Installing the panel as an app

9 min · 12 sections

The panel can be installed on your phone, tablet or computer like any other app: its own icon, no browser bar, and it starts faster. There is nothing to download from any store — it is the panel itself.

Two steps, and the first one is the one nearly everybody skips:

1. Install your NAS's certificate on that device.
2. Add the panel to the home screen or the desktop.

What you get out of it

It is not just the icon. These four things do not exist while the panel is just another browser tab:

Why the certificate is needed

Your NAS is yours and it is in your house, so there is nobody outside who can vouch that it is who it says it is. To solve that, the NAS creates its own certificate authority when it is installed and signs the panel's certificate with it. That is why the browser shows the "not secure" warning the first time: it does not know that authority.

You can click past that warning to look at the panel, but there are things the browser will not do until you trust the authority, and there is no way around it from the panel:

• installing the panel as an app (on Android and on the computer),
• storing a copy of the interface so it opens fast, and
• receiving alerts.

What you see when it is missing is confusing, and worth recognising: instead of the app, the browser saves a plain shortcut with no logo that opens blank with the address bar on top.

The iPhone is a half-exception. Safari lets you "Add to Home Screen" with nothing installed, so the icon appears anyway — but you will keep seeing the warning every time, and there will be no alerts and no stored copy. Install the certificate there too.

Installing the certificate is done once per device and does not need repeating even if the NAS changes address.

⚠️ Installing it tells that device to trust your NAS for any address it signs. On a home network that is normal, but keep it in mind: install it only on your own devices, and do not pass it around.

Step 1: install the certificate

Download it from the panel itself: Control Panel → External access → Certificate. There is a button to get it, the steps for the device you are looking from, and a picker to see another device's steps — handy for preparing your phone from the computer.

The file is called lgm-os-autoridad.crt.

iPhone and iPad

1. Settings → "Profile Downloaded" → Install.
2. Settings → General → About → Certificate Trust Settings, and switch it on there.

The second step is the one always forgotten, and without it the first one is worthless: the certificate sits there installed but switched off.

Android

1. Search for "certificate" in the phone's Settings: it is under **"Encryption & credentials"**. On some phones that hangs off Security → More settings, on others off "Security & privacy"; the name of the section does not change.
2. "Install a certificate" → "CA certificate" → "Install anyway".
3. Pick the downloaded file, lgm-os-autoridad.crt.

Two things that stop a lot of people here:

• If the phone has no PIN or pattern, it will ask for one first. Android does not install certificates without a screen lock, and there is no way round it.
• Afterwards it warns that "the network may be monitored". It says that whenever one is installed, whoever it belongs to; yours is your NAS's.

Windows

1. Open the downloaded file and press "Install Certificate".
2. Choose "Local Machine" and then "Place all certificates in the following store".
3. Browse → "Trusted Root Certification Authorities".
4. Close the browser completely and open it again.

If you leave it in "Personal" — which is the default — it does not work: it has to go into the trusted roots store.

Mac

1. Open the downloaded file: it is added to Keychain Access.
2. Find it under "System", open it and set Trust → "Always Trust".

Linux

1. Chrome, Brave, Edge and Vivaldi do not read the system store: type chrome://certificate-manager (in Brave, brave://certificate-manager; in older versions, chrome://settings/certificates) → "Local certificates" → "Installed by you" → Import, pick the file and tick "Trust this certificate for identifying websites". Close the browser completely and open it again.
2. Firefox has its own store: Settings → Privacy & Security → Certificates → View Certificates → Authorities → Import.
3. System-wide (optional): on Debian and Ubuntu, copy it to /usr/local/share/ca-certificates/ and run "sudo update-ca-certificates"; on Arch, CachyOS, Fedora and openSUSE, "sudo trust anchor --store lgm-os-autoridad.crt".

Step 2: add the panel

With the certificate in place the browser warning is gone and it can be installed.

iPhone and iPad

Open the panel in Safari, press Share and choose "Add to Home Screen". Safari has no install button; those two steps are how it is done.

Android

Chrome offers it on its own, with an "Install app" prompt. If it does not appear, it is in the three-dot menu as "Install app" or "Add to Home screen".

Windows, Mac and Linux

Chrome and Edge show an install icon in the address bar, on the right. It is also in the three-dot menu. Firefox does not install web apps: there the panel is used as a normal tab.

Checking it worked

Three signs, and all three have to be true:

1. The icon carries the NAS logo, not a thumbnail of the page or a letter.
2. There is no address bar when you open it.
3. Control Panel → External access → Certificate no longer warns that it needs installing. The panel checks this from inside the app itself, which is where a missing certificate shows.

If 1 or 2 fail, what got saved was a shortcut: go back to step 1.

Alerts on your phone

With the app installed, Control Panel → Alerts → Alerts on your devices switches notifications on for that device. The important ones — critical and warnings — arrive even with the panel closed.

No third-party accounts: your NAS generates the keys and the message travels end-to-end encrypted.

What is needed:

Two different alerts no longer replace each other: if "a disk is dying" arrives and then "the backup failed", you will see both, and they stay until you tap them.

Sending things to the NAS from any app

With the app installed, the NAS appears in the phone's Share menu. You pick photos in the gallery, share to LGM-OS, and the panel asks which folder to put them in.

What you share is not uploaded until you choose a folder: if you pick the wrong app, nothing has left the phone.

It also works with a link or some text: it is saved as a .txt instead of being lost.

How often you have to redo this

Almost never, and it is worth knowing why:

Because the panel's certificate is signed by your authority, your devices keep accepting it when it renews, with nothing to do. Same if the NAS changes IP address: the panel's certificate is reissued with the new one, signed by the same authority, and nothing has to be repeated on any device.

If something does not work

Removing it

• The app: delete it like any other (press and hold → remove; on a computer, from the window's own menu or the browser's app list).
• The certificate: on iPhone, Settings → General → VPN & Device Management → the profile → Remove. On Android, Settings → Encryption & credentials → Trusted credentials → User. On Windows, certlm.msc → Trusted Root Certification Authorities. On Mac, Keychain Access → System.

Removing the certificate breaks nothing on the NAS: it only makes that device see the warning again.

The other option: a real certificate

Everything above is for using the NAS at home. If you also want to get in from outside, there is a route that needs nothing installed on any device: your own domain name and a Let's Encrypt certificate, which every browser already knows. With that there is nothing to install anywhere and the app installs first time, including on a guest's phone.

It is covered in Access from the internet.

See also

• Connecting your devices — the NAS as a folder, as well as an app.
• When something is not working — if the panel will not open at all.