Knowledge Center

AFP

At Control Panel > File Services > AFP, you can enable AFP (Apple Filing Protocol) service to make Synology NAS a Mac file server (AFP server).

To enable Mac file service:

  1. Tick Enable AFP service to make Synology NAS a Mac file server (AFP server).
  2. Click Apply.

Enabling Transfer Logging

Checking this option enables logging of file access operations, including creating, deleting, reading, writing, moving, and renaming files or folders via AFP.

Advanced Settings

Apply default UNIX permissions:

Enabling this option applies the default UNIX permissions when uploading or creating files and folders. Applied permissions are the same as permissions applied by the UNIX command umask. When this option is enabled, UNIX permissions are 644 for files and 755 for folders. When this option is disabled, UNIX permissions are 666 for files and 777 for folders. The default umask value is 022.

Note:

  • Enabling this option might cause inconsistent permission issues between different protocols. To avoid inconsistencies, we suggest leaving this option disabled.

Immediately release resources after disconnect:

Enabling this option immediately releases resources when the AFP server connection unexpectedly disconnects. If you receive "Volume in use" error messages while using Time Machine, please enable this option.

To search file contents via Finder:

After folders are fully indexed and then mounted on your Mac computer, you can use Finder to search for contents of the contained files.

  1. On your Synology NAS, launch Universal Search and click Preferences (the cogwheel icon) at the upper-right corner. In File Indexing > Indexed Folder List, click Create to index specific folders and contained files by file type.
  2. Mount the indexed folders to your Mac computer.
  3. On your Mac computer, click the desired mounted folder on the left panel of Finder, and use Finder to search contents of the contained files.

Note:

  • Network video recorder (NVR) models do not support searching file contents via Mac Finder.
  • Use Finder to search within mounted folders. Spotlight on the Mac desktop can only be used to search for local files.
  • On Mac OS X 10.9 and later versions, Finder supports searching within mounted folders by tag name and category.
  • When accessing shared folders via AFP, only 255 shared folders will be displayed (in alphabetical order) if the number of shared folders exceeds 255.