NAS Client for iOS

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manca

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Jul 19, 2013
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Hello everyone,

I am in the process of making a NAS client for iOS. It'll be a very reasonably priced app <5$ that will allow you to securely access your NAS server. The application will allow you to view your photos, music and videos right from your phone. It'll be very intuitive and easy to use.

My question is, how many of you FreeNAS users actually use iOS devices, as well as would you be interested in such an app?

I myself am a very heavy iOS user, but couldn't find any easy to use app that would allow me to securely remotely access all my media on a FreeNAS server. That's the motivation behind the idea to create such an app.

Please let me hear your opinions.

Thanks a lot!
 

fracai

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Aug 22, 2012
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I'd probably check out something like that. I'd want to be able to connect from outside the network as well (tunnel over ssh?). Moving and deleting files as well?

The killer feature would be administration of the NAS. There are other iOS cifs/nfs/ago clients.
 

manca

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Jul 19, 2013
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Yup, it'd probably be a tunnel over ssh.

I know that there are other clients, but non of them is easy to use. It usually requires you to setup additional stuff on your FreeNAS box. This would work OTB, the only thing you'd have to turn on is SSH service (and forward ports on the router of course).
 

cyberjock

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Mar 25, 2012
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A friend has an iphone and he has multiple apps that access the FreeNAS server over CIFS. Some of them were free... I don't have an iphone myself so I can't tell you what they were called, but he got the apps and I helped with the settings.

We didn't try to do tunneled SSH but I know that I had done some tinkering with an SSH iphone app that supported tunneling from his iphone.
 

manca

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The idea here is to have access to your FreeNAS content wherever you are, making it look like a small box in "the cloud". I just want to know how many people here actually use iOS and have FreeNAS setup.
 

hraynor

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Apr 13, 2013
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I have FreeNAS and use a few iOS devices. While I'd love to see another app that might allow accessing things on FreeNAS, there are many out there that work well.

For instance, "Remote Files" (I actually bought it, not using the free one) is an excellent application for when I just simply want to easily connect to CIFS shares.

I also use "Good Reader" which has access via CIFS, WebDAV, FTP/SFTP, and most of the online places (Dropbox, SkyDrive, Google Drive, Box.net, etc).

So IMHO the app would have to provide some features that things like this don't...

For instance, if the app actually provided more specific integration with FreeNAS, ie: allowing for Administration, monitoring, etc - as well as file access - that would get my $5 if done well and it were useful. While the latest versions of FreeNAS's web interface work well under Safari on the iPad (prior versions not so well), its not the easiest thing to navigate all the time with the smaller text, and lots of tiny places to have to touch to use it. Something more iOS friendly would be very useful.

One thing I would LOVE to see would be LOCAL FILE COPY... ie: an app that would let me copy from one FreeNAS dataset, directory, or volume DIRECTLY to another - ie: everything happening on the FreeNAS server, not passing through the iOS device. Yes, most likely this would require it to either SSH into FreeNAS to execute the commands, or else have a small plugin on FreeNAS.

I often have files in one volume that I want to move to another quickly - often because I do a dump of files from another machine to FreeNAS and want to organize later. Having to pull these over the network to an intermediate device, and then push back out to FreeNAS again is a waste, and slows down the process.

Anyways just some ideas here to help differentiate what you might develop from the rest of the pack. I think general CIFS is pretty well covered in the existing iOS apps (within the limits of what one can do in iOS).

BTW - I believe this is not possible in an official (non-Jailbroken) iOS app, but if there is any application out there that would let me access files stored by other applications so I don't have to keep doing an "Open In" and having tons of copies of the same (or different versions) files scattered all over my iPad - that would be something I'd definitely pay for. That said, my guess is that this is an Apple restriction...
 

nriley

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Apr 30, 2013
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Have you seen Owncloud? It may be more inline with what you are looking for, not discounting Freenas...
 

BigDave

FreeNAS Enthusiast
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Oct 6, 2013
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My question is, how many of you FreeNAS users actually use iOS devices, as well as would you be interested in such an app?
I have iPads around the house and have a NAS server.
 
Joined
Dec 5, 2013
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I too am looking for some solid apps to do the same thing and have found a few that work pretty good, but not perfect.

My favorite one so far is called Files Connect it is available for $4.99 and you can view/download files and even stream videos and music. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/files-connect/id404324302

However, streaming video only works with mp4 I think. I hope this helps you guys I'm still looking for the right one for me, but for now this one works quite well.
 

fefele

Explorer
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Dec 9, 2012
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I will follow you friend!

I am a user iphone / ipad too. I did not find app to access data on FreeNAS until now (I had a home NAS with FreeNAS 8.3.1 but that is dead). I have not NAS, now.
I access to the data that I have on my work, with Ajaxplorer for IOS and android. I do not know if it also supports multimedia files but I tell you that it works well. is not free.

however if there is any news I want to have your app.

thanks
 

emk2203

Guru
Joined
Nov 11, 2012
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One thing I would LOVE to see would be LOCAL FILE COPY... ie: an app that would let me copy from one FreeNAS dataset, directory, or volume DIRECTLY to another - ie: everything happening on the FreeNAS server, not passing through the iOS device. Yes, most likely this would require it to either SSH into FreeNAS to execute the commands, or else have a small plugin on FreeNAS.

I often have files in one volume that I want to move to another quickly - often because I do a dump of files from another machine to FreeNAS and want to organize later. Having to pull these over the network to an intermediate device, and then push back out to FreeNAS again is a waste, and slows down the process.

If we get Samba 4.1 or newer on 9.2.1, this would support server-side copy offload for the CIFS filesystems. I am looking forward to this for the same reason.
 
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