Write to NTFS-formated drives on Yosemite I sometimes need to mount USB drives that are NTFS formatted and write to them. On Mavericks I achieved this using the Homebrew formula ntfs-3g which depends on osxfuse.

After upgrading to Yosemite, osxfuse is broken.  Homebrew message:

==&gt; Upgrading osxfuse
osxfuse: OS X Mavericks or older is required for this package.
OS X Yosemite introduced a strict unsigned kext ban which breaks this package.
You should remove this package from your system and attempt to find upstream
binaries to use instead.
Error: An unsatisfied requirement failed this build.


I take this to mean that the kernel extension used by osxfuse is completely disallowed in Yosemite because it is not digitally signed by Apple, whereas in Mavericks it was allowed.

So, is there any way now to mount and write to an NTFS-formatted USB drive in Yosemite using either open-source software or free, unencumbered (not spyware/malware or bundled with useless toolbars etc.) software from the App Store?
Open Terminal.

If you have brewed osxfuse installed, you have to uninstall it, because unsigned kexts are banned now. Type:

brew cask uninstall osxfuse


On the other hand, if you don't have Homebrew at all, download it:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"


Updating Homebrew is recommended.

brew update


If you don't have Homebrew Cask installed, type:

brew install caskroom/cask/brew-cask


Install a binary osxfuse package from Homebrew Cask:

brew cask install osxfuse


Install ntfs-3g:

brew install ntfs-3g


You need to create a symlink for mount_ntfs, in order to make drives mount automatically:

sudo mv /sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs.original 
sudo ln -s /usr/local/sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs


If you are running OS X 10.11 and the commands above fail, try:

sudo nvram boot-args="rootless=0"


edit: This doesn't work for me in the final El Capitan (from Mac App Store). I had to disable SIP through recovery. Could someone confirm that this is indeed necessary?

... and reboot your machine. Then try symlinking mount_ntfs again.

Thanks to bjorgvino.