ConnectedNAS Free SMB Client is a robust, full featured file sharing application that transforms your Android smartphone or tablet into a participating member of a Windows, Linux, or MacOS network. ConnectedNAS is unique and is different from other Android SMB applications in two significant ways. First, the ConnectedNAS client is integrated into Android. Most SMB Clients are integrated into a File Browser application which enables you to browse and copy files between your Android device and computer. But these files are not visible to applications such as Word, Powerpoint or other apps until you have copied them locally onto your device. By integrating ConnectedNAS into Android, all apps that utilize the relavent Android features, have access to your files even when they are remote. This means you don’t need to copy files back and forth and you don’t need to use a File Explorer kind of application to access your files. Second, Connected NAS has a professional version that includes a SMB Server. This allows you to expose files and directories that are stored on your smartphone or tablet with other computers and Android devices on your network.
This help document is designed bring a user up to speed on the use of ConnectedNAS and to explore various features of the application. Please also view our help page on the ConnectedWay website for more information.
NOTE: ConnectedNAS leverages Android’s Storage Access Framework (SAF) and requires Android 4.4 (API level 19) or greater.
The ConnectedNAS professional version supports both an SMB Client and an SMB server. The walkthrough for the professional version sets up a loopback configuration where apps on your phone are able to access files on your phone through the ConnectedNAS SMB client and server. The ConnectedNAS free version only supports an SMB Client so you will have to have a share already exported from some Windows, Linux, MacOS, or NAS storage device on your network. This walkthrough assumes you know how to do that and that it has already been done.
Connected SMB can be installed directly from from Google Play Store. The Connected SMB Play Store App page is:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.connectedway.connectedsmb.demo
To run, either hit “Open” from the ConnectedNAS Play Store App page or locate the “ConnectedNAS” Icon in your phone’s apps and click on it to open.
You will then be shown the ConnectedNAS Storage app main screen. The professional version has three tabs (File Servers, Exported Directories, and Realms) while the free version has just one tab: File Servers. Your main app screen should appear as:
These screens will look like:
The main screen has a title bar with a pulldown menu on the right side of the title bar. Below the title bar is the main window of the app. As you use the ConnectedNAS as an SMB client, you will populate the File Servers tab with information about remote computers that you wish to access.
Select the “Menu Options” icon in the top right of your screen to the right of the ConnectedNAS Title bar. This is sometimes called the “Kabob Menu” for obvious reasons. You will see four menu options: About, Settings, Files App and Help. This is shown below:
Please take the time to read About page by clicking the About menu item. Clicking on the Files App menu item will bring up the Android built in file explorer which you use to browse remote files. This will be discussed more later. The Help page will load the help text in a browser window. The settings menu is greyed out. It is only relevant for the professional version.
In order for local applications to be able to access shares on remote computers, you must add that computer to the File Servers tab.
In our case, we are looking for the name of the remote computer that has a share on it that you wish to access.
Once selected, you will see the information field of IP and Port filled in with the resolved IP address and port. You do not need to be concerned with this.
See the section on Discovering Remote Computers for more information on disccovering servers.
The most common case for why your phone or some desired server is not visible is simply that the discovery algorithm has not found it yet. Allowing the algorithm to run for a longer time will allow the server to be discovered and added to the list. But waiting may not always be the best option, nor may the discovery option ever find the server. So, if you do not see your server, you can select <new…> in the “Select Server” pulldown. This will bring up the Remote Address Dialog.
This allows you to manually enter a server and address/port pair for the server you wish to access. You will need to know the IP address of the PC that you are sharing files from.
Select the field to the right of Remote Alias and type in a name that you wish to use to refer to the file server. In our case, you may want to type “MyServer”
Select the field to the right of DNS or NetBIOS Name or IP Address and type in the IP address of your file server PC.
To the right of Server Type there are a pair of radio buttons, one for computer and one for phone. Select computer if the file server is a Windows, Linux, MacOS or some commerical NAS storage device. Select Phone if the file server is another phone running ConnectedNAS.
When done, hit “Set”. You will be brough back to the File Server dialog and the IP/Name and Port of the recently added server will appear.
Back in the Exported Directories dialog, Select the field to the right of Description and enter a Description for the file server. For the demo, you can enter “My File Server”
In the username and password fields, type the credentials that you use to access files on your File Server.
Leave the field to the right of domain blank. This will be used only when configuring remote computers that are part of an Active Directory domain. Active Directory is not available in the free version.
Toggle whether you wish applications to be able to view thumbnails of images when browsing directories remotely. Usually we recommend this setting remain off because loading thumbnails remotely can be time consuming. Depending on your browsing experience you may wish to slide this Thumbnail toggle on or off.
When complete, hit “Add”
Your File Servers tab will be updated with your recently added server as shown below:
If you hit add prematurely or want to edit or delete the provider you just added, you can select the provider and the “File Server” dialog box will reappear. You can edit the info or delete the provider as needed.
ConnectedNAS provides access to the Android operating system’s native file explorer application. With ConnectedNAS, there no longer is a need for a third party file explorer application. To launch to native file explorer application, select the menu bar pulldown in the title bar and select “File App”. This application is very convenient for browsing local and remote file systems, launching applications on particular files, copying, deleting, renaming files and more.
The Android file app supports the same framework that the ConnectedNAS SMB client supports. Therefore, once a File Server is added to ConnectedNAS, it will be visible in the native file app.
When running the files app, you will see a screen like:
The title bar will be set to the name of the directory or in the case of a root directory, the name of the device or provider. In this case, I am viewing the root of my device so it shows the device name. In the main window of the app, the contents of the current directory are shown.
To the left of the title bar is a stack of lines called the “Explorer Pane” Icon. When clicked, it will allow you to select a “provider” of directories to browse. You’ll see items like “Recents” on the top, and other providers like “Downloads” below. If you added an SMB Client using ConnectedNAS, you will see a ConnectedWay icon to the left of the name you gave your SMB server.
Simply select the storage provider with the ConnectedNAS Icon.
Once you select the ConnectedNAS provider, the explorer window will show you all the network shares exported on that server. In our case, we had created a “Pictures” share. You will see a message pop up that says “SMB Server Session Started”. This is so that you will see if someone is accessing your phone unexpectedly. The content pane will look like:
Clicking on the share name (Pictures in this case), will bring up the content of the pictures Directory. If you had selected Thumbnails when you configured the file server, then you will see a thumbnail of each image in your Pictures directory. If you did not turn on thumbnails, you will see a default image icon for each picture. You can actually change the mode interactively. Simply go back into the ConnectedNAS app, open the Network Share for “My Phone”, turn on or off thumbnails, and come back into the Fileapp and reload the directory.
And Clicking on one of the Pictures will actually open the picture in the phone’s photo viewer. Depending on the size of the picture, this may take a 30 seconds or more. You will see a spinning icon.
There is a bit of history to network discovery. With SMBv1, discovery occurred using a combination of NetBIOS and an SMBv1 based browse service. Those are now deprecated. Other mechanisms have not been standardized across all system architectures. This makes discovery a bit of a challenge. ConnectedNAS leverages the Android Network Service Discovery framework for discovering file services. The underlying mechanism uses multi-cast DNS (mDNS) which has also been called Bonjour or zeroconf.
ConnectedNAS Professional version 1.0.20+ uses mDNS for discovering Linux, MacOS, and other ConnectedNAS servers. It uses the Universal Plug ’n Play SSDP protocol for discovering Windows servers. There is nothing you need to do to discover MacOS, Windows, or other ConnectedNAS professional enabled phones. For Linux, you need to make sure the discovery service is installed and running.
Linux supports mDNS as part of the avahi package. This may or may not have been installed on your Linux machines.
To install avahi, issue the following command as root:
# apt-get install avahi-daemon avahi-utilsOnce installed, make sure there is a service for smb. Create a file in /etc/avahi/services called smb.service with the following content:
<?xml version="1.0" standalone='no'?>
<!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">
<service-group>
<name replace-wildcards="yes">%h</name>
<service>
<type>_smb._tcp</type>
<port>445</port>
</service>
<service>
<type>_device-info._tcp</type>
<port>0</port>
<txt-record>model=RackMac</txt-record>
</service>
</service-group>Then reboot your Linux machine or restart your avahi service:
# systemctl restart avahi-daemonYour Linux machines will now be discoverable by Android devices running ConnectedNAS.
To configure the ConnectedNAS SMB Client and get started accessing files on remote computers from your Android device, you simply need to add servers to your File Servers tab. Once they are added, the server will appear in the Android Files App, as well as any other Android Application that supports the Storage Access Framework.
To add a server to ConnectedNAS, click the floating server add button on the lower right of the window. This will bring up a Remote Server dialog box. Fill the fields in as follows:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Server | A pulldown that lists all servers either discovered or added. Select the server you wish to access. If your server is not listed, but you know its DNS name, NetBIOS name, or IP Address, you can select <new…> in the dropdown. This will bring up the New Server Dialog. For more information, see adding a new server. |
| IP and Port | A read only informational field detailing the IP address and TCP Port associated with the server name. |
| Description | A friendly description of the server that will be seen by local apps when they are browsing for storage locations. |
| User Name | The user name you have been given to access files on the remote server. |
| Password | The password you have been given to access files on the remote server. |
| Domain | The authentication domain for the user. Use only if server is part of an Active Directory Domain. |
| Thumbnail | A toggle that will tell the ConnectedNAS SMB Client whether it should provide thumbnails to applications. |
Once the form is complete, you can click “Add”. If you change you mind and do not wish to add the remote server at the present time, you can click “Cancel”.
If for some reason, you wish to modify or delete a server configuration, simply click on the server from the list in the File Servers tab. This will bring up the server’s configuration. The fields are identical to the fields you were presented when adding file servers.
You may update one or more fields and click “Set” to update the server configuration. If you wish to remove the server configuration from the ConnectedNAS SMB Client, simply click on “Delete”. If you change your mind and do not wish to modify the provider, simply select “Cancel”.
The ConnectedNAS SMB Client will do its best to locate servers on the local network. For various reasons, it may not be able to discover the server. In this case, it is possible to manually add the server which you would like to access. To add a new server, bring up the adding a file server dialog. In the Server pulldown, select “new…”. This will bring up the Remote Address Dialog box. The fields in this dialog are as follows:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Remote Alias | A name you wish to identify for the address you are adding. |
| DNS or NetBIOS Name or IP Address | The DNS or NetBIOS name, or the IP address of the server. The IP Address can be an IPv4 or IPv6 Address. |
| Server Type | Selects whether the remote server is an Android device running the ConnectedNAS SMB Server (Phone) or a Windows, Linux, or OSX Computer with File Sharing enabled (Computer). Computer type may also be used for other File Servers such as a Buffalo Link Station or similar device. |
After completing the information, hit “Add” to add the server to the server pull down list, or “Cancel” to return to the File Server dialog box without adding a new server.
If you wish to modify a manually entered, or automatically discovered remote address, bring up the adding a file server dialog. In the Server pulldown, select the server name you wish to modify, then select the “edit” icon to the right of the dialog box. This will bring up the Remote Address Dialog box. The fields will be the same as described in the adding a new server section.
After completing the information, hit “Set” to update the server info. If you wish to return to the File Server dialog box without changing the server address, simply hit “cancel”. If you wish to delete the remote you can also hit “delete”.
Once the ConnectedNAS SMB Client is running, applications that use the Android Storage Access Framework (SAF) will be able to access files on servers configured through the File Servers tab.
The following list is a partial list of supported Applications:
| Application | Access Information |
|---|---|
| Android Files Application | To access SMB files through the ConnectedNAS SMB Client, click on the explorer button on the top left of the screen. ConnectedNAS servers will appear with the Connected Way logo, the friendly name, and the Description. |
| Microsoft Word | When Word first comes up, it will list a set of Places. If Places do not appear, click on the “Open” Icon. Within the places screen, click on “Browse”. This will bring up the Android file picker dialog. Click on the explorer pane icon on the top left. This will bring up a list of locations. ConnectedNAS servers will appear with the Connected Way logo, the friendly name, and the Description. |
| Microsoft Powerpoint | Powerpoint does not support opening of presentations within the powerpoint application itself, but it will open a file if launhed through the Android File Manager. Use the Android File manager to navigate to the powerpoint presentation you wish to view or edit and simply open it from the Files application |
| Microsoft Excel | You can follow the same directions as applied to Microsoft Word. |
| Adobe Acrobat Reader | You can follow the same directions as for Microsoft Powerpoint. |
| Microsoft Outlook | Microsoft Outlook does not support attaching items directly from the SMB storage provider. Copy your files using the Android File Apps to a location local to your device, then click on the “Attach” icon in your compose window and select “from your local device” item in the pull down menu. |
| Google Mail | Click on the Attach icon in the compose window, then click on “Attach File”. Use the Android File Picker to navigate to the file to the SMB managed servers and select the file you wish to attach. |
The file servers you have added to the ConnectedNAS SMB Client File Servers tab will be visible in most Android apps through the file pulldown button on the top left of the application along side the application’s title. You will normally see a list of providers of various types. Simply select the relevant provider and you will be brought to a file navigation window for the root of your remote file server.
There are many more applications on Android today that supports the Storage Access Framework and more to follow. If there is a particular app you would like to see added, please contact us through the “About” page and let us know.
This section provides details on the ConnectedNAS Free SMB Client Application.
On the right side of the Application toolbar, is a “kabob icon” (three vertical dots) to denote a pulldown menu. When selected, there are four menu items presented:
The About Box will show you the Application Title, Version, and Author
Contact Support: There is email icon which will bring up your email client and prepare it to send an email to Connected Way’s support team. Enter in your question or feedback, hit send and someone will be quick to respond.
Leave Review: Click on this to be brought to the playstore where you can provide feedback. We hope you find ConnectedNAS valuable to your workflow. Please leave a review to share with others your experience.
Share: Click on this to share your experience in other Applications.
Facebook: Click on this link to be brought to Connected Way’s Facebook Page. Follow Connected Way to stay on top of developments and blogs.
Web: Click on this link to be brought to Connected Way’s Web Page. Learn about our other products and services and more about Connected Way.
Privacy Policy: ConnectedNAS’ privacy policy is explained here. In layman’s terms, we don’t collect private information although in the process of providing support, there may be some data shared. We never share anything with third parties.
Acknowledgements: View our acknowledgements and open source licenses here. The majority of our application is written by and copyrighted by ConnectedWay. Portions of our security hooks have been leveraged from permissive open source sites.
The Settings menu item is greyed out in the Free version of ConnectedNAS. It is used to configure the SMB Server in the Professional Version. ### Files App
This menu item will launch the Native Files App. The Files App will be able to browse remotes, and perform other action on remote files.
This menu item will launch a web browser and load the ConnectedNAS Free SMB Client Help page.
The File Servers tab is used to configure remote computers and Android smart devices that you wish to access and store files on. The tab consists of a list of individual File Servers. If no File Servers are configured, the list will be empty. There is also a “Floating Action Button” or FAB on the lower right hand corner of the window. This will allow you to enter a new server.
If you click on an existing item, you will able to edit that server.
Whether you are adding a new server or editing an existing server, a dialog box will pop up and will allow you to add or edit information. If you are editing an existing server, the current values will be shown.
The File Server dialog box will appear as follows:
The fields are:
Server: This is a list box which will contain address information of the remote server. The list will be populated with current known servers. If you select the list box, you will be able to scroll through known servers and select the one you want to connect to. If the server does not exist in the list but you know it’s IP address or Name, you can select <new…>. New will bring up the Remote Address dialog box.
Edit Server: To the right of the server list, is an icon that represents an edit action. If you click on the edit icon while a remote address is displayed, then a dialog box will appear with information related to the remote. You will be able to edit the information as needed.
Description: The description is general information that is optional but is useful to describe some information about the server that helps you remember what it is used for. For example, “Project Repository”, "Kid’s Pictures. The description will be visible in the File Server item on the File Server Tab.
User Name: The user name to use to authenticate with the remote server. This is likely to be the same user name you use to log in directly on the file server. If you do not know the user name, ask your system admin.
Password: The password to use when authenticating with the remmote server. This is also something that should already be known by you. If you do not know it, ask your system admin.
Domain: If your remote server is part of a Windows or Samba Active Directory domain, enter the fully qualified domain name here. If you are unsure, you can ask your system admin, or leave this blank. If you know your server is not part of an active directory domain, leave this field blank.
Thumbnail: Slide the slider to either On or Off. On will direct applications to display thumbnails for images in listings of directory contents. Off will direct appications to display a generic icon in place of the image. If thumbnails are being displayed, it will cause the directory listings to consume more time and network bandwidth as the thumbnail is loaded. For large directories, this added time may be considerable. We recommend leaving the thumbnail setting as Off.
Delete: The delete button will delete the configuration for the File Server. This button is only displayed if the File Server info is being edited. It is not displayed when adding a new file server.
Cancel: The cancel button will dismiss the dialog box without making any changes to the configuration. This is displayed when adding or editing a File Server.
Set: The set button will update the existing server configuration with the values entered in the various fields. This will only be displayed when editing a server. It will not be displayed when adding a new server.
Add: The add button will add a new server configuration with the values entered in the various fields. This will only be displayed when adding a new server. It will not be displayed when editing an existing server.
The remote address dialog box allows you to associate an IP address, or DNS or NetBIOS name with an alias for the remote computer. ConnectedNAS is able to discover remote servers in some network configurations. In those situations, there will be no need to add or edit the discovered information. In many situations though, it is necessary to explicitly configure the remote computer’s name or IP address. This dialog box also allows you to specify whether the remote is running a computer or NAS device or whether it is an Android device running the ConnectedNAS server software.
Remote Alias: The friendly name of the remote computer. This is how you will refer to the remote within the File Server dialog box.
DNS or NetBIOS Name or IP Address: The remote computer or device can be addressed in one of four ways: - It’s DNS name (e.g. desktop1.example.com) - It’s NetBIOS name (DESKTOP1) - It’s IPv4 address (192.168.1.1) - It’s IPv6 address (fe80::1cff:c91f:3db1:45e%en0)
Enter the respective name or ip address.
Server Type: The remote computer is either running an SMB stack as part of the operating system support and can claim the default SMB TCP port number (445) or it is running as an application on Android where it is not allowed to claim the default SMB port. In the latter case, the Android ConnectedNAS SMB stack will claim an alternative port of 4445. The Server Type field lets you specify whether the SMB stack on the remote is running on the default SMB port or the alternative SMB port.
Delete: The delete button will delete the configuration for the Remote Address. This button is only displayed if the Remote Address info is being edited. It is not displayed when adding a new remote.
Cancel: The cancel button will dismiss the dialog box without making any changes to the configuration. This is displayed when adding or editing a Remote Address.
Set: The set button will update the existing remote address configuration with the values entered in the various fields.
This will only be displayed when editing a remote address. It will not be displayed when adding a new remote.
Add: The add button will add a new remote address configuration with the values entered in the various fields. This will only be displayed when adding a new remote. It will not be displayed when editing an existing remote.
If you wish to learn more about the ConnectedSMB application, or contact developers, sales, or support, simply click on the menu pulldown in the top right of the screen and select “About”