What does Safari/Mac do for FTP these days?

Question

i am trying to bookmark an ftp download site for my website that is of the form:
ftp://[email protected]//[email protected]
i know this is a mouthful but it is the correct url and when i enter it into Safari it kicks it out into Firefox which I also have loaded but try to never use. Does anyone know if there are settings in Safari that control this or what is happening here?
is ftp controls set in safari, firefox or elsewhere?
is there a better way to handle ftp on the mac?
all my searches show very old threads on this topic.
TIA

Answer 1

hotwheels 22 wrote:
i am trying to bookmark an ftp download site for my website that is of the form:
The URI doesn't seem righ to me. It should be of the form
<ftp://user:password@host:port/path>
(see <http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/ftpurl.html>)
Does anyone know if there are settings in Safari
The settings are not in Safari.
The default FTP client is set in com.apple.LaunchServices.plist. This command in Terminal
$ defaults read com.apple.LaunchServices | grep -A 2 ftp
should give you a reading of the current settings. It sounds as if you set Firefox to be the default FTP client; if so, there should be a preference for it in Firefox. If not, you should be able to change it in the preferences of the app you decide to use as FTP client, or using the prefpane RCDefaultApp (make sure to read the docs first before installing it).
is there a better way to handle ftp on the mac?
Finder is the default FTP client. Do ⌘K, or Go > Connect to Server…, put the correct URI in "Server Address", and you're good to go. However, it's download only.
For full FTP (we'll ignore CLI tools), I've been using for many years Fetch by Fetch Softworks (commercial, but free for educational or charitable purposes). Alternatives are Interarchy (commercial), Transmit by Panic (commercial), CyberDuck (free), FileZilla (free), Fugu (free, but SFTP only), and others.