One of our readers pointed out in the comments a great trick that uses Automator to automatically mount network drives on Mac login. Alternate: How to Enable Automatic Mounting of Network Drives on Login with OS X Automator This can be used to automatically connect to and mount SMB drives for those that need to share files with a Windows PC often, though you’ll need to enable SAMBA beforehand within File Sharing preferences.Ĭonfirm the drive will automatically mount by logging out of the active user account and logging back in, or by rebooting the Mac. Optional: check the “Hide” box to keep the drives window from opening on each login and boot.Drag & drop a mounted network drive into the login items list.Select your user name from the list and then click the “Login Items” tab.Open System Preferences and click on “Users & Groups”.Once you are connected to the network drive we can set up automatic connections upon logging into the Mac: 2) Setting Up Automatic Connections to the Network Drive on Login Next, you add the network drive to automatically connect on OS X by bringing it into your Login Items list. Choose Guest or for a specific user check the box next to “Remember this password in my keychain” – you must select to remember the password otherwise the automatic login event can not happen without logging into the network drive.Connect to the server and mount the drive you want to automatically connect to on boot.From the OS X desktop, pull down the “Go” menu and select “Connect to Server”.

If you’re already familiar with mapping a network drive in Mac OS X you can skip the first part of this and go straight to System Preferences in the second section. This should work flawlessly in most versions of OS X, but we’ll cover an alternative approach that uses Automator to mount a network drive automatically on login as well. Setting up automatic network drive connections in OS X is a two-step process, you must mount the drive, then you add it to your automatic login items.

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