Have you noticed that it can be a bit of a hassle to connect to networked drives from your Mac? Going to your “Network” folder is a complete exercise in futility. Following the steps outlined in this guide you’ll be able to easily connect to remote drives with just two clicks.
- First things first, head over to the ConnectMeNow download page, scroll down a bit and download the App by clicking the large green Download Now button (see screenshot below). The app itself is small (uses very minimal/almost no system resources) and completely free.
- Once the download has completed, open the .dmg file and drag ConnectMeNow to your Applications folder to install it. After that, open your Applications folder and launch ConnectMeNow by double-clicking it.
- A new icon will appear in your Menu Bar. Click it and then select Preferences, then Open Preferences from the ‘sub-menu’.
- The main “configuration” window will open. It’s from within here that we’ll add your first remote computer/drive.
- In the Defined Shares section, click the Add Share button.
- Remove the check-mark from the box labelled Automatic naming and then give a ‘name’ to your first share – ideally something descriptive so you’ll know right away which share you’re connecting to.
- Now select the Server Type pull-down menu and choose the kind of networked drive that you’ll be connecting to. If it’s a Windows networked drive, select SMB. If it’s a Mac, select AFP or if it’s Linux/Unix, select NFS.
- In the Server Name or IP field enter the IP address of the machine you want to connect to. This can be an internal IP address if it’s on your local network, or a public IP/domain. Though not required, you can also enter the path to the folder you want to open as soon as you open the connection in the Shared Path field.
- If you need to enter a user/pass to connect to your remote drive, place a check in the box labelled Connect with credentials (Optional) and then enter your username and password in the spaces provided.
- Finally, click the Test Share button.
- Assuming all the info was entered correctly, you’ll now connect to your remote drive. You won’t ‘see’ anything happening, the drive will just mount itself and become accessible.
- Before you close out of the Preferences, place a check in the box labelled Start ConnectMeNow at computer startup so you don’t have to open it each time you restart.
- From now on, each time you want to connect to that remote drive, just click the ConnectMeNow icon in your Menu Bar and select that drive. It’s that easy!
- Return to the Preferences section to add additional drives. You can even use separators to organize your networked drives into sections.
Thanks for the excellent software! :)
Thank you for an excellent guide on using ConnectMeNow :-)