NTFSTool Pro (Beta)

NTFSTool Pro is the new native version of NTFSTool, rebuilt from the ground up in Swift. It reads and writes Windows NTFS drives on your Mac, with a cleaner interface modeled on Disk Utility.

Download NTFSTool Pro 5.0.0.12

Universal app for Apple silicon and Intel · macOS 12 or later · 25 MB · Apple-notarized

What you get

• Mounts NTFS drives with read and write access automatically when you plug them in, and remounts them after sleep.
• Runs quietly in the background. A menu bar icon is optional.
• Per-drive settings, First Aid, erase as NTFS, speed test and S.M.A.R.T. health.
• Optional driver 2 (experimental, macOS 15.4 or later) uses Apple's modern file system framework. In our tests on macOS 15.7 it created small files about twice as fast as Apple's own exFAT driver (about 1.5 times as fast on macOS 27). You turn it on in Settings › Driver with a short guided step, and Pro falls back to the standard driver if anything goes wrong.
• 20 languages.

Why there is no kernel extension (kext) driver

NTFSTool has held Apple's kernel extension signing authorization for 7 years, so a kext driver is not something we can't do. It is something we chose to retire.

• It lowers your Mac's security. On Macs with Apple silicon, installing a kernel extension means shutting down, starting up in Recovery, switching to Reduced Security, approving the extension and restarting.
• A bug can take down the whole Mac. A kernel extension runs inside the core of macOS. If it fails, the Mac can freeze or restart. With NTFSTool's drivers, a problem stays inside the driver, and the app can recover or switch drivers on its own.
• Apple has deprecated it. Apple has been moving file systems out of the kernel since 2019, and its own exFAT and FAT drivers now run on the same modern framework (FSKit) as our Driver 2.

That is why the Driver settings in NTFSTool Pro still list “Driver 3: Kernel extension (kext)”, greyed out and marked Retired. Driver 1 and Driver 2 give you full read and write access without ever lowering your Mac's security.

Your license and settings

Your existing NTFSTool license key works in Pro. Pro uses the same settings and saved administrator password as the classic app, and asks you to quit the classic app the first time it starts.

About this beta

Pro is in beta. Please keep backups of important data and always eject drives before unplugging them. If something goes wrong, use Settings › Feedback in the app: it can attach a diagnostic report so we can fix the problem quickly. During the launch period Pro also sends anonymous diagnostic logs once a day so we can fix problems quickly. See the Privacy Policy for details and how to opt out.

Prefer the classic app? Download NTFSTool.