The official OneDrive app wants to sync your whole cloud drive to your Mac — painful when your cloud storage dwarfs your SSD. A lighter path: mount OneDrive as a network drive in Finder and browse your files directly in the cloud, with nothing stored locally. The method uses an unofficial WebDAV address — it works, with caveats worth knowing first.
Fair warning: this is a community-discovered workaround, not a Microsoft feature. Microsoft’s own support library documents only the official OneDrive sync client for macOS, and the WebDAV trick below is unsupported — slow at times, and it can break after account or security changes. Alternatives for a rock-solid setup are at the end.
What you need
A Mac with Finder, your Microsoft account login, and your OneDrive customer ID (the CID) — a long hexadecimal string identifying your cloud drive. Step one finds it.
Mount OneDrive as a network drive, step by step
- Find your OneDrive CID. Sign in at onedrive.com in a browser. Once your files load, check the address bar for ?cid= followed by a long string of letters and numbers — copy everything after ?cid= (stop at the next & if there is one). That is your CID.
- Open Connect to Server. In Finder, click Go in the menu bar and choose Connect to Server, or press Cmd+K. Apple’s guide to connecting to a server in Finder shows the same dialog.
- Enter the WebDAV address. Type https://d.docs.live.net/ followed directly by your CID — for example, https://d.docs.live.net/ABCDEF1234567890 — then click Connect. No trailing slash, no spaces.
- Authenticate. Sign in with your Microsoft account and choose whether Finder remembers the credentials. OneDrive now mounts like any network drive: browse, open, and edit files directly in the cloud, with no local sync copy.
- Mind the caveats. This WebDAV trick is unofficial and NOT supported by Microsoft. Transfers can be much slower than the sync client, big files may time out, and the mount can stop working after a password or security change. Don’t make it your only route to important files.
If it still doesn’t work
Re-copy the CID first — one wrong character breaks the address, which must be exactly https://d.docs.live.net/<CID>. If Finder rejects your password, sign in at onedrive.com to confirm the account. If the mount keeps dropping, the WebDAV endpoint is just fragile — the mounter apps below are the pragmatic fix.
Frequently asked questions
Is this officially supported by Microsoft?
No. The WebDAV address is an unofficial trick Microsoft neither documents nor supports. It works today, but Microsoft could change or disable the endpoint at any time — treat it as a convenience, not infrastructure.
What is the most reliable way to access OneDrive on a Mac without syncing everything?
Use the official OneDrive app with Files On-Demand enabled: tiny placeholder files stay on your Mac, and content downloads only when you open it. For a true network-drive feel, mounter apps like CloudMounter and ExpanDrive — or the open-source rclone — beat the WebDAV trick on reliability.
Reliable alternatives
For daily use, pick something sturdier. Mounter apps like CloudMounter and ExpanDrive — or the open-source rclone — map OneDrive as a local drive reliably. Or use the official OneDrive app with Files On-Demand: tiny placeholders on your Mac, downloads only on open, so a huge cloud library fits a small SSD (Microsoft’s guide to syncing files with OneDrive on macOS walks through setup). Outlets like Computerworld regularly cover these Mac cloud workflows. Once mounted, learn to change folder colors and add emoji so your OneDrive folders stand out in Finder.
Conclusion
Mounting OneDrive as a network drive is a neat trick for cloud access without sync overhead — but it is unofficial and can break without warning. For everyday work, Files On-Demand or a dedicated mounter app is the safer bet. And for wiring your Apple devices together, see our guides to setting up message sync between iPhone and Mac and setting up automatic hotspot connection from iPhone on Mac.
