XeFM connects to a NAS or file server by itself. On macOS you no longer need to
open Finder, walk into Network and open a share to get it into /Volumes;
on Windows you no longer need Explorer’s Map network drive. Open
Connect to Server (connect_server),
pick the server, and the pane lands in it.
The connection is a real mount made by the operating system, not a private
XeFM channel. Once it is up, the share is an ordinary directory —
/Volumes/photo on macOS, \\nas\photo on Windows — so everything else in XeFM
works on it unchanged: viewers, archives, copy and move, external programs,
drag and drop, and automatic reloading.
Available on macOS and Windows. On Linux the dialog is not offered; mount your shares with the tools your distribution provides and reach them through the Drives dialog like any other directory.
| How | |
|---|---|
connect_server |
Opens Connect to Server directly |
drives |
The Drives dialog, whose first row is Connect to Server… |
| Menu | Go → Connect to Server… |
The dialog is the same searchable picker as Favorites and Drives — type to filter, Up/Down to move, Enter to choose, Esc to close.
┌ Connect to Server ────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ NAS Photo — smb://nas/photo → /Volumes/photo │
│ NAS Backup — smb://nas/backup │
│ Documents — https://dav.example.com/files │
│ New connection… │
│ SynologyNas — on the network │
│ Anna's iMac — on the network │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Each row says what it is, and Enter does the obvious thing with it:
| Row ends with | |
|---|---|
→ /Volumes/photo |
Mounted right now. Enter just moves the pane there — no network, no password, no waiting. |
| an address | Saved, not mounted. Enter connects, then moves the pane. |
— on the network |
Found just now (see below). Enter asks it which shares it offers. |
The list’s remove key (remove_list_item) forgets the highlighted server.
It does not disconnect
anything — it removes the entry from the list, along with any password saved
for it. A password is kept per server and account rather than per share, so if
another saved row still uses the same account on that machine, the password
stays for that row’s sake. Servers written into your config file cannot be
forgotten this way; edit the config instead.
XeFM looks for file servers while the dialog is open, the same way Finder’s Network view does, and they appear at the bottom of the list as they are found — named as the server announces itself, and marked on the network because there is no saved address for them yet. Nothing is contacted until you choose one.
Choosing one asks it what it offers and shows a second list:
┌ Shares on SynologyNas ─────────────────────────┐
│ home │
│ Videos │
│ Documents │
│ PlexMediaServer │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Pick a share and it mounts. That is the whole path from “the NAS is on” to “the pane is in it”, without typing anything.
Both platforms find servers the same way: the machines that announce file sharing on the local network — which is what a NAS, a Mac and a Samba box all do out of the box. So XeFM finds what Finder finds on macOS, and on Windows it generally finds more than Explorer’s Network folder shows.
Windows additionally asks the network providers, which is the only way a domain, or a Windows machine that shares files without announcing it, turns up. That half frequently answers with nothing on a home network and is not what the list rests on.
A machine that announces nothing at all will not appear on either platform, and is reached by typing its address.
A server you have already saved as a server is not listed twice. A saved share does not hide its server, because the two rows do different things: one goes straight to that share, the other browses the machine.
A NAS will not tell a guest what it offers, so the question has to be asked under an account. XeFM tries what it already has before it asks you anything:
If that gets nowhere, the connection form opens on the server and says «server» needs a user name and password. Fill them in, press Enter, and the share list appears — you do not have to know a share name, and you do not have to tick anything. Save password only decides whether the password is kept for next time.
What you type there is used directly, not looked up: on macOS the tool that asks the server for its share list takes a password only as a command-line argument, so for the couple of seconds that request takes, another user of the same Mac could read your password out of the process list. Nothing is written down and nothing is kept. If that matters on your machine — a Mac other people have accounts on — connect by typing the full address including the share name instead, which does not go through that tool at all.
Servers that answer anonymously are asked as a guest first, so this only happens for a server that requires an account.
Tick Save password and you are not asked again: the next time you pick that server, its share list comes up without a prompt — and so does any share on it you have not opened before, since the password belongs to the machine and the account, not to the one share you first used it on.
A few servers refuse to list their shares even for an account they know. There
the form comes back a second time, now with the server’s own reason and the
address ending in a slash for you to add the share to: smb://nas/ becomes
smb://nas/Videos.
Type the address into the filter line and press Enter. If it looks like a server address rather than a filter, the connection form opens with it already filled in, so all that is left is the password. If it looks like neither — a word that matched no row — nothing happens, because it was a search.
＋ New connection… opens a small form:
| Field | |
|---|---|
| Address | smb://nas/photo, \\nas\photo, https://dav.example.com/files, … |
| User name | Leave empty to connect as a guest |
| Password | Typed characters show as bullets |
| Save password | Off by default. See Passwords |
| Save this server | On by default — adds it to the list for next time |
| Drive letter (Windows) | Empty by default. See Drive letters |
Up/Down moves between the rows — Tab and Shift-Tab do the same — Space ticks the checkbox you are standing on, Enter connects from anywhere in the form, and Esc cancels.
Leaving both User name and Password empty connects as a guest, which is how a share that needs no account is reached.
While XeFM is connecting, a progress dialog names the server and Esc gives up on it — worth knowing, because a server that is switched off does not refuse the connection, it simply never answers, and without a way out you would be waiting for the network’s own timeout.
| macOS | Windows | |
|---|---|---|
| SMB / Windows file sharing | smb://server/share |
\\server\share or smb://server/share |
| WebDAV | https://server/path, http://server/path |
https://server/path |
| Apple File Protocol | afp://server/share |
— |
| NFS | nfs://server/export |
— |
A user name can be written into the address (smb://me@nas/photo) instead of
into the User name field; XeFM splits it out and fills the field for you.
A short server name that your network does not resolve is also tried as
name.local, which is how Macs and many NAS boxes announce themselves. So
smb://nas/photo finds the machine whether it answers to plain nas or only
to nas.local, and the volume is named after whichever one worked.
Leaving the share off the end (smb://nas) is not an error: an address that
names a server and no share is a request to browse it, and you get the share
list described above.
Two kinds of entry appear in the list, and they are merged into one:
Servers you save from the dialog are remembered by XeFM and can be removed with the list’s remove key.
Servers written into ~/.xefm/config.py come from NETWORK_SERVERS:
NETWORK_SERVERS = [
{'name': 'NAS Photo', 'url': 'smb://nas/photo', 'user': 'crftwr'},
{'name': 'NAS Backup', 'url': 'smb://nas/backup'},
{'name': 'Docs', 'url': 'https://dav.example.com/files'},
]
name is what the list shows, url is the address, and user is optional. A
config entry cannot be removed from the list — the config is the source
of truth for it, the same way it is for Favorites.
Never put a password in the config file. There is no field for one, and XeFM will not read one from there.
Save password is off by default, so by default XeFM asks every time you connect. Tick it and the password goes into the operating system’s own store — the login Keychain on macOS, Credential Manager on Windows — never into the config file or XeFM’s own state. On the next connection the field comes up already filled.
To remove a saved password, either forget every saved row that uses that server and account (the password goes with the last of them) or delete the entry in Keychain Access / Credential Manager directly.
Saving happens after the connection succeeds, so a failure to save is reported in the log and costs you the saved password, not the connection.
If the server rejects the credentials, XeFM says so and reopens the form with the address and account you typed — the password field comes back empty, ready for another attempt. Any other failure (no such server, no such share) is reported on its own, because retyping a password would not help.
XeFM does not restore connections when it launches. Windows offers this for mapped drives and it is deliberately not copied here: an unreachable server turns startup into a network wait, and a file manager that will not open because a NAS is off is worse than one extra keypress. A saved server is one dialog and one Enter away.
Both live in the Drives dialog, on its remove key
(remove_list_item):
C:\, an S3 bucket, an SSH host) it does nothing, and
the dialog’s key hint says so by naming the key only where it applies.If a pane is sitting inside the volume, XeFM moves it out to the volume’s parent first and stops watching the directory, so the unmount is not refused by XeFM’s own activity. If something else is using the volume — a file open in another application, a shell sitting in it — the operating system refuses, and XeFM reports that rather than forcing it. Close whatever is using the volume and try again.
The Drives dialog closes as the disconnect starts, and the log line says what happened. Disconnecting a server that has gone away can take a moment, and a row that vanished from the list before the answer came back would be claiming something nobody knew yet.
Disconnecting is not the same as forgetting. A disconnected server stays in the Connect to Server list, ready to be connected again.
By default a connection is deviceless: it is made to \\server\share with no
drive letter, which is all XeFM needs, and it keeps your letters free. The
connection still shows up in the Drives dialog and still disconnects from there.
Type a letter into Drive letter to map one anyway — useful for programs that cannot take a UNC path. The field only appears where there is a free letter to use, and the mapping is not remembered across sign-ins (see No reconnecting at startup).
“The server may not exist, or it is not responding” — the name did not resolve or nothing answered. Check the spelling, and check that the machine is awake; a NAS that has spun down can take a few seconds.
A server you can see in Finder is not in XeFM’s list — both use the same announcements, so this usually means it had not announced itself yet; the list fills as answers arrive, so give it a few seconds. A server that advertises nothing (some Windows machines, and NAS boxes with Bonjour switched off) will not appear in either, and is reached by typing its address.
A device in Explorer’s Network folder is not in XeFM’s list — look at which group Explorer puts it in. Something under Other Devices was found by UPnP, which says a device is there and nothing about file sharing; Explorer opens its web page rather than its shares, and XeFM does not offer it as a server. If the machine does share files, it will appear in XeFM’s list on its own announcement, whatever Explorer makes of it.
**“
Authentication keeps failing on a Windows server — try the user name
qualified with the domain or the machine name (WORKGROUP\me, nas\admin).
The share mounts but is empty — some servers publish a share whose contents need a second level of permission. Check the same share in Finder or Explorer once; if it is empty there too, it is the server’s doing, not XeFM’s.
macOS: “Connect to Server is not available” — XeFM could not load the system framework it mounts through. This should not happen on a supported macOS; the log pane names the reason.