I've been using Dolphin on KDE Plasma a lot and it's made me realize just how much the shortcomings in Finder limit how I work. Finder doesn't have good support for remote volumes, and a lot of the files I want to access are via SFTP and webDAV. I'm increasingly using a variety of computers, mostly running macOS or KDE Plasma, with Nextcloud to sync files. On some of these computers, I don't want everything synced, but do want fast occasional access. This is particularly the case on macOS devices, where I don't want to pay Apple's storage premium for disposable computers. What I want is to be able to connect to my Nextcloud server via WebDAV and access those files with the speed and convenience of a local file system. I also want to be able to access my Debian servers via SFTP.

This article offers a comparison of macOS file managers, with a focus on WebDAV and SFTP connectivity.