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Cloud accounts

Storage Studio can move data between your Mac, the paired fast drive, and remote servers. Every remote is configured once in the Cloud Accounts window and then becomes available everywhere — in the New Transfer picker, in the Data Parking window's path bar, and to any job you schedule.

What a move keeps

Moving a folder to your fast drive keeps everything about your files, not just their contents:

  • Created and modified dates — Finder's "Date Created" survives the move.
  • Tags and colour labels, and the other hidden details apps attach to files.
  • Permissions, including custom sharing permissions.
  • The "Locked" and hidden settings you set in Finder.
  • Linked copies stay linked, shortcuts stay shortcuts, and space-saving files stay small.

Every move is checked before the original is removed, and you can move anything back. The one thing a move can't keep is which user account owns a file, because external drives don't record it.

Open the manager

From the popover, click Cloud Accounts (the cloud icon with the green count badge). The badge shows how many accounts are currently configured across all providers; it includes every type, not just Google.

Supported providers + account limits

To keep things sane, each provider has a cap:

  • Google Drive — up to 5 accounts.
  • Google Photos — not available for new accounts right now. Since

March 2025 Google lets an app see only the photos it uploaded itself, so connecting it would show an empty library. Choosing it in Add Account explains this and points you to Google Takeout, which can export your whole library to Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or Box — connect that account and Data Transfers can copy the export to your Mac or your external drive. We're working on another way to bring your photos in. A Google Photos account connected earlier still works as a destination.

  • OneDrive — up to 5 accounts (personal or work; the account's own drive is connected automatically).
  • Box — up to 5 accounts.
  • iCloud Drive (another Apple ID) — up to 3. Your Mac's own iCloud Drive

needs no account. For a different Apple ID you sign in with its password and a six-digit code; the Apple ID needs Advanced Data Protection off and Access iCloud Data on the Web on, and Apple asks for a new code about once a month (the account shows Sign in again when it does).

  • S3-compatible (AWS, Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, Wasabi,

DigitalOcean Spaces, MinIO, custom) — up to 10 accounts.

  • FTP — up to 10 accounts.
  • SFTP — up to 10 accounts.
  • Local folder alias — up to 5. Lets you give a path a nickname

so it shows up as a remote in the picker (handy for network shares mounted via Finder).

Each row in the Add Account picker shows a "used / cap" badge so you can see your headroom. At-cap rows dim and are unselectable until you remove an existing account.

Adding an account

  1. Cloud Accounts → Add Account.
  2. Pick a provider. Caps update live; you can't pick a row

that's at its limit.

  1. Enter a nickname. Used in transfer paths and shown in the

picker. Use a different nickname per account (e.g. personal-drive, work-drive, client-s3). All accounts stay signed in independently.

  1. Fill the provider-specific form. Each provider has its own

form below the nickname:

Google Drive

Browser-based OAuth. Click Open browser to sign in, pick the Google account, approve access, and the form picks up the token automatically. One tab opens, not two.

The browser doesn't redirect anywhere on the internet — it lands on a page Storage Studio serves on your own Mac just for the handshake. That page confirms "You're connected" and you can close it right away; if the provider refused, it says why in plain English and no account is added.

If Google shows a "This app is blocked" page, you'll need custom OAuth credentials — see the Advanced — custom OAuth credentials disclosure for an in-app guide.

S3-compatible

  • Provider preset — pick the closest match. Each preset fills

sensible defaults: AWS uses us-east-1 and no custom endpoint; R2 uses auto and requires an endpoint URL; the rest sit in between.

  • Access Key ID — the public part of the keypair.
  • Secret Access Key — kept in the encrypted credential vault

(see below). Strength-gated.

  • Region — preset per provider, editable.
  • Bucket — optional. Leave blank and you'll see every bucket

the key can list; fill it to scope this account to one bucket.

  • Endpoint URL — only shown for non-AWS providers. Use the URL

from your provider's dashboard.

  • Advanced — addressing + transfer behaviour — toggle

path-style URLs if your S3 server doesn't support virtual-host style. On by default for MinIO / Other, off for AWS / R2.

FTP

FTP transmits passwords and file contents in cleartext. The form opens with a red warning banner and a mandatory consent checkbox: "I understand the risks and want to add this FTP account anyway." Save is disabled until you tick it. If you can use SFTP instead, please do.

Fields: server, port (21), username, password, optional base path. The password is still strength-gated — a weak password over plaintext is worse, not better.

SFTP

SFTP is file transfer over SSH and is the safe default. Pick the auth method with the segmented control:

  • Password. Standard SecureField with a strength meter.
  • Private key. Browse to your key file (the picker opens at your

SSH keys folder with hidden files already visible). Standard OpenSSH keys and PEM files are both accepted. If your key is encrypted, type the passphrase below — also strength-gated.

The key file path stays on your Mac. Storage Studio reads it directly each connection; nothing is uploaded.

Password strength gate

Password fields (and SFTP key passphrases, if you supply one) are scored on the fly. The four-segment meter under each field shows:

  • Red — Very weak / Weak. Save is disabled. Add length and mix

character classes.

  • Orange — Fair. Save allowed with a hint to strengthen.
  • Yellow — Good. Save allowed, gentle nudge.
  • Green — Strong. No hint shown.

The threshold is Fair. The check happens locally; nothing is sent off your Mac.

Where secrets live

Credentials (S3 secret keys, FTP / SFTP passwords, SFTP key passphrases) are stored in an encrypted credential vault in Storage Studio's private data folder on your Mac.

Protected with strong, industry-standard encryption, and the key is tied to this specific Mac — so copying the vault to another Mac will not let it decrypt, by design. You can point the vault at an encrypted external volume from Preferences.

Passwords are never stored in plain text: what Storage Studio reads at transfer time is always an obscured, encrypted form, and the vault is the canonical encrypted record kept alongside it.

Removing an account

In the Cloud Accounts window, select the row → Remove. Before it deletes anything it runs a reference check: if any scheduled or one-off transfers use that account, it lists them and offers to remove the account and those transfers together — so nothing is left pointing at an account that no longer exists. The account's saved connection is removed and the matching vault entry is purged in the same step. Your data in the cloud is untouched; you can re-add the account later.

Your accounts in Finder's sidebar

Storage Studio adds a "Storage Studio" entry to Finder's Locations sidebar — right next to iCloud Drive, Google Drive and Dropbox — with your connected accounts (plus your external drive's Home folder) as folders inside it. Files show as online-only until you open them, then download on demand, exactly like the other cloud drives. It's a first-class Finder Location, not a mounted network volume, and it's on by default — nothing to switch on.

  • Which form is it in? The Mounting tab says so. "On — in Finder

under Locations" is the normal one. If the Location can't start on your Mac, Storage Studio falls back to a network drive so your files stay reachable — that one is not in Finder's sidebar (putting a drive there needs an administrator password, which Storage Studio doesn't ask for), so the tab shows you its folder path and an Open the Drive button.

  • Read and write. Open, edit, rename, move and delete files in your

cloud folders right in Finder — changes sync to the account. Transfers are multi-threaded and resumable, and unchanged files are skipped.

  • Home is read-only. Your Home folder holds your relocated apps

and Storage Studio's own settings, so it's read-only in Finder — you can browse it, but can't delete or change those files by accident.

  • Encrypted. The link between Finder and Storage Studio is

encrypted and stays on your Mac; cloud transfers travel over encrypted connections, and Bridge transfers are end-to-end encrypted.

  • Not running means not running. Quit Storage Studio and the

Location disappears and all background activity stops; it returns when you reopen the app.

  • What's in the drive — a per-account on/off list, so you choose

which accounts show up. Add, remove or edit an account and the drive updates on its own; an account that needs signing in again is left out until you do, so it can't hold up the others.

  • One click from the app. The Finder icon at the top of the main

window, just right of the tabs, opens the Location directly (a spinner shows while the drive is getting ready).

  • Big folders. A large folder keeps loading in the background even

if you click away, and it's remembered — next time it opens straight away and only what changed is fetched.

  • Thumbnails. Photos, videos and documents show real thumbnails in

accounts where looking costs nothing (Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box, iCloud, your devices and servers). Storage that charges per request — bucket storage and Delta Drive — shows plain icons, so browsing never runs up a bill.

  • Keep opened files on this Mac. Only files you open are downloaded.

In the Mounting tab choose how long an opened file stays after you stop using it — don't keep, 6 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours (default), 2 days or 1 week — then it goes back to cloud-only and the space is freed. Open or still-uploading files are never removed. Forever is offered only when the drive's copies are kept on your external drive; otherwise macOS keeps them on your Mac's own disk, where Forever would slowly fill it.

  • iCloud Photos. Each extra Apple ID you connect also shows its photo

library as its own folder, read-only, with the Hidden and Recently Deleted albums never shown. The same library is a source in New Transfer.

If the new mechanism can't start on your Mac, Storage Studio automatically falls back to the previous network-drive style, so your files are always reachable. Any account that's briefly unreachable is skipped so one offline account never blocks the others.

Using accounts in transfers

Any account you add automatically appears in:

  • New Transfer — as a source and as a destination dropdown

(a Google Photos account connected earlier, as a destination only).

  • Data Parking — when you type a path into either pane, paths of the

form account-nickname:folder/path resolve to that account.

  • Scheduled jobs — pick the account in the New Transfer sheet,

set a schedule, and the job runs on cadence whether or not the app is in the foreground.

Cross-provider transfers work out of the box. You can copy work-drive:Reports/ → client-s3:backups/2026/, or your Documents folder → production-sftp:incoming/, in any direction. Transfers that touch a remote endpoint automatically resume and retry, so a brief network blip won't lose progress on a multi-GB upload.

A finished, failed or cancelled transfer has Sync again (Run again for a copy or move): the same transfer, same settings, sending only what changed since last time. It isn't offered for a Move (Overwrite) from Data Parking — the source is gone once that finishes — or for web downloads, which resume in their own way.