If you’re a Mac user who relies on network drives (like a NAS, a Windows share, or a server), you’ve almost certainly felt the frustration: you put your Mac to sleep, change Wi-Fi networks, or your server reboots, and suddenly your network drives are gone. You have to open Finder, go to “Connect to Server,” and manually mount them all over again.

It’s a small annoyance, but when you have to do it multiple times a day, it becomes a significant drag on productivity. macOS’s built-in “Login Items” feature only works at login and doesn’t help with mid-session disconnects.

After a long and detailed debugging journey, I’ve developed a simple, robust, and “set-it-and-forget-it” solution. Today, I’m sharing this package of scripts that creates a persistent background agent to ensure your network drives are always there when you need them.

✨ What Makes This Solution Different?

This isn’t just another simple script. It has been designed from the ground up to be reliable and user-friendly, solving the common pitfalls of other solutions.

• ⚙️ A Reliable Engine: It uses AppleScript to command the Finder directly, the same method you use when manually connecting. This is far more compatible than low-level commands that often fail with special characters or permissions issues.
• 🚀 Truly Persistent: A background agent runs every 30 seconds. It doesn’t just mount drives at login; it actively checks and remounts them whenever they disconnect, for any reason.
• 📝 Simple & Clean Configuration: No more confusing URL encoding! You configure your drives in a simple, 4-column text file that’s easy to read and edit.
• 🔔 Smart Notifications: If a drive genuinely can’t be reached (maybe the server is offline), the script will notify you once and then wait, preventing a storm of annoying pop-ups.

🚀 The Setup Guide

Getting this up and running is a straightforward, one-time process.

Step 1: Download the Script Package

First, you need to get the files. I’ve hosted the entire package on GitHub to make it easy to access.

• Download macOS Drive Mounter from GitHub here (<– My GitHub repository link!)

Download the ZIP file and extract it to a permanent location on your Mac. A great place for it is in your Documents folder, inside a subfolder like Scripts.

Step 2: Configure Your Drives

Before we activate the script, we need to tell it which drives to mount.

1. Open the drives.txt file in a text editor.
2. You’ll see a well-commented file with examples. Replace the generic examples with your own server details.

The format is a simple, 4-column layout:
server_address “Share Name” username “Password”

Crucial Tip: If your Share Name or Password contains spaces or any special characters (like @, !, $, #), you must enclose it in “double quotes”.

Here are some examples of what it should look like:

# Example 1: Simple share on a NAS using its hostname
MyNAS.local             Public          guest       ""

# Example 2: Share with a space in its name, using an IP address
192.168.1.50            "My Documents"  myuser      "SimplePass123"

# Example 3: Share with a special character (@) in its name
fileserver.local        "Scans@HP"      scanner     "Scan-Pass!"

# Example 4: Password with special characters that requires quotes
10.0.0.10               Backups         admin       "My$uperP@ssw0rd!"

Step 3: Install the Background Service

Now it’s time to activate the script using the Terminal.

1. Open the Terminal app (you can find it in Applications/Utilities).
2. Navigate to the folder where you saved the script. For example:

cd ~/Documents/macOS-Drive-Mounter

3. Next, make the scripts executable by running this command:

chmod +x *.sh

4. Finally, run the installer:

./install.sh

Step 4: Approve the One-Time Security Prompts

The very first time the script runs, macOS will ask for your permission to let it control the Finder and connect to servers. This is a normal and essential security step.

• You will likely see a prompt asking for permission to control the Finder. Click “Allow.”
• For each new server, you may see a connection confirmation prompt. Click “Connect.”

Once you have approved these, macOS will remember your choices, and the script will run silently and automatically from now on.

✅ And you’re done! Your network drives will now mount automatically at login and will diligently reconnect whenever they are disconnected.

🗑️ How to Uninstall

If you ever want to remove the script, it’s just as easy.

1. Navigate to the script’s folder in the Terminal.
2. Run the uninstaller script:

./uninstall.sh

3. You can then safely delete the folder.

A Final Word

This project was a deep dive into the nuances of macOS scripting, from the quirks of the mount command to the complexities of background agent permissions. I hope this tool saves you from the daily annoyance of reconnecting your drives and makes your workflow a little smoother.

You can find the complete source code and all the files on the GitHub repository. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment below.