How do you map InstantDrive as a drive on Windows, macOS or Linux?

Last updated: 5 November 2026

What does the WebDAV drive do?

WebDAV is a standard that lets a computer treat a web address like a folder. InstantDrive exposes the documents of your company over WebDAV, so you can open them in File Explorer, Finder or a Linux file manager, and drag files in or out. The code describes three intended clients: the Windows network drive, the macOS Finder and davfs2 on Linux.

The drive shows the same documents as the web app. It is not a sync client. Nothing is copied to your computer in advance. A file is fetched when you open it, and a file you drop in is uploaded straight away. InstantDrive has no separate desktop sync application, so this mapped drive is the way to work with the vault from a file manager.

What is the address of the drive?

The WebDAV path in the backend is /api/v1/vault/webdav/. On the web domain, the address to enter is https://app.instantdrive.app/api/v1/vault/webdav/ with a trailing slash. Use the same host that you use to sign in to the web app. The path has no company name in it. Your company is taken from the account you sign in with.

Some pages and screens in the product show a shorter address ending in /webdav, and some examples add a company name to the path. The server code and the web server configuration route only the /api/v1/vault/webdav/ path, so use that one. If the drive does not open, check the address first.

How do you sign in to the drive?

The drive accepts HTTP Basic authentication, which means your account email as the user name and your account password. It also accepts a bearer token, which is the same signed-in token the web app uses and is valid for 24 hours. Most file managers use the email and password route.

Failed sign-ins are limited. After 8 failures for one address and email, or 40 failures from one address, further attempts return HTTP 429 and a message to wait 15 minutes. A successful Basic sign-in is cached for 60 seconds on the server, because File Explorer sends many requests in quick succession. There is no two-factor step on this route. Because Basic sends the password with each request, use only the https address.

What do you see inside the drive?

The root of the drive shows four folders that match the vault: Employees, Vendors, Company_Expenses and Admin_Vault. Documents appear in the folder where they are stored. You can create subfolders. They are held as empty folders until you put a file in them, and an empty folder is kept in shared server memory, so it may disappear after a restart.

A file dropped at the root, outside any folder, is placed in Admin_Vault. A file placed in one of the four folders takes that folder as its vault category. A file placed in any other top-level folder is filed under Admin_Vault as its category.

What happens to a file you upload through the drive?

A new file runs through the same pipeline as a web upload: the file is read, the pattern engine and OCR extract fields such as Emirates ID, TRN, Ejari or IBAN, PDFs are optimised, and phone image formats such as JPEG and PNG are converted to WebP. The file is then renamed to the pattern Prefix_Entity_Identifier_Exp<date> with the stored extension. If the name already exists in that folder, a number is added, for example _1. The vision AI fallback applies here too. When text recognition is not confident enough, the image is sent to Google Gemini.

The drive remembers the original name you used for 10 minutes, so Explorer and Office can keep saving to that name even though the stored name has changed. Afterwards, the file appears under its new name. If you save over a file that already exists at the same path, the content is replaced in place and the name is kept. The extracted fields are not recalculated in that case.

Why does the WebDAV drive stream files through the backend?

The web app never streams downloads through the backend. It hands the browser a presigned storage link valid for 15 minutes. WebDAV is the one exception. The Windows WebDAV client does not reliably follow redirects to presigned links, so the server reads the file from storage and sends the bytes itself, with support for byte ranges.

This has two consequences. Downloads through the drive use the server's bandwidth and memory, because the whole file is read before it is sent, and they are slower for large files than a presigned link. Second, the claim that all downloads avoid the backend does not apply to this feature. For large or frequent transfers the web app is the better route.

How do you map the drive on Windows, macOS and Linux?

On Windows, open File Explorer, choose This PC, then Map network drive, pick a letter, enter the address and select Finish. Microsoft documents the same wizard and also the command line form net use * followed by the address. Enter your email and password when prompted. The WebClient service must be running. Windows treats Basic sign-in over HTTP differently from HTTPS, so use the https address.

On macOS, in the Finder choose Go, then Connect to Server, type the address and select Connect, then choose Registered User and enter your email and password. Apple documents these Connect to Server steps. The InstantDrive code names Finder as an intended client, but the connection has not been tested here against this server. On Linux, install davfs2 and mount the address with mount -t davfs <address> <folder>, giving your email and password when asked.

What does a worked example look like?

Consider a fictional company, Desert Palm Contracting LLC. Its accounts assistant maps https://app.instantdrive.app/api/v1/vault/webdav/ as drive I: on a Windows laptop and signs in with her work email. She sees the four folders. She drags a scanned supplier invoice, scan0042.jpg, into Vendors.

The upload converts the scan to WebP, reads the supplier name, the TRN and the invoice number, and stores it under a generated name that ends in .webp. For about 10 minutes Explorer still shows scan0042.jpg. After that, the drive lists the new name. A week later she tries to copy a 70 MB video of site works. InstantDrive accepts files up to 100 MB, but Windows stops the copy because its default WebClient limit is 50 MB. She uploads the file in the web app instead, or her IT administrator raises the Windows limit.

What are the known limits of the drive?

Locks are recorded but not enforced. The server accepts LOCK and UNLOCK requests, holds a lock for up to one hour and rejects a second lock on the same path, but PUT, DELETE and MOVE do not check locks, so two people can still overwrite each other. Property changes sent by PROPPATCH are acknowledged and not stored. Folders can be created, but only single files can be moved or copied, not whole folders.

Uploads made through the drive are not written to the hash-chained audit ledger. The drive runs on the same tenant storage counter as the web app, with no enforced quota. HEIC and AVIF files are stored without conversion. The drive offers no versions and no trash.

How do you troubleshoot a connection problem?

Microsoft lists several causes for a mapped-drive failure with system error 67, the network name cannot be found. They include the WebClient service not running on your computer and using Basic authentication over HTTP instead of HTTPS. Microsoft states that Basic authentication over WebDAV is disabled by default unless the connection uses SSL, and its BasicAuthLevel default is 1, which allows Basic for SSL sites only. Changing it to allow plain HTTP is strongly discouraged. System error 5 means access denied, usually a wrong account or password. System error 224 means the site must be added to the trusted sites list in Internet Options.

Microsoft also states that the default FileSizeLimitInBytes for the WebClient service is 50,000,000 bytes, so larger transfers fail until an administrator changes the registry value and restarts WebClient. If you receive HTTP 429, wait 15 minutes. If the drive opens but looks empty, confirm you signed in with the right account, since the content depends on the company of that account. Next steps: map the drive with one test file, check the stored name in the web app, then decide whether your team will use it for daily work.