usage

Usage

GUI

The main window exposes:

Control	Purpose
Browse	Select a .chd file
Console type	Choose the filesystem/format parser
Mount	Mount the image as a read-only virtual drive
Unmount	Remove the virtual drive
Log pane	Real-time mount/parse log output
Status bar	Current state and the mounted drive letter/folder

Menus

Menu	Item	Purpose
File	Open CHD…	Select a .chd file
File	Settings	Auto-open the mounted drive and select the mount core
File	Exit	Close the application (unmounts first)
Help	Open AppData Folder	Opens the folder with settings, logs and screenshots
Help	About	Version information, update banner and third-party credits

Keyboard

Key	Action
F8	Save a screenshot of the window (see Screenshots)

Mount options

• Auto-open drive — open the mounted drive in your file manager when the mount succeeds. The same behaviour can be requested per run with the /l command-line flag.
• Mount core — choose Dokan (default) or WinFsp on Windows; Linux and macOS always use FUSE (libfuse3 / macFUSE).

On Windows settings are encrypted with DPAPI; on Linux/macOS they are stored as plain JSON. Settings persist between sessions — see Settings for all options and storage locations.

Update checker

On startup CHDMounter checks the latest release of purelogiccode/CHDMounter. When a newer version exists:

• the main window asks whether you want to open the matching download page for your platform and architecture (win-x64, linux-arm64, osx-x64, …);
• the About window shows a banner with a direct download link.

The check is best-effort: network failures are logged locally and never interrupt the application. See Privacy if you want to disable network access.

CLI via the GUI build

The GUI executable is also a CLI application:

CHDMounter.exe [/l] [/a] [/s:<alias>] <chd_file> [mount_point]

See Command Line for all flags and examples.

Read-only by design

CHDMounter never writes to your CHD files. The mounted volume reports a read-only filesystem and the image is opened in read-only mode. Windows shows the volume as CHDFS.

Closing and signals

• Closing the window (or File → Exit) unmounts the drive before the application exits.
• On Linux and macOS, SIGTERM, SIGHUP and Ctrl+C (SIGINT) also shut the application down cleanly: the drive is unmounted and the log is flushed before the process exits.

Logs

Structured Serilog logs are written to the logs folder inside the application data folder (%LOCALAPPDATA%\CHDMounter on Windows, ~/.local/share/CHDMounter on Linux, ~/Library/Application Support/CHDMounter on macOS). Log files roll daily and files older than 7 days are removed at startup. The log pane in the UI shows the same messages.

When reporting an issue, include the newest log file — see Troubleshooting.

See also

• Settings
• Screenshots
• Privacy and Telemetry