The Problem

Got a BitLocker-encrypted drive that you need to access on your Mac? macOS has no built-in support for Microsoft’s encryption, which means you’re usually out of luck. Commercial solutions exist but cost money and often have limitations.

There’s now a free alternative: anylinuxfs. This open-source tool lets you mount NTFS (the primary Windows filesystem) on macOS with full read/write access — whether it’s encrypted with BitLocker or not. It also supports Linux filesystems but that’s a topic for another time.

What You’ll Need

First, you need Homebrew installed. If you don’t have it yet, open Terminal and run:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

You will also need your BitLocker recovery key. This can usually be found under your Microsoft account or you may already have another backup. Windows lets you print it out on paper or save to a USB flash drive.

Installation

Install anylinuxfs using these two commands:

brew tap nohajc/anylinuxfs
brew install anylinuxfs

That’s it. The tool is now ready to use.

Finding Your Drive

Connect your BitLocker drive and list all available Microsoft drives:

anylinuxfs list -m

You’ll see output like this:

/dev/disk9 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *128.0 GB   disk9
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data                         126.6 GB   disk9s3

The drive shows as “Microsoft Basic Data” but it’s actually encrypted. Running the same command with sudo reveals more details:

sudo anylinuxfs list -m

Now you can see it’s actually BitLocker:

/dev/disk9 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *128.0 GB   disk9
   3:                  BitLocker DESKTOP-7EP4D9Q C: 7... 126.6 GB   disk9s3

Mounting the Drive

To mount your encrypted drive, use the device identifier from the listing above:

sudo anylinuxfs /dev/disk9s3

You’ll be prompted for your BitLocker recovery key:

Enter passphrase for /dev/disk9s3:

Enter your recovery key and the drive will mount automatically. You’ll find it in /Volumes/ with a name based on the original drive label.

Optional: Decrypt Metadata First

If you want to see what filesystem is inside the encryption before mounting, you can decrypt the metadata:

sudo anylinuxfs list -m -d /dev/disk9s3

This shows:

Enter passphrase for /dev/disk9s3: 

/dev/disk9 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *128.0 GB   disk9
   3:            BitLocker: ntfs DESKTOP-7EP4D9Q C: 7... 126.6 GB   disk9s3

But this step isn’t necessary — you can mount directly without it to avoid typing your recovery key twice.

Verifying the Mount

Check that your drive mounted successfully:

anylinuxfs status

You should see something like:

/dev/disk9s3 on /Volumes/DESKTOP-7EP4D9Q_C__7-15-2025 (ntfs, uid=501, gid=20, mounted by nohajan) VM[cpus: 2, ram: 512 MiB]

The drive is now accessible in Finder. Note that mounted drives appear as network drives under “localhost” in the sidebar (similar to when you use “Connect to Server”). This happens because anylinuxfs uses a virtual machine behind the scenes to handle the filesystem operations, then shares the files back to macOS through a network protocol (NFS). The drives won’t show up on your desktop, but you can access them normally through Finder.

Unmounting

When you’re done, you can unmount the drive in two ways:

  1. Use the eject button in Finder (under “localhost”)
  2. Or use the command line:
diskutil unmount /Volumes/DESKTOP-7EP4D9Q_C__7-15-2025/

How It Works

anylinuxfs bridges the gap between macOS and unsupported filesystems by leveraging Linux’s extensive filesystem support. Since Linux can handle BitLocker decryption and NTFS operations natively, the tool creates a lightweight Linux environment to do the heavy lifting, then presents the results to macOS in a way it can understand (NFS).

Beyond BitLocker

While this tutorial focuses on BitLocker-encrypted drives, anylinuxfs also works with regular unencrypted NTFS drives and of course Linux native filesystems such as ext4 or btrfs (with or without LUKS encryption), making it a versatile tool for accessing drives that macOS can’t handle natively. You can visit the project GitHub repository for more information.

Wrapping Up

anylinuxfs solves the BitLocker problem on macOS without requiring expensive commercial software. The installation is straightforward, and once set up, mounting encrypted drives is just a matter of running one command and entering your recovery key.