Accessing a USB drive on a Mac is often straightforward, but if you’re unfamiliar with macOS or encountering issues with the drive, it might be challenging. Here, we’ll guide you on how to locate and open your USB drive on a Mac.
Find Your USB Drive on the Desktop
Under normal conditions, your USB flash drive or external hard drive should appear on your Mac’s desktop. Connect your USB drive and then click the yellow minimize button in the top-left corner of any open windows to reveal the desktop.
USB drive on Mac desktop
If you see an icon for your USB drive, double-click it to open. If not, proceed to the next section to use Finder to access your USB drive.
Find Your USB Drive Using Finder
Finder is Apple’s counterpart to File Explorer in Windows. To open it, click the blue smiley face icon on the left side of the Dock. If the Dock isn’t visible, move your mouse cursor to the bottom of the screen to make it appear. If this doesn’t help, try moving the cursor to the far left or right of your screen if you’ve adjusted the position of the Dock.
macOS Dock with cursor over Finder logo
Once a Finder window is open, your USB drive should be visible in the left sidebar under the Locations heading.
If your USB drive is still missing, navigate to Finder > Settings from the top menu bar. Click the Sidebar tab and ensure External disks under the Locations heading is enabled.
USB drive in the Finder sidebar
If your Mac detects the USB drive, it should now show up in the Finder sidebar.
Can’t Access a USB Drive on Your Mac?
If you can’t find your USB drive in Finder, it could be due to a problematic drive or an incompatible format with macOS.
Check Your USB Drive Format
To verify the USB drive’s format, press Cmd + Space to open Spotlight, type “Disk Utility,” and press Return (or Enter) to launch Disk Utility. Select your USB drive from the sidebar to reveal the drive format below its name.
USB drive in Disk Utility showing drive format
If the format is ExFAT, FAT32, APFS, or Mac OS Extended, your Mac should detect it without issues. Click the First Aid button in Disk Utility to resolve any problems, then attempt to access it in Finder again.
If the drive is formatted in Microsoft’s NTFS, your Mac can read it but won’t write to it. For both read and write access, reformat the drive in macOS to a suitable format. If reformatting isn’t feasible, look for other solutions to use an NTFS drive on your Mac.
Check for Physical Drive Problems
If the USB drive doesn’t appear in Disk Utility, it might have a physical issue, or the USB port on your Mac might be faulty. Try a different drive or port.
Alternatively, test your USB drive with another computer. If it fails to work across devices, the drive is likely the problem, not your Mac.
Make Sure the Contents of the Drive Work With macOS
If the drive appears but it’s empty when it shouldn’t be, it might be due to file incompatibility with macOS. Ensure the files you’re transferring are compatible with macOS.