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How to Connect to an SMB Share on a Mac and Reconnect at Login

· 6 min read

To connect to an SMB share on a Mac, open the Finder, choose Go › Connect to Server… (⌘K), type the share's address, such as smb://nas.local/Photos, and click Connect. Sign in as a Registered User and tick Remember this password in my keychain. To get the share back each time you log in, add it to Open at Login in System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions.

That works for a NAS, a Windows PC or another Mac. Below are the steps in detail, what the login item does and doesn't do, and how to keep your servers as saved connections in Folia Files, mounted in one click, at login, and again after sleep.

Connect to an SMB share from the Finder

  1. In the Finder, choose Go › Connect to Server…, or press ⌘K.
  2. Type the address: smb://, then the server's name or IP address, then the share. For example smb://nas.local/Photos or smb://192.168.1.20/Photos. If you leave out the share (smb://nas.local), macOS lists the shares on the server and lets you pick.
  3. Click Connect.
  4. Choose Registered User, type the name and password of an account that can open the share, and tick Remember this password in my keychain. On a Windows PC, that is a Windows account allowed to open the shared folder.
  5. Click Connect. The share opens in a Finder window. It is now mounted like a disk, in /Volumes, for every app on the Mac, until you eject it.

Keep the address at hand

In the Connect to Server window, click + after typing the address: it goes into Favorite Servers, and next time a double-click is enough.

If the name isn't found, or the NAS only speaks AFP

  • When nas.local doesn't answer, use the IP address shown in the NAS or router settings.
  • macOS 27 no longer includes an AFP client, Apple's old file-sharing protocol. If an older NAS still shares over AFP, turn SMB on in its settings and connect with smb://.

Reconnect the share at every login

macOS has no "reconnect at login" checkbox, but a mounted share can be a login item:

  1. Connect to the share as above, with its password in the keychain.
  2. Open System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions.
  3. Under Open at Login, click +, select the share and confirm. It is listed with your disks in the window's sidebar, or in /Volumes: press ⇧⌘G and type /Volumes to get there.

At each login, macOS mounts the share with the password from the keychain and opens it in a Finder window. You can close that window: the share stays mounted.

Two limits are worth knowing:

  • It happens once, at login. If the share is disconnected later, after sleep, a change of network or an eject, it stays disconnected until you connect again or log in again.
  • The server has to be reachable at that moment. On a laptop away from home, or before a VPN is up, macOS can't connect and tells you so.

When the Finder hangs on the share

A sleeping NAS, weak Wi-Fi or a server that stopped answering can leave the Finder spinning while it waits. The causes and fixes are in why the Finder freezes on a network drive. In short: prefer a wired connection or the IP address, lengthen the NAS's disk sleep delay, and turn off icon previews in large photo folders.

Saved connections in Folia Files

Folia Files keeps your servers as saved connections in its sidebar and mounts them the same way macOS does, so you don't type an address again.

Add the NAS once

  1. Click Add Server… in the Servers section of the sidebar. You can also choose Tools › Connections (Servers and Clouds)… (⌘K) and click New Connection.
  2. Pick SMB (Windows, NAS). The same sheet offers WebDAV, FTP (mounted read-only by macOS), NFS, and AFP for the macOS versions that still include it, as well as SFTP and S3, covered in how to connect to SFTP and S3 without macFUSE.
  3. Fill in Display Name (here Synology), Server Address (the name or IP address you would type after smb://, here synology.local), User, Password and Share / folder (Photos).
  4. Tick Mount automatically when Folia Files launches to have it at every launch, and Read-Only if you only browse it. Click Save and Mount.

The Connections window of Folia Files with an SMB connection being edited: Synology, server address synology.local, user alex, share Photos, mounted automatically when Folia Files launches

The password is stored in the macOS Keychain. The share is mounted by macOS, like the Finder's Connect to Server: it is a disk for the whole Mac, visible in the Finder and in every app's Open and Save dialogs.

One click in the sidebar

The connection stays in the Servers section, dimmed while it isn't mounted. Click it to mount it and open it; the button at the end of its row mounts or unmounts it. Right-click it for Mount “Synology” and Manage Connections….

The Folia Files sidebar with three saved servers, NAS, Nextcloud and Synology, each with its Mount button, and the Connections window showing Synology: not mounted, mounted by macOS like the Finder's Connect to Server, mounted automatically at launch

At login, and again after sleep

  • At login: with Mount automatically when Folia Files launches ticked on the connection, turn on Open Folia Files at login and Start in the background (no window) in Settings › General › Startup. Your shares are mounted when you log in, while Folia Files stays in the background.
  • After sleep or a drop (website edition): Reconnect automatically after sleep, a network change or a drop, in Settings › Files and Network › Network, is on by default. Connections set to mount automatically come back quietly, with a few more tries over several minutes. A share that stays out of reach is reported once (“Synology” is unreachable), and Folia Files tries again at the next wake or network change.
  • A share you mount in the Finder: right-click it under Volumes in the sidebar and choose Keep Connected (Reconnect Automatically) (website edition).

A slow server doesn't freeze the window

Everything on a network disk is read in the background. When the NAS is slow to wake or stops answering, only the pane that shows it waits: the window, the other panes and copies elsewhere carry on.

Website and Mac App Store editions

Saved SMB, WebDAV, FTP, NFS and AFP connections are in both editions. In the Mac App Store edition, Apple's sandbox doesn't let an app mount a disk itself: Folia Files hands the address to macOS, which mounts the share as Connect to Server does and may ask for the password in its own window the first time. SFTP and S3 need Folia Files Companion there, and automatic reconnection after sleep and Keep Connected are in the website edition only.

Which one to use

For one share you use at home every day, the Finder and a login item are enough. With several servers, a laptop that moves between networks, or a NAS that sleeps, saved connections that mount at login and come back after sleep spare you a trip to Connect to Server.