NTFS on Apple Silicon

There are times that you need to copy some files to an external hard disk or a flash disk which is formatted as NTFS.

There are several applications that will help you to manage your NTFS formatted disks on macOS and they are not free. Apps like Paragon NTFS $19.95 or Tuxera NTFS $15.00 and they both work great.

I’ve personally been using Tuxera NTFS for a long time but I ran into an issue with using it on an Apple Silicon Mac, it requires to install a 3rd party kext in order to work but when you want to add a 3rd party kext on an Apple Silicon Mac you have to disable the macOS’s security from recovery partition which creates two issues.

  1. You are exposing your Mac to security risks
  2. Your Mac might become painfully slow

So these issues made me look for an alternative solution and after searching for a while I found an application called NTFS Disk by Omi NTFS which is available for download from App Store and has a free version and In-App purchase options but the free version might just be right for you to use and it supports macOS Monterey and macOS Ventura.

I personally didn’t buy the app because the free version did what I needed to do but I didn’t have to disable Mac’s security or it didn’t become slow as the result of tampering with Mac’s internal security.

You need to install the applications helper in order to get it to work properly on your Mac and it works on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.

So give it a try and if that worked for you consider buying it to support the developers.