source components which are credited in the app.