Prapl Cloud Mount Manager — User Guide

What is Cloud Mount Manager?

Prapl Cloud Mount Manager is a Windows app that turns remote storage into a folder on your PC. Your web server, your NAS, your S3 bucket or your OneDrive shows up in File Explorer as an ordinary folder — it works exactly the way your OneDrive folder does, but for your own servers and clouds.

From that moment on, working on server files stops being a chore. There's no "download the file, edit it, upload it back, overwrite, hope it was the right version". You just open the file, edit it, and hit Save — in Word, Photoshop, VS Code, or any other program — and the saved file lands back on the server automatically.

Every mounted server gets its own folder inside your user profile:

C:\Users\you\Prapl Cloud Mount Manager\<server name>

Three ideas run through the whole app:

• Nothing downloads until you need it. Every remote file appears instantly as a lightweight placeholder — you see the whole server while it uses almost no disk. A file is downloaded the moment you open it.
• Everything you save goes straight back. Edits, new files, renames and deletes made in the folder are uploaded to the server for you — and changes made on the server side appear in your folder on their own.
• Your logins stay on your machine. Passwords and keys are stored in Windows' own secure vault (the keyring) on your PC — never on Prapl's servers.

What can you mount?

If you can log in to it, you can almost certainly mount it. Cloud Mount Manager speaks seven storage protocols, which between them cover most of the storage on the internet:

Before you start

You need two things, and setup takes five minutes:

1. A Windows computer — Windows 10 or Windows 11, 64-bit.
2. Your login details — for a server: host, username and password (the same ones any FTP program uses). For cloud storage: the endpoint/bucket and access keys from your provider's console. For OneDrive: just your Microsoft sign-in. Not sure where to find them? Where to find your login details walks through all 27 services, one at a time.

Installing the app

Installation is deliberately boring:

1. Download the installer from the Cloud Mount Manager product page.
2. Double-click it. That's the whole installation.

The first time you open the app, you're on a 15-day free trial: the full product, every feature, no credit card. If you decide it's not for you, nothing is charged — we never had your card to begin with.

A quick tour of the app

The app has four screens, listed in the sidebar on the left:

• Site Manager — your home base. Every server and cloud account you've added, in one searchable list, with its live status.
• File Browser — a two-pane file manager: your PC on one side, the server on the other, with a transfer queue underneath.
• Mounted Folders — one card per server, with the Mount button and each folder's live status: Syncing… while it populates, then Mounted ✓.
• Multi-Deploy — pick one folder on your PC and push it to many servers at once.

Two things worth noticing as you look around:

• The status bar at the bottom shows what the app is doing right now, and the sync history keeps a searchable log of every download, upload, conflict, mount and unmount — with timestamps.
• Everything stays in sync. Add or remove a server anywhere and every screen updates — the sidebar, the mounts, the browser, the deploy list.

Adding your first server

Click New Server. One small form appears, and it's the same three-part story for every storage type:

Give it a name you'll recognize ("Client website", "Studio NAS", "Backup bucket") and pick the protocol — SFTP, FTPS, FTP, S3, WebDAV, Azure or OneDrive. The app fills in the standard port for you. The name you choose becomes the folder's name on your PC.

For a server: host, username, password — exactly what you'd type into any FTP program. For S3 or Azure: the endpoint or account, the bucket or container, and the keys from your provider's console. For OneDrive: a Microsoft sign-in window opens and that's it.

The server joins your Site Manager list, and its details autofill every time after. Passwords and keys go into Windows' secure vault on your own machine.

Mounting a server as a folder

Open Mounted Folders and click Mount on any server card. Seconds later the server has its own folder at C:\Users\you\Prapl Cloud Mount Manager\<server name>, and the card's status walks from Syncing… to Mounted ✓ as the file list fills in.

From here you work in Explorer, not in the app:

• Browse the folder like any other — every remote file is already visible as a placeholder, so even huge servers browse instantly.
• Open any file in any program — it downloads from the server the moment you open it, and opens instantly the next time.
• Save — the file is uploaded back to the server automatically. New files, renames and deletes sync the same way.
• Server-side changes appear on their own — the app checks the remote side every half a minute and updates your folder to match.

Placeholders, the Status column & Free up space

The mounted folder uses the same on-demand system OneDrive does, and Explorer shows you exactly what's where:

• A cloud icon in Explorer's Status column means the file is a placeholder — visible and openable, but stored only on the server. It uses almost no disk space.
• A green check means the file has been downloaded and is also stored locally — it opens instantly, even offline for reading.

Opened a lot of big files and want your disk back? Right-click a server's card (or the folder) and choose Free up space: every downloaded file turns back into a placeholder. The server still has everything; your disk keeps nothing. You'll see the app log how many files were freed.

The built-in file browser

Sometimes you don't want a synced folder — you want to move a lot of files, deliberately. That's the File Browser: your PC in one pane, the server in the other, and a transfer queue that shows exactly what's happening.

• Drag and drop files or whole folders in either direction — or select and press the arrow buttons.
• Folders transfer recursively with parallel workers, so big trees move at full speed, with per-file progress in the queue.
• Interrupted transfers resume. A network blip doesn't restart the job — it picks up where it stopped, with automatic retry and your choice of overwrite rules.
• Everyday tools included: sortable columns, filtering, breadcrumbs, folder creation, rename, delete, ZIP compress and extract, keyboard shortcuts, and auto-reconnect that keeps long sessions alive.

Multi-Deploy: one folder, many servers

Publishing the same files to several servers — a landing page to six regional hosts, a config to every client — used to mean repeating the same upload over and over. Multi-Deploy makes it one button:

1. Pick the source folder on your PC.
2. Tick the target servers from your saved list.
3. Click Deploy. Every server gets its own connection and uploads run in parallel, each with its own progress bar plus an overall bar for the job.

Troubleshooting

The connection fails

• Re-check the basics. Host, port, username, password — 90% of failures are a typo. Copy-paste instead of retyping.
• Firewall in the way? The server must accept connections from your network. On a hosting account this is almost always already open; on a VPS, check that port 22 (SFTP) or 21 (FTP/FTPS) is allowed.
• Cloud storage refusing? Check that the access keys are current and that they have read and write permission on the bucket or container.

The folder looks empty right after mounting

That's normal for a moment — the first crawl is filling the folder with placeholders, top folders first. The card says Syncing… while it works and Mounted ✓ when the listing is complete. Huge servers take a little longer, but you can start working as soon as the files you need appear.

A file I saved doesn't show the change on the server

Saves upload when the program finishes writing the file — for most apps that's instant, but some editors keep files open. Close the file (or the app) and the upload completes. The sync history shows every upload with its timestamp, so you can confirm it landed.

Explorer stalls when I open a file after a reboot

The app must be running for on-demand downloads to work — it's the bridge between the folder and your server. Turn on start with Windows in Settings and the app relaunches quietly in the tray at every login, so your folders are always connected.

Something feels stuck

Unmount, then mount again. It's the reset switch, takes a few seconds, and never touches the files on your server. If it keeps happening, the sync history tells the story — send it to us and we'll find it.

Trial & license

The trial runs 15 days with every feature and no card. A license is a one-time cost — $29 for 1 user, $69 for 5, $129 for 10 — with unlimited servers and mounts, every feature included, and a 14-day money-back guarantee. There's no subscription and no renewal: pay once, it's yours. Full details on the pricing page.

Getting help

If this guide didn't answer your question, a real engineer will. Include which screen you're on, what you expected, and what happened instead — a screenshot of any error message is perfect.