Accessing a USB drive on a Mac is usually pretty easy, but if you’re new to macOS or there’s a problem with the drive, you might struggle to find it. Below, we’ll show you exactly how to find and open your USB drive on a Mac.

Find Your USB Drive on the Desktop

By default, you should be able to find your USB flash drive or external hard drive on your Mac’s desktop. Connect your USB drive, then click the yellow minimize button in the top-left corner of all your open windows to reveal the macOS desktop.

If you can see an icon representing your USB drive, just double-click to open it. If not, follow the next section to access your USB drive using Finder instead.

Find Your USB Drive Using Finder

Finder is Apple’s equivalent to File Explorer in Windows. To open it, click the blue smiley face on the left side of the Dock. If you can’t see the Dock on your Mac, move your mouse cursor to the very bottom of the screen to make it appear. If that didn’t work, try moving the mouse to the far left or right of your screen if you’ve customized the position of the Dock.

After opening a Finder window, you should be able to see your USB drive in the left sidebar under the Locations heading.

If you still can’t find your USB drive, go to Finder > Settings from the menu bar at the top of the screen. Then, click the Sidebar tab and make sure External disks under the Locations heading is enabled.

If the Mac is able to detect your USB drive, doing this should make it appear in the Finder sidebar.

Can’t Access a USB Drive on Your Mac?

If you can’t find your USB drive in Finder, chances are there’s a problem with the drive, or it uses a format that doesn’t work with macOS.

Check Your USB Drive Format

To check the USB drive’s format, press Cmd + Space to open Spotlight, then type “Disk Utility” and hit Return (or Enter) to launch the macOS Disk Utility tool. Then, select your USB drive from the sidebar to reveal the drive format beneath its name.

If your USB drive is in ExFAT, FAT32, APFS, or Mac OS Extended format, your Mac should have no trouble detecting it. Click the First Aid button in Disk Utility to fix any issues with the drive, then try to access it in Finder again.

However, if it uses Microsoft’s NTFS format, your Mac should still be able to read it but won’t write to it. So, if you need both read and write support, you can reformat your external drive in macOS to an appropriate format. If reformatting isn’t an option, explore other ways to use an NTFS drive on your Mac.

Check for Physical Drive Problems

If your USB flash drive or external hard drive doesn’t show up in Disk Utility, there may be a physical problem with the drive or the USB port on your Mac. Try using a different drive or a different port instead.

Alternatively, try using your USB drive with a different computer to see if it works with that. If it doesn’t work anywhere, you can be sure that the problem is with the drive and not your Mac.

Make Sure the Contents of the Drive Work With macOS

If the USB drive shows up on your Mac but it’s empty when it’s not supposed to be, it could be a problem with the types of files you’re trying to transfer. Not all file types work with macOS. So, make sure the files you’re trying to transfer to the Mac are compatible with macOS.

Sometimes, no matter what you try, nothing seems to let you access your USB drive on a Mac. When this is the case, it’s often easier to resort to a different storage type to transfer your data, like cloud storage.

Choose from one of the cheapest cloud storage services available, connect your USB drive to another computer that supports it, and upload your files to the cloud. Then, download the files to your Mac from the cloud.