LGM Connect: your NAS on your computer

17 min · 10 sections

LGM Connect is your NAS's own app. It is not a cut-down panel, nor a separate app with four features in it: it is the whole panel, with the same applications and the same Control Panel you see in the browser, and with whatever your account is allowed to open. What you have in the browser you have here, in the same place and looking the same.

What it adds is exactly what a web page cannot do on your computer:

Any NAS user signs in with their usual account, not only whoever administers it. Everyone sees their own things: the app does not hand out permissions, it only shows what the NAS already gives you.

At home you need nothing else. To use it from outside, the NAS needs a door to the outside world, and there are three: the LGM Connect address —the one your licence hands out, in Control Panel → External access → LGM Connect—, your own domain (see Access from the internet) or the VPN. With none of the three the app still works, just only while you are at home.

Installing

Windows

Download it from lgm-os.com → Download, in the "Download LGM Connect" card. The big button is the one for your system; the others are underneath. The installer installs for your user, so it does not ask for your computer's administrator password.

When you open it, Windows shows a blue screen saying "Windows protected your PC". There is nothing wrong with the file: the app is not signed by a recognised authority yet, and Windows warns about everything that is not. To carry on: More info → Run anyway.

The first time you use "Search my home network", Windows may ask whether to let LGM Connect use the network. Say yes for private networks, which is your home Wi-Fi. If you say no, the search will find nothing: you can still add the NAS by typing its address.

Updating

Once a day the app checks whether there is a new version and, if there is, tells you with a notice. It installs nothing on its own: go to System → Update, read what is new and press Install and restart. Before installing it checks that the download is signed by LGM-OS; if it is not, it does not install it and says so.

Ubuntu and other Linux

At lgm-os.com → Download, the Linux button downloads an .AppImage file: it is not installed, it is run. Give it permission to run once (right click → Properties → "Allow executing as a program", or chmod +x in a terminal) and open it with a double click. It works on Ubuntu 22.04 or later and on any distribution with an equally recent system library. Folders need GVFS on the system (it comes with GNOME and most desktops); if something is missing, the app says so by name.

Android

The Android button downloads an .apk. The app is not in the store yet, so Android will ask whether you allow installing "from this source": say yes only for that download. Open the app with the phone on your home Wi-Fi and press "Search my home network". Folders as a drive do not exist on the phone (there they live in Files); music, alerts and cameras do. When you close the app completely it will ask for your password again: on the phone it is not kept yet.

macOS and iPhone

Very soon. The downloads page lists all five systems; those without an installer yet appear dimmed with "very soon", and as soon as there is one it shows up there without you having to do anything.

Meanwhile, the panel opens in the browser from any device on your network, and can be kept with its own icon and no browser bar: Install the panel as an app.

Finding your NAS

The first screen asks which NAS you are connecting to. At the top is "Your NAS devices" —the ones you have already added, with "In use" on the one you are on— and below it, three ways to add one. You can have several and switch between them whenever you like.

Search my home network

This is the first thing to try. Your NAS announces itself on the network, so it comes up with its name and you do not need to know any address: press Add and that is it. Both of you have to be on the same network — the same Wi-Fi or the same cable.

If nobody shows up, the app tells you in those very words: check that the NAS is on and on that network, and if not, type its address.

Type the address

One single field. Its IP (192.168.1.50), the computer name, the LGM Connect address or the address you use over the VPN all work. You do not need to know which of those yours is: paste whatever you use to open the panel.

Before saving anything, the app checks: it shows the name that machine introduces itself with, its version and its signature. That is what turns "I typed an IP" into "it is my NAS and I recognised it". If nothing answers there, it says so and saves nothing.

I have an invitation

A piece of text somebody sends you over chat that carries the whole NAS: its name and every way of reaching it, the one at home and the ones from outside. It is the route for someone who lives in the house but has installed nothing, and the one that works best from a phone on mobile data or from somebody else's network.

The code starts with LGMC1. Paste it, the app shows you which NAS came out of it and how it is reached, and you sign in.

Whoever administers the NAS gets it from Users and groups → "Invite this computer", and copies it with a button. It carries no passwords: only where the machine is and which certificate it presents, so it can be sent through anything. Whoever receives it still needs their own NAS account.

From your lgm-os.com account

It is the same code, for the owner. In your account each NAS has its "Code for LGM Connect": copy it and paste it under "I have an invitation". The "Open my account" button at the bottom of that screen takes you straight there.

That code appears on the website as soon as the NAS reports how it is reached, which it does every twelve hours. If it is not there yet, copy it from the NAS panel as above.

The "NAS signature"

It is the fingerprint of your machine's certificate: its signature. The app saves it the first time and from then on only accepts that exact certificate. If it ever changes without you having touched anything, it does not connect and warns you, instead of signing in to whatever is there.

That is what lets you trust the certificate your NAS signs for itself. A freshly installed NAS may not have its own certificate yet: then you sign in all the same, just without that warning, and the screen tells you so.

Signing in

With your NAS username and password, the usual ones. If your account has a second factor, the app asks for the six-digit code after the password. And if your password has never been used, it makes you change it before going in, exactly like the panel.

"Remember this computer" is ticked by default. Your sign-in is kept in the system keychain —Credential Manager on Windows— and you are not asked for the password again. Untick it on a shared machine: the session then lives only while the app is open and ends when you close it.

• Switch NAS: the button under "Sign in", or the one that takes you back to "Your NAS devices".
• Sign out: the icon in the top right corner, next to your name. It closes the session on the NAS and forgets the sign-in saved on this computer.
• Remove a NAS from the list: the bin on its row. Your saved sign-in here is forgotten; the NAS and what is inside it are not touched.

Getting around the app

The applications are laid out in six categories, and the layout is a home's, not a server's:

On a wide window all six sit open in the left-hand bar. On a narrow one —or on a phone— they move to the bottom bar: you tap a category and a sheet comes up with its screens; if it only has one, you go straight in.

What you open does not close when you switch screens. Going back to Files returns you to the folder you were in, not to the beginning.

What your account does not have appears greyed out, not hidden, with a notice when you press it: "No permission for X: ask whoever administers the NAS". Knowing what is there is part of knowing what you can ask for. Who sees what is decided on the NAS, not here: Users and permissions.

"NAS settings" is the machine's Control Panel, and it only shows up if you administer it or if some of its screens have been shared with you. Below it sits "Alerts", which belongs to this computer and everyone can see.

The window and the tray

The close button hides the window, it does not quit the app: that way notifications keep reaching you and any folders you have connected stay put. The icon next to the clock brings it back with one click, and right-clicking it gives you three things: open it, start with the computer and really quit.

Folders

This is the only screen that does not exist in the browser panel, and it is the one that brings most people to install the app: your NAS folders, opened on this computer as if they were its own. It is in the Files category, first on the list.

Every folder has two things that look alike but are not the same:

Connect

Press Connect. The first time it asks for your NAS account: it is asked once per computer and kept in the system keychain, not in any file. When it is done, the row says where it ended up ("On this computer: N:\") and an Open button appears, which opens it in your file explorer.

Which route it connects by is decided by the app on its own, looking at which system you are on and whether you are at home or away. There is nothing for you to choose.

• Disconnect takes it off your computer. The files stay on the NAS, untouched.
• At startup makes it open by itself every time you turn the computer on. If the NAS is off, it keeps trying until it is back.

From outside your home the folder is opened over the internet, and for that Windows needs WinFsp and macOS needs macFUSE, installed once. They are free, and the screen itself tells you with the link before even trying. At home neither is needed.

On a phone this does not appear: there your folders are already in the Files app and take up no space on the device.

Having it offline too

"Sync here" asks you for a folder on this computer and from then on keeps the two level in both directions. The first time can take a while: everything has to come across.

The row tells you how it is going —"Getting ready the first time…", "Syncing", "Up to date 3 min ago", "Stopped: …"— and you get "Sync now" so you do not have to wait and "Stop syncing" to end it (the files stay where they are, on both sides).

If two computers touch the same file without seeing each other, you get "2 with two versions". Nothing is thrown away: both are there, the second one with "conflicto" in its name, and you decide which one counts.

Two things can stop you from starting, and whoever administers the NAS fixes both: that folder not having web access turned on, and nobody in the house syncing it yet — setting it up the first time is an administration job. The screen tells you which of the two it is.

Music

The Music app is the panel's, with three things a browser cannot do.

It keeps playing wherever you go. Put a record on and go to Files, Backups or the settings: a mini player stays at the bottom with what is playing, to pause, skip a song or go back with “Open Music”.

The keyboard keys are in charge. The playback keys (pause, next, previous) and the system media control —the one that shows up when you touch the volume or on the lock screen— drive LGM Connect's music, with its title, artist and cover.

Save on this device. Open an album or a playlist in Music and press “Save on this device”: it is downloaded to this computer and plays even with the NAS off or without signal. Nothing on the NAS is touched. What is saved lives under Media → “Saved on this device”, with how much it takes and a cap (“At most”); changing the cap deletes nothing. “Remove” deletes it from this device, and the NAS stays as it was. In the browser that button does not exist: it belongs to the app.

Movies, Gallery and the rest of the apps

Every other screen is exactly the panel's: Movies and series, Gallery, Files, Backups, Cameras, Calendar… There are no two versions of anything, so what you learn in one works in the other, and each guide serves both:

• Files · Gallery · Notepad
• Cameras · Backups
• Home services (downloads, calendar, printer, the TV)
• Package Center and containers · [Virtual machines](maquinas-virtuales.md)

Alerts

System → Alerts. Whatever the NAS has to tell you comes out through your computer's notification centre even with the window hidden, which is where it will be nearly all the time. This only works in the installed app: in a browser there is nothing asking the NAS while you are not looking at it.

Two switches:

• Alerts on this device: on or off. It applies to this computer and to nobody else, just like the volume.
• Only the important ones: the ones asking you to look at something — a failing disk, a backup that did not run. The rest stays in the panel's bell.

When you press a notification, the app takes you to where it is: if it is motion on a camera, to Cameras; if not, to the bell, where the alert is written out in full and with its time.

Each alert comes out once only, and the first time you point the app at a NAS that already has history you do not get twenty at once: old news is not news.

Cameras

In Cameras, the "Open in another window" button opens the wall in a real window, with no bars and no menus, so you can leave it in a corner while you work on something else. The window remembers where it was, and if it is already open the button brings it to the front instead of opening a second one.

On a camera's live view, the picture-in-picture button pops the video out into the system's little floating window, which stays on top of everything else.

Both are computer things: they do not appear on a phone.

If something goes wrong

"Cannot reach the NAS"

An amber strip appears at the top and you do not lose what you were looking at. The app keeps checking on its own; "Try again" does it now. Check that the NAS is on and, if you are away from home, that you have a connection.

"The NAS certificate has changed"

The signature saved the first time is no longer the one the machine presents. Two cases, and it is worth telling them apart:

• You have reinstalled the NAS or given it a new certificate: remove it from the list and add it again, preferably from "Search my home network".
• You have touched nothing: somebody may be impersonating it. Do not sign in and find out what happened first.

"No permission for…"

Your account does not have that application. It is not an LGM Connect fault: ask whoever administers the NAS, who hands it out in Control Panel → Users and groups.

A folder will not connect

The app tells you the real reason. The ones that actually come up:

The invitation code is not accepted

• "That is not an invitation code": LGM Connect's start with LGMC1. You have most likely pasted something else.
• "It cannot be read": it got cut while copying. Ask for it again and paste it whole.
• "It was made by a newer NAS version": update LGM Connect and paste it again.

I cannot find the NAS on the network

Check the thing everybody forgets: that you are both on the same network. A computer on a cable and a NAS on another virtual network cannot hear each other. If the search still comes up empty, type the NAS address: the app will find it all the same.

Would you rather not install anything? The panel opens in a browser from any device on the network, and it can be left with its own icon too: Install the panel as an app. And if what you want is the NAS showing up as just another folder without going through LGM Connect, there is Connecting your devices.

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