sshfs
Hacker ApprovedRanked 7 of 10 filesystems by recommenders
Free tool that mounts remote folders over SSH so you can edit them with local apps. Critics say it is slow, often much slower than rsync.
Free tool that mounts remote folders over SSH so you can edit them with local apps. Critics say it is slow, often much slower than rsync.
22 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 17
- criticize it
- 5
- approval share
- 77%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 17 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Mounts remote folders over SSH
“sshfs can mount remote dirs and then you can drag and drop”
Comment from 4 Mar 2026 in “Disable Your SSH access accidentally with scp” “I can use sshfs to mount a remote directory over SSH”
Comment from 22 Jan 2026 in “Threat Actors Expand Abuse of Microsoft Visual Studio Code” “Mount a shared drive? Use sshfs?”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly” - Comment from 30 Jun 2026 in “A native graphical shell for SSH”
Works with any editor
“In that situation I'd rather use sshfs and whatever editor I'm fancying the most for the job.”
Comment from 31 Aug 2026 in “Emacs vs. Vim 2026: 24.3% vs. 8% Usage, 20x Memory Gap” “Use SSHFS (or other) and then just open the folder in Sublime and have at it.”
Comment from 21 Sep 2026 in “Sublime Text Build 4213” “Been using that for ages, since before VSCode existed.”
Comment from 24 Sep 2026 in “VSCode's SSH Agent Is Bananas (2025)” Reliable and fast enough
“not because it's particularly good but because it works well enough”
Comment from 3 Sep 2026 in “Creating backup storage sucks” “This setup is rock-solid reliable and very fast.”
Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “Localsend: An open-source cross-platform alternative to AirDrop” “sshfs solves the laggness problem”
Comment from 24 Sep 2026 in “VSCode's SSH Agent Is Bananas (2025)”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Slow compared with alternatives
“it will be an order of magnitude slower than an rsync task”
Comment from 6 Jun 2026 in “Did Claude Increase Bugs in Rsync?” “ultimately it's at-best pretty slow”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?” “That's a less efficient protocol than 9pfs and virtiofs, even if you subtract the encryption.”
Comment from 11 Jun 2026 in “macOS Container Machines” - Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?”
Other filesystems people recommend
The four most recommended other filesystems, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 10 filesystems, rankedWhat people said
20 of the 22 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“sshfs solves the laggness problem”
“don't come close to making it so seamless”
“Been using that for ages, since before VSCode existed.”
“Use SSHFS (or other) and then just open the folder in Sublime and have at it.”
“not because it's particularly good but because it works well enough”
“In that situation I'd rather use sshfs and whatever editor I'm fancying the most for the job.”
“I do this all the time via sshfs”
“Mount a shared drive? Use sshfs?”
“That's a less efficient protocol than 9pfs and virtiofs, even if you subtract the encryption.”
“it will be an order of magnitude slower than an rsync task”
“This setup is rock-solid reliable and very fast.”
“you have to do it manually every time and write a script to automate it for each host”
“suspending with a drive mounted reliably crashes the entire system”
“sshfs can mount remote dirs and then you can drag and drop”
“make this all a lot more bearable”
“I can use sshfs to mount a remote directory over SSH”
“possibly sshfs / fuse with readonly mount”
“they all let you read any range of file, and start giving the data immediately”
“my experiences with sshfs have been that it is slow”
“ultimately it's at-best pretty slow”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.