FTP in Mac OS X without third-party clients
Written by Brent Sheets
May 12
There are some nice FTP clients available for Mac OS X – some are even free. But suppose you need to download a file to a Mac that doesn’t have an FTP client installed? What to do? Why, just use the FTP functionality that’s built into Mac OS X, of course. Here’s how.
For my file transfer needs, I use the Yummy FTP client, which is $25 at the time of this writing. But if you only occasionally need to download a file – or if you find yourself on a Mac without an FTP client installed– you could get by with the Mac OS X built-in FTP feature.
Info: Please note that Secure FTP (SFTP) is not currently integrated with the Finder. So this is FTP only, not SFTP.
On the Finder menu, click and type the FTP server path into the field of the Dialog that appears and click the button.
If you’re prompted for authentication, type in your username and password and click Okay. A Finder window will open with the FTP server selected as in the sidebar. You may then navigate within folders and transfer files with drag-and-drop.
Thursday, August 6th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
A kind reader pointed out that I mentioned “upload” in this FTP tip — and of course, the Finder FTP is a one way feature, allowing downloading only. So I’ve edited to correct. A tip of the hat to the eagle-eyed reader. Thanks.
I wrote this tip basically for an emergency situation. Do yourself a favor and download a free Mac OS X FTP client instead of using the Finder. As I mentioned in the original tip, I use Yummy FTP but there are free clients available.