Use WebDAV to Mount Your Box Drive in the Finder

(UPDATE: Since I wrote this, Box.com has changed its WebDAV address to https://dav.box.com/dav, so make note of that below.)

I was reading about Box.com offering a new sync application for their personal accounts (Intel-only, natch) when I came across this little tip on how to mount your Box drive on your desktop. I never got into Box that much because its web interface was kind of a hassle and uploads were unreliable. Half the time they wouldn't start and I would just be staring at a barbershop progress bar. So I was curious to check this out.

The procedure is simple. In the Finder, click on the Go menu, choose Connect to Server, and under Server Address enter https://www.box.com/dav and click connect. Then enter your Box username and password and a new volume will mount in the Finder called /dav. Like magic!

There was just one problem. Uploads were still unreliable in the same way, and I had to force quit mount_webdav in Activity Monitor to kill the stalled progress bar and get my Finder back.

Then I thought, wait a minute, I've heard of WebDAV though I wasn't quite sure what it was. Don't they have dedicated clients for that? Let's see what google has to say.

Bingo! Cyberduck supports WebDAV connections. Leopard PowerPC users can download the latest version, though Tiger users will have to go here and look for version 3.2.1. Click "Open Connection" and choose WebDAV (HTTP/SSL) as the connection type, then fill in https://www.box.com/dav in the server field and add your username and password. Under "More Options," and this is important, make sure the path is /dav, because if it's blank the mounted folder will be "/" and you'll get a bunch of permissions errors when you try to make changes.

It's weird, if you copy and paste https://www.box.com/dav in the server field it automatically adds the path as /dav, but if you type out the url, you have to manually add /dav to the path field yourself. Another way to do this is to choose WebDAV (HTTP/SSL) as the default protocol in preferences and type www.box.com/dav in the Quick Connect field and press return. It will mount your Box folder as /dav automatically.

Once I had my Box folder mounted successfully, uploads worked flawlessly. I could also choose the Synchronize option to easily sync folders from the desktop to my Box folder, though not vice versa, so it's not pure syncing like Dropbox. However it's a good online backup solution that's quick, cross platform (you can also mount WebDAV volumes in Linux in a variety of ways, in the true Linux tradition), and I don't have to mess around with symlinks on Dropbox or a java application like on Wuala or Mozy.

One last note, if you accidentally delete something in the Cyberduck interface, it's still recoverable by going to Box.com's web interface and finding it in your Trash folder. This procedure truncated my heart attack last night.