Explorer speaks FTP badly and SFTP not at all
File Explorer has shipped an "Add a network location" wizard since Windows XP, and it is still there in Windows 11. It knows plain FTP. It does not know SFTP, which runs inside an SSH session and has never had a mapping path in any version of Windows. macOS is barely better: Finder opens ftp:// read-only and has no SFTP mount at all.
The result is a small daily absurdity: a machine you reach with one ssh command is invisible to your file manager.
The usual workarounds and what they cost
- sshfs-win on Windows: install WinFsp first, a kernel-mode filesystem driver, then the sshfs layer on top.
- sshfs on macOS: requires macFUSE. On Apple Silicon that means a Recovery boot, dropping the security policy to Reduced Security to permit third-party kernel extensions, a reboot, an approval in System Settings, and a revisit after every major macOS upgrade.
- Commercial mount drivers: the same driver story, with a license attached.
- Just use a transfer app: FileZilla and Cyberduck move files fine, but the files stay invisible to every other program. Your editor still cannot open the remote config.
None of it is unreasonable engineering. It is just a lot of kernel-level machinery for the crime of wanting a folder.
Mount SFTP as a network drive without a driver
AnyStorage takes a different route. It connects to SFTP as a client, like any transfer app, then republishes whatever is connected through a small WebDAV server running inside the app on your own machine. Your OS mounts that, not the SFTP server. No kernel extension, no WinFsp, no admin rights, no config file to hand-edit.
The setup, end to end: add your SFTP connection in AnyStorage and open it once so it is live. Go to Services in the sidebar, pick the WebDAV tab, press Start. You get http://127.0.0.1:3211 by default, with HTTP Basic auth always on: username anystorage, plus a 24-character password generated on first use. Both are editable, with a Regenerate button and copy buttons beside them. Change the port if 3211 collides with something.
Then mount it with the tools your OS already has.
- macOS: Finder, Go menu, Connect to Server, or just Cmd+K. Paste http://127.0.0.1:3211, connect as Registered User, use the username and password from the app.
- Windows: File Explorer, This PC, Map network drive, paste the same URL. Read the next section before you do this.
- Linux: any WebDAV-capable file manager, for example GNOME Files, Other Locations, dav://127.0.0.1:3211.
Every connection that is currently connected in the app shows up as a folder at the WebDAV root, named after the connection. Your SFTP server sits next to your S3 buckets, if those are connected too.
One behaviour worth knowing before it confuses you: connections attach lazily. After an app restart, open the SFTP connection once in AnyStorage and it reappears at the WebDAV root. Connections added later need no server restart.
Two things up front rather than in fine print. On the free tier the WebDAV server is read-only; read-write is a Pro feature. And there is no TLS in the current version, so the endpoint is plain http. That is why we bind to 127.0.0.1 by default, and why the app warns you when you switch on LAN access: Basic credentials would cross the network in the clear.
Windows is where the quirks live
The server side is the easy part now. Windows' native WebDAV client is what fights you.
- The WebClient service is deprecated as of 2026 and is usually not running. Start it from services.msc before you map anything.
- Windows refuses HTTP Basic auth over plain http by default. BasicAuthLevel under HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters is 1, meaning Basic over SSL only. Set it to 2 and restart WebClient. If you skip this you get "The folder you entered does not appear to be valid", System error 67, or 0x80070043, none of which mention authentication.
- FileSizeLimitInBytes defaults to 50,000,000 bytes. That is 50 MB, not 50 GB, and copies above it fail with 0x800700DF. You can raise it to 0xFFFFFFFF, roughly 4 GB, and restart WebClient again.
Or sidestep the list: a third-party WebDAV client has none of these limits, and anything large is better moved in AnyStorage's own transfer view, which has no 4 GB ceiling.
Where this fits, and where it does not
It is very good for the small stuff. Drag yesterday's log off a VPS from a Finder window. Open a server's uploads folder and Quick Look your way through it. Edit a config in your normal editor instead of fighting vim over a jump host. Plain FTP connections work the same way.
Latency is the honest limit. The hop to 127.0.0.1 costs nothing, but every directory listing still becomes real round-trips to your SFTP server, and a folder with twenty thousand entries feels like a folder with twenty thousand entries over SSH. Reads stream with HTTP range support, so seeking inside a large file does not download the whole thing first.
Some things it does not do at all. There is no file locking, so two machines editing the same remote file are not protected from each other. Top-level connection folders cannot be deleted or renamed through the mount, and files cannot move directly between two connections; copy down and back up, or do it in the app. Bulk migrations belong in the transfer view.