Using rclone on macOS for Remote Storage (Samba/WebDAV) over Poor Networks

Accessing remote storage like Samba or WebDAV on macOS over unstable or slow networks can be frustrating—often 90% of operations fail or hang.
I even tried Cyberduck, but it frequently froze and had to be force-killed.

Today I found a free and reliable alternative: rclone!

Mounting a Remote with rclone

rclone mount remote_samba:remote_folder /path/to/mount \
  --allow-other \
  --noapplexattr \
  --noappledouble \
  --vfs-cache-mode full \
  --vfs-read-chunk-size 256M \
  --buffer-size 128M \
  --log-level INFO \
  --log-file /tmp/rclone_samba.log \
  --daemon

Setup Steps

Install rclone
Use the official install script: https://rclone.org/install/

⚠️ Installing via Homebrew does not support the mount command.
Install FUSE backend
```
brew install fuse-t
```
- fuse-t is lighter and works well.
- macFUSE requires more permissions and often causes unmount issues on macOS.

Explanation of Key Options

--noapplexattr --noappledouble --vfs-cache-mode full
Prevents macOS from creating hidden ._* files and extended attributes that can cause errors when copying.
--vfs-read-chunk-size 256M --buffer-size 128M
Improves transfer speed by reading larger chunks and buffering more data in memory.

⚠️ Important Note

When copying files to the remote:

The copy operation between macOS → rclone cache and rclone cache → remote backend is asynchronous.
macOS may report the copy as “finished” while rclone is still uploading in the background.
On poor networks, this delay can be significant.
Always check the logs to confirm the transfer is complete:
```
tail -f /tmp/rclone_samba.log
```

👉 With this setup, rclone provides a much more stable and resilient way to work with Samba or WebDAV storage on macOS, even over unreliable connections.

nay-kang/macos_samba.md

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