

Earlier versions of macOS don’t support it, so nothing changes for those running older systems for now. The File Provider extension first appeared in macOS 12.1 Monterey, though Apple’s Developer site suggests that it may have subsequently been made available in macOS 10.15 Catalina.

I touched on this move a year ago in “ Cloud Storage Forecast Unsettled, with Possible Storms” (4 February 2022). It provides an Apple-approved framework for integrating remote files into macOS and displaying them in the Finder. Over the last year, cloud storage services Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive-and probably others-have migrated from custom kernel extensions to Apple’s new-ish File Provider extension.
