Help · NFS Files Pro

Your NAS in the Finder

With Pro, every saved server appears in the Finder sidebar — usable from every Mac app's Open and Save dialogs. macOS makes you enable the location yourself, and the switch is not where you'd expect.

Where the switch actually is

This trips everyone up, including me. macOS does not put the toggle in System Settings → Login Items & Extensions, where you’d look for it. Instead:

1. Open a Finder window.
2. In the sidebar, under Locations, click NFS Files.
3. A banner appears across the top of that Finder window with an Enable button. Click it.
4. Your servers appear as folders inside the NFS Files location.

If you don’t see NFS Files in the sidebar: Finder → Settings → Sidebar → make sure NFS Files is ticked under Locations (it may take a few seconds to appear after the first launch with Pro).

The server card in NFS Files stays amber — Finish setup — until this is done, and re-checks each time the app becomes active.

What you can do there

• Open and save from any Mac app’s file dialogs, directly on the NAS.
• Drag files and folders in and out; drag between folders on the same server for a server-side move.
• Quick Look with the space bar, Get Info, rename, trash.
• Files download on demand when opened. Nothing is synced in bulk; nothing is kept once macOS evicts it.

If the location lists nothing

• Not enabled — the banner step above. Nearly always this.
• Renamed the server — that re-registers the location and resets the switch; enable it again.
• Two copies of NFS Files installed — the Mac App Store version and the iPhone/iPad version running on Apple silicon. They share an identity and only one can own the Finder location; the loser fails silently. Keep the Mac version and delete the other (Launchpad → hold the icon).
• The server isn’t reachable from this Mac right now.
• Pro isn’t active on this Mac — NFS Files → Settings → Restore Purchase if you bought on another device with the same Apple ID.

Speed

NFS Files talks NFS directly from the Finder extension — no proxy through the app — so throughput is the same as in the app. On the menu-bar NAS Monitor, transfers done through the Finder don’t yet show in the live-speed row; that’s a known gap.