Computers, Laptops & Tablets Apple How to Map a Network Drive on a Mac Create shortcuts to navigate quickly around your Mac By Luis E. Chavez Saenz Writer Luis Chavez is a former Lifewire writer and a System Administrator with 5+ years' experience writing about technology for end users. our editorial process Luis E. Chavez Saenz Updated September 13, 2019 Apple Macs iPad Tweet Share Email It's common to map a network drive on Mac or Windows computers in the corporate environment, but they can also be set up in your home environment where you have multiple devices that need to access the same information. The instructions in this article illustrate how to map a network drive on macOS. While the steps may vary slightly based on the version of macOS you're using, they should generally be the same across all versions of the OS. How to Map a Network Drive on Mac Instead of downloading or copying the same data to all your devices, you would save this data in a single folder, then share this folder with other devices. Once you have shared the location of this data via a UNC path, you can then map the network drive to all your devices with a few simple steps. Launch Finder. Click Go > Connect to Server. Enter the path for the network drive you'd like to map and click Connect. If you're prompted for a confirmation, click Connect. Accounts that don't have permissions to access this file/folder are unable to create a connection to the network drive. Once the network drive has been mapped, it will appear under your desktop as a mounted drive or under your Locations menu in any Finder window. Since mapped drives show up as mounted drives on your macOS device, you're able to disconnect from them by ejecting the drive. How to Automount a Network Drive on macOS If you want to ensure the previously mapped drive remains after a reboot, you must enable automounting via Login items under your user account preferences. Click the Apple Logo > System Preferences. Click User & Groups. Select the username that has access to the network drive. Select the Login Items tab. Navigate to the item you wish to add. Click once to select it, then click Add.