Many users complement their Macs with Apple-branded iPhone smartphones and iPad tablets. They all tie together nicely, syncing with iTunes. (Whether iTunes has grown into an ungainly combination of music player, video player, and connection device for the range of Apple devices is a question for another article.)
Droid nas free download - NAS, NAS, PCB Droid, and many more programs. A NAS drive that provides shared storage for everyone on your network is ideal for homes that own multiple Macs and mobile devices. Here are the 6 best NAS drives for Mac owners.
- Network-attached storage options are more abundant than ever, but jumping into the copious bush of NAS can be quite a task, especially if you want a system that plays nice with both PC and Mac.
- The only problem I always had with Mac and Android combo is not being able to transfer data between these devices fast enough. Thanks MacDroid for filling this gap. Overall rating 4.5. Based on 56 reviews. Manage data between Android and Mac computer.
- A Network Attached Storage device can provide shared storage, a Time Machine backup target, and additional useful features for Mac, iPhone, and iPad users on a local area network — and beyond.
I suspect I'm not alone, however, in having a variety of devices. I use a Mac, but I also use Android devices – in my case a Nexus 7 tablet and a Galaxy Nexus smartphone. Not surprisingly, Apple doesn't provide tools to connect these devices to my Mac.
Using a USB cable, I can plug my Android devices into my Mac; using the free Android File Transfer utility a window opens up showing the folders on the devices allowing me to move music, movie, ebook, and photo files on and off the devices. (Note that Android File Transfer does not work with all Android devices; on the ones where it doesn't work, you may want to try DoubleTwist).
New to me today, though, is something that I like even better, Droid NAS. Like Android File Transfer, it lets you transfer files between an Android device and a Mac. But it does it wirelessly and in a more straightforward manner than anything else I've tried – using the Mac Finder. (NAS stands for Network Attached Storage – and that's exactly what it does.)
For it to work, you need to download and install Droid NAS from the Google Play store onto your Google device – it's free and a quick little download. Note that it warns that it could impact battery life – you probably don't want to leave this running in the background when you're not using it.
Start up the app, and you're given options for Home, Office, or Cafe, with a list of folders that are shared by default in each setting – at Home the assumption is you want to be able to share everything on your device with any Mac on the WiFi network, while in a public place like a café, that's probably not the case. Fine-tune your settings and click Start Server to connect.
On your Mac, if you open the Finder you'll now see your connected Android device listed as Shared in the bar on the left. Click it, and you'll see some standard folders:
The screenshot image file displayed is the screen capture I made of Droid NAS, shown up above. (Don't know how to make a screen capture on your Droid device? If you're running Android 4.0 or later, if you press the Volume Down and Power buttons at the same time, you'll hear a click and a moment later see a smaller version of what was on screen).
You can click on any of those folders, dragging files stored within to your Mac or dragging files or folders from your Mac to the Android device.
For instance, the Music folder shows me a set of folders containing music from different CDs stored on my Nexus 7:
On my Mac, music I access in iTunes is stored in my Music/iTunes Music/Music folder – it's easy to drag folders from there to the Nexus 7's Music folder.
Photos are bit trickier – photos in Apple's iPhoto are not so easily accessed: iPhoto store all the photos in its library in a single huge database file. In order to get them onto the Android device, you'll first need to open iPhoto and 'export' the photos you want to some location on your Mac (perhaps your Desktop) before you can drag them to the Photos folder.
If you click on the SD Card folder you'll see a more complex set of folders:
Your folders may vary, depending on what apps are installed on your device – many apps create folders to store their data files.
Here you'll see the Android device's Movies folder, if you want to copy some digital movies over. (Note that digital movies can be pretty large files so your storage space may be limited!)
Cool possibility – if, like me, you have more than one Android device – in my case, a Nexus 7 tablet and a Galaxy Nexus phone – you could install and run Droid NAS on all of them. With the app running on multiple devices at once you could copy files from one device to the other – getting the same music or photos onto each.
Less cool – Droid NAS works by making use of Apple's Bonjour standard for easy networking. Apple has released Bonjour drivers for Windows, letting Windows computers take part in easy printer networking (etc.) along with Macs. Despite this, a user on Droid NAS's Google Play page reports that it didn't work with the Bonjour-running Windows system. Pity, that!
But it's the best way I've found to connect my Android devices to my Mac. Just remember to click Stop Server when you're done!
Keywords: #droidnas
Short link: http://goo.gl/pdJq6U
searchword: droidnas
Mac users usually have a limited way of interfacing with their Android Filesystem from their laptops, unlike their Windows user counterparts who can just plug in in Mass Storage mode and access the files as a drive. Mac users are tied in to using the Android File Transfer app for most of the work, which is not the best way.
Now you can do this via your WiFi network using Droid NAS. Droid NAS mounts your Android Device and shows it up on your Mac's Finder as a Bonjour device. You can then go in and play around with it like you would any other shared drive.
All you need to do is to launch the app and click on the 'Start Server' to start sharing.
Droid NAS also allows you to select your network as a Home, Office or Cafe giving different pre-set levels of access with each mode. At Home, you can access to all the locations of you phone though the network. If you'd like to change the pre-set access, you are free to go and tap on the location to share to enable or disable it. For example, tapping on the camera toggles the availability for the network you chose.
Here you'll see the Android device's Movies folder, if you want to copy some digital movies over. (Note that digital movies can be pretty large files so your storage space may be limited!)
Cool possibility – if, like me, you have more than one Android device – in my case, a Nexus 7 tablet and a Galaxy Nexus phone – you could install and run Droid NAS on all of them. With the app running on multiple devices at once you could copy files from one device to the other – getting the same music or photos onto each.
Less cool – Droid NAS works by making use of Apple's Bonjour standard for easy networking. Apple has released Bonjour drivers for Windows, letting Windows computers take part in easy printer networking (etc.) along with Macs. Despite this, a user on Droid NAS's Google Play page reports that it didn't work with the Bonjour-running Windows system. Pity, that!
But it's the best way I've found to connect my Android devices to my Mac. Just remember to click Stop Server when you're done!
Keywords: #droidnas
Short link: http://goo.gl/pdJq6U
searchword: droidnas
Mac users usually have a limited way of interfacing with their Android Filesystem from their laptops, unlike their Windows user counterparts who can just plug in in Mass Storage mode and access the files as a drive. Mac users are tied in to using the Android File Transfer app for most of the work, which is not the best way.
Now you can do this via your WiFi network using Droid NAS. Droid NAS mounts your Android Device and shows it up on your Mac's Finder as a Bonjour device. You can then go in and play around with it like you would any other shared drive.
All you need to do is to launch the app and click on the 'Start Server' to start sharing.
Droid NAS also allows you to select your network as a Home, Office or Cafe giving different pre-set levels of access with each mode. At Home, you can access to all the locations of you phone though the network. If you'd like to change the pre-set access, you are free to go and tap on the location to share to enable or disable it. For example, tapping on the camera toggles the availability for the network you chose.
Droid Nas For Mac Os
If you are on an open network, I'd also suggest that you go into settings, by tapping the gears icon on the bottom right hand of the screen and choose 'Limit Access to Device'. This gives you the option of setting a username and password for accessing your phone contents from the Finder.
The settings screen also gives you the option of choosing the Name and icon which shows up for your phone on the Mac Finder. You can also select which WiFi network to assign to Home, Office and Cafe. Once the NAS server is active, you can go ahead with using other apps on the Phone, and hit on the Notification area to get a quick link back to the app.
Download Droid Nas For Mac
In all a nice and simple app to access your phone and copy data between that and your Mac. A note to Windows users, you can give this app a miss, since it's doesn't work for you.
Download Link
Screenshots from Droid NAS
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