SideMount vs FreeDroid

What each one is

FreeDroid, by Merkost on GitHub, is free under the MIT licence. It shows each connected phone in Finder's sidebar under Locations, through Apple's File Provider framework, which its README says is the one Dropbox, OneDrive and iCloud Drive use. It reaches the phone over adb when USB debugging is on and over MTP when it is not, and it lists a Wi-Fi mode as experimental. It also has a window of its own with a file browser, a photo gallery and a transfer queue. It needs macOS 15.4 or later. Version 0.1.0, its only release, came out on 13 May 2026, and the code has not changed since 14 May.

SideMount is a paid menu bar app that mounts the phone as a drive in Finder. It needs USB debugging turned on once and macOS 26 or later. Nothing is installed on the phone, and nothing else on the Mac.

Side by side

Where FreeDroid is the better choice

• You want to pay nothing. FreeDroid is free, with no paid tier and no trial.
• Your Mac is not on macOS 26. FreeDroid runs on macOS 15.4 or later. SideMount needs 26.
• You do not want USB debugging on. FreeDroid falls back to the phone's File transfer mode when USB debugging is off.
• You want to read or change the code. FreeDroid is open source under the MIT licence, and it asks for help adding phones it does not yet recognise. SideMount is not open source.

Where SideMount is the better choice

• You want it looked after. SideMount had eight releases in October 2026, and you can write to [email protected] when something goes wrong. FreeDroid has had one release, in May, and no changes since.
• You want the phone as a drive. SideMount mounts the phone like a USB stick, with an eject button, so Finder, Terminal, cp and rsync use it like any disk.
• You want it without a cable. A phone on Android 11 or later can mount over Wi-Fi after pairing once. The cable is much faster, but Wi-Fi is handy for a few files. See pairing wireless debugging with a Mac.

What they have in common

Both show the phone in Finder, so you can drag files both ways and preview them with Quick Look. Both handle several phones at once. Neither installs anything on the phone or asks you to install other tools on the Mac. Neither needs an account, and files go only between the phone and your Mac. And the cable matters more than either app: a charge-only cable carries nothing. See whether your USB-C cable carries data.

Trying SideMount after FreeDroid

Nothing needs uninstalling, but quit FreeDroid first, so the two apps do not reach for the phone at once. Turn on USB debugging, download SideMount and follow the setup guide. The trial is seven days and asks for no card.

Questions