Files

8 min · 9 sections

Everything the NAS stores, from the browser: moving through folders, uploading and downloading, looking at a photo or a contract without downloading it, sharing with people who have no account and getting deleted things back. The Files app is the web view; for day-to-day work from your PC the comfortable way is still the network folder of a lifetime (SMB sharing) — and both see the same thing, recycle bin included.

Moving around and organising

• At the top there are three tabs, the same as in Gallery, Music, Movies and Downloads: Mine is your My Drive, with your Photos, Music, Videos, Documents and Downloads folders already made and private; Shared with me, what other people at home have let you see or change; and Household, the household folders you have permission for. The window remembers which one you left it on. (An administrator with "See everything in every account" on has a fourth, Everyone's, view only.)
• If you have clouds connected or folders from other computers mounted, they show up too, with their name, only when they are really connected. Mounting folders from other computers and "Open as disk" for an ISO image are for whoever administers.
• The folders you use daily can be pinned to the sidebar (right-click menu → "Pin to the sidebar") and stay one click away.
• Creating folders and files, renaming, cutting, copying and pasting work like in any file explorer, shortcuts included (Ctrl+C/X/V, F2, Del). Copying or moving lots of things runs as a panel task: you can close the window and it carries on.
• Compress turns a selection into a ZIP right there; "Extract here" opens one. Both run as tasks with progress: compressing a 100 GB folder freezes nothing.

Uploading and downloading

Drag files —or whole folders— onto the window, or use the Upload button. Each upload shows its progress; whatever fails to upload is named, with the reason. Downloading is the double click (or the preview's Download button); a folder downloads as a ZIP.

The uploads tray, top right, tells you how much of the batch is done, how fast it goes and how long is left. Large files go up in pieces: if the page reloads or the network drops, whatever already arrived stays on the NAS and the tray shows it as unfinished, with its bar. Continue asks you to choose the same files again and carries on from where it was; Discard throws away what arrived. Whatever nobody continues within a day is deleted on its own.

The preview

Double-clicking a file shows it, without downloading it and without opening anything else:

• Photos: with rotate, zoom and full screen. To see them with the whole library — timeline, albums, favourites — there is "Open in Gallery" in the menu, and the Gallery guide.
• Video and audio: they play right there. A format the browser cannot play shows the download button instead of a silent error.
• PDF: whole, in the window itself.
• Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and the open formats): the NAS converts them to PDF and shows that — read only, the original is not even touched. To edit them in the browser there is the Documents editor; the preview's "Edit" button takes you there.
• Notes and text: a .md file shows up composed —headings, lists, bold— with the same view as the Notepad, and a button opens it there for editing. Other text files (.txt, .log, .json…) show as they are.

Search

The box at the top searches by name in the folder you are in and its subfolders — and it is instant: the NAS keeps a name index that updates itself, so searching a NAS with a million files answers complete and on the spot. With no folder picked it searches all your folders (only yours: search respects what each account sees).

"Search inside the files" also looks into the content of text files: notes, configurations, code, lists. Results can be opened, renamed or deleted right there, no hunting for the folder.

Sharing

Give access to another account

Right-click a folder in your My Drive (or select it and use the toolbar) → "Share with someone in the household": the window with the people at home opens (and the groups, if there are any). Tick whoever you want and choose "Can view" or "Can change". They get a notice with "Open" that takes them to their Shared with me tab; you keep it just the same. To take it back, the same window, or Control Panel → Your account → "What you share", which says who can do what and asks before you stop sharing.

• Over the network, what is shared with you shows up in a separate folder, "Compartido-conmigo", outside your My Drive and read-only: changes are made in the panel. It is for what comes from another person's My Drive; what is shared inside a household folder opens only in the panel.
• Household folders are handed out with their permission list, in `Control Panel → Household folders`, as always.

A download link

To hand something to someone without an account: right-click → "Share via link…". The link downloads that file (or that folder, as a ZIP) for whoever holds it — and nothing else: they do not see the rest of the NAS.

• Optional expiry: the link dies on its own when it is due.
• Optional password, so you can send the link through one channel and the key through another.
• The panel keeps each link's download count, and revoking it is one click.
• Only the owner creates links to their things: someone who can change a folder of yours cannot take it outside the house with a link.

Request files

The other way round: having things sent to you. Right-click a folder → "Request files here…" creates a link that shows the other person an upload page with no account and no view of your NAS: whatever they upload lands in that folder, without overwriting anything already there, and you get a notification on arrival. With expiry (a day, a week, a month), an optional password and a size cap. A folder's active requests are visible — how many files have arrived — and revocable from the same menu.

The recycle bin

Deleting sends to that household folder's Recycle bin, and it is the same bin no matter where you delete from: what you remove from the PC through the network folder lands in the same place. From the bin you restore to the original location or empty it for good.

• Permanent delete, skipping the bin: Shift+Del, and it asks.
• What someone else deletes from your things, with permission to change them, lands in your recycle bin, the one in your My Drive.
• The bin cleans itself up over time, and its size counts as used space until then: if the volume is running tight, emptying it is the first place to look.

Folders that empty themselves

For the folder things pass through on their way somewhere else —what somebody leaves for you to pick up, what gets uploaded from a phone, what is sent to print— there is a switch under Control Panel → Household folders → Empties itself. It comes switched off.

• Every day, anything untouched for more than N days is taken out. The countdown starts from the last time the file changed, so saving it again restarts it.
• If the folder has a recycle bin, what is taken out goes there and can be recovered. As the bin lives inside the folder, the space is not freed until it is emptied (that happens on its own too). With no bin it is deleted, and the panel says so plainly when you turn it on.
• Opening the folder in Files shows a notice at the top —“anything you leave here disappears after N days”— so nobody keeps there what has to stay.

Versions

If the NAS takes snapshots of the volume, every file carries its history: right-click → Versions shows the copies the snapshots kept, dated, and restoring one is a click — a whole folder too, which comes back as a task. Without scheduled snapshots there are no versions: the screen says so and points you to turning them on.

From a Windows PC, those same versions appear under the network folder's "Previous versions": that is covered in Watching over and defending the data.

The history of a file

Right-click a file → "When did it change?…" shows its history: every different version kept by the snapshots and the recycle bin, with its date, its size and who saved it. Each one can be viewed right there or downloaded.

• Restore puts that version back in place. The current one is not lost: it goes to the recycle bin and shows up in the history as one more, in case you change your mind.
• In a folder without a recycle bin, restoring places the version next to it, dated in its name, and the current file is left alone.
• With many snapshots the oldest versions may not show up here; they are all still in the snapshots.

Notes

"New note" creates a Markdown file in the folder you are in and opens it in the Notepad to write on the spot. Markdown on purpose: such a note reads nicely —headings, lists, checkboxes— and is still a plain text file that opens from any machine, over SMB or from the phone.