Tether

Mount your Android in Finder — over USB or WiFi, no kernel extensions.

A tiny macOS menu-bar app that mounts your Android device's filesystem into Finder over ADB — USB or WiFi. No kernel extension, no third-party mounting software, nothing to install on the phone beyond USB debugging.

• Lives in the menu bar; auto-detects connected devices.
• One click to mount a device and browse it in Finder; one click to unmount.
• See every storage volume — internal storage and removable SD / USB cards.
• Periodic auto-detect plus a manual Refresh.
• Read, write, and delete files directly in Finder.
• Unmounts cleanly on quit, kill, or crash — never leaves a broken volume behind.

Install

Grab the latest signed & notarized DMG from the Releases page, open it, and drag Tether into Applications. Because it's Developer-ID signed and notarized by Apple, it runs without any Gatekeeper warnings.

How it works

Tether runs a small in-app WebDAV server backed by adb, and mounts it with macOS's built-in /sbin/mount_webdav. That gives a real, live Finder volume using only software that already ships with macOS. See DESIGN.md for the full design and the mount-engine trade-offs.

Requirements

• macOS 26+
• adb (Android platform-tools). Install with: brew install --cask android-platform-tools
• On the phone: USB debugging enabled, and the Mac authorized (accept the on-device prompt).

Build & run

./build.sh --dev      # build and run locally
./build.sh            # build an unsigned DMG (local testing)
./build.sh --sign     # build a signed + notarized DMG (needs Apple creds)
./build.sh --help     # all options

Tether is not distributed via the Mac App Store: it spawns adb and mount_webdav, which the App Store sandbox forbids. Instead it ships as a Developer-ID-signed, notarized DMG — see Install above to download it.

License

BSD-3-Clause — see LICENSE. Made by Pedro M. Sosa.