macOS comes with no support for the file systems most likely to be used by Linux. This article suggests how you might be able to access them, for example when a NAS system is connected directly to an Apple silicon Mac, or when you need to access external storage that has been used with a Linux system.

extFS

I believe Paragon Software’s extFS is the only generally available commercial solution, and is described here. If you only need access for a short period, it’s free to use for up to ten days, but must be licensed for $39.95, €39.95, or £38.81 if you want to unlock it to use for any longer. Paragon also offers support for accessing APFS from Linux and Windows.

If you need more than simple access to the contents of the file system, you can also combine extFS with an Ubuntu VM running in UTM to access backups made using Duplicity, for example. This is detailed here by Benjamin, to whom I’m very grateful for information about extFS and for inspiring this note.

macFUSE

Benjamin Fleischer’s free fork of Google’s MacFUSE software should be able to implement a fully functional alien file system running in user space. Its latest release 5.0.5 is compatible with current betas of macOS Tahoe as well as older versions back to macOS 12. However, some report that it isn’t able to deliver reliable support for Ext4 and similar. In theory, this should now be simpler, as recent versions of macOS can support macFUSE without requiring a kernel extension, and there’s an alternative backend in recent versions of macFUSE to support that. Project front page.

Jeff Geerling’s walkthrough using macFUSE with ext4fuse.

anylinuxfs

This is based on the libkrun microVM hypervisor, available separately from here. It has the advantage that it doesn’t rely on either kernel or system extensions, and is available from here. I’ve been unable to discover how reliable this is on Apple silicon, if it works at all.

Others

If you know of other ways of doing this with an Apple silicon Mac, please provide details in a comment.