NAS Reborn on a Mac

NAS Reborn is made for the iPhone or iPad in the drawer, and the same app runs on the Mac that may be lying next to it. A Mac from 2015 or later running macOS 12 or newer, Intel or Apple silicon, serves the same drive, websites, S3 buckets, repositories, backups and camera. One purchase covers both.

What is different

On a phone the app has to stay on screen. A Mac lets it serve in the background, so the Mac version behaves like other Mac apps:

• Close the window and it keeps serving. An item in the menu bar shows whether sharing is on, starts and stops sharing and web serving, and brings the window back. Quitting the app stops the server.
• The display may sleep. While sharing, NAS Reborn keeps the Mac itself awake, and you can switch that off with "Keep Mac awake while sharing" in Settings if you only serve while you are around. A closed laptop lid still puts the Mac to sleep, unless it is on power with an external display.
• It comes back after a restart. While sharing or serving, NAS Reborn lists itself under Login Items, which is what Guided Access does for the phone, and removes itself again when both are off. On macOS 12 that is not possible from an app, so add NAS Reborn under System Preferences → Users & Groups → Login Items yourself.
• Reveal in Finder takes the place of Open in Files. The served folders live in the app's own folder, and any folder on the Mac or on a drive the Finder shows can be added as an external folder, with none of the adapters or power limits a phone has. See External Drives.
• The screen is left alone. There is no dimming and no burn-in to worry about, so those settings are absent on a Mac.

File Sharing and port 445

The network drive uses port 445, and macOS's own File Sharing uses the same port. While File Sharing is on, NAS Reborn cannot share and the Share tab says so. Turn it off under System Settings → General → Sharing, and sharing starts on its own within a minute.

macOS already lets a Mac share files and serve as a Time Machine destination, so the drive alone is nothing new on a Mac. What NAS Reborn adds is the rest with the same setup as on the phone: the website and S3 API with a real certificate, git hosting, encrypted backups to a friend, and the camera.

Permissions

The Mac asks for the same permissions as the phone at the point where each is first needed. On macOS 15 and later, Local Network is among them, and if it was denied the app tells you and you can allow it again under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Local Network.

Sensors and the camera

A camera feed on a Mac uses the built-in camera, or an iPhone docked as a Continuity Camera, and there is no front or back to choose between. The Mac's own sensor pages read its power state (a desktop simply reports mains) and the thermal state, while the barometer and movement readings of a phone do not exist on a Mac. Apple Home accessories read the same way on both.