Connecting to a server with the Files app.

By Khomus, 25 July, 2024

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hi.

This appears to be broken. I have two servers, a Synology NAS and my Windows laptop that I shared a directory on, just to see if that would work. I should be able to open the Files app, pick connect to server, fill in the server name or IP address, fill in username and password, and connect. When I try this, the following things happen.

1. I can connect to the Windows laptop by IP address, but not by name.

2. If I try to connect to the Synology by either, I get "socket is not connected". If my wife tries connecting from her iPad, it loads the top directory, but if she goes into a directory, it just says "loading content", and then fails with an unknown error.

Both are running the latest iOS/iPad OS 17. Anybody have any ideas? I know the Synology's working, because I can connect to it from the Windows laptop just fine. I can see all the files and directories, copy them, move them, delete them, and so on, in other words, all the things I would expect to be able to do with files.

No, I do not want to hear about uploading files to Dropbox or insert your favorite cloud service. It shouldn't be necessary at all. Everything is on the same local network. iOS claims to be able to do Samba protocol connections, which is what it's trying to use. I shouldn't have to upload books or whatever to Dropbox or whatever, and then pull them down. I should just be able to go right to the source.

Is there a replacement for the Files app perhaps? I don't want to do that either but if it's just going to fail this spectacularly at something so basic, it might be time to look elsewhere.

Options

Comments

By Rachel Ramos on Wednesday, July 24, 2024 - 21:10

Hi Khomus,

When connecting to your server, (it's a mystery why you can't access your laptop via the hostname), but for the NAS, try inputting: smb:// followed by your IP address. Choose the Connect to Server option, and there are two authentication choices: guest or registered user. If you have a username and password to access your files, choose registered user, and input those details, then choose Connect.
Hope you are greeted with the contents of your server!

By Khomus on Wednesday, July 24, 2024 - 21:10

I was fighting with this thing all day, and finally googled the right gibberish. Apparently what you need to do, at least for the Synology network server, I assume this would work with the laptop's name too, is use a fully-qualified domain name. Apparently that's [name].local, e.g. if you r server is called foo, you do foo.local as the server name, not just foo.

Now for a quick question I'm sure somebody can answer, how do I copy files? I get how to start, you highlight a file or folder and swipe up/down to copy. I assume double tapping that selects it because I can then move through the directory and do that with other things as well.

The part I don't get is when I go back to the files on my iPhone, and into where I want to put the stuff I told it to copy, how do I tell it to put the stuff there?