Category:	Utilities
Price:	Free
Popularity:	Medium
Version String:	4.0.17
Release Date:	2024-04-22
Architecture:	Intel & AppleSilicon(ARM)
Minimum OS:	macOS 10.14.0
Vendor Name:	Hans Luijten - Tweaking4All.com / WeetHet.nl.
Homepage:	www.tweaking4all.com

Description:

ConnectMeNow v3 – Mount Network Shares Quick and Easy on a Mac

macOS is great – I really like it a lot – but one thing it doesn’t handle all that great is … network shares.
In this day and age a little weird to still see this, especially from a company like Apple. We are more network connected than ever before – at home, in school and at work. We have network shares on our computers, want to access company network shares, or have a dedicated file server or NAS (Network Attached Storage) to store our information or make our backups.
Unfortunately, it is still cumbersome under macOS X to connect to those “shares” (also known as mounted network “Volumes“).
In Finder, a server doesn’t always appear right away, we need to go through a list of shares on a given “server”, get confused if we need SMB, CIFS, FTP, SSH, WebDAV, NFS or AFP, and I’m not even mentioning the need to enter a username and password on protected shares.
For this reason I created ConnectMeNow – initially just for personal use.
But the arrival of the 64 bit requirement, mandatory signed applications, and notarization requirements, and Catalina issues, my original old version was simply outdated.
So after months of work, I’d like to present ConnectMeNow v3, which hopefully makes working with shares easier for you as well.


Mounting Network Shares with ConnectMeNow

So, let’s start by explaining what “mounting network shares” means.

The simplest explanation would be:

Mounting Network Shares
Attaching a directory located on a different computer, shared over a network, to your computer as if it was a local disk drive.

Note: this is most certainly not the most complete, technical or most correct description, but for most regular users this will suffice.

The “different computer” can be another computer, a NAS (Network Attached Storage – like from QNAP, Synology, Western Digital, Seagate, etc.), or even a full size server. The Operating System of these “computers” does not need to be relevant. For example a QNAP NAS runs a Linux variant, however can share directories in a Windows originated format (SMB), and be accessed by a macOS computer.

Out of the box, under macOS, you’ll need to go through some hoops to “open” such a Network Share.
Either the “server” is listed in Finder on the left, and you’ll have to click it to be confronted with selecting a share-name and entering username and password, OR you have to use “Go” menu in Finder and select “Connect to server” option – which comes with even more questions.

Both options are rather cumbersome, if not slow, if you ask me (Apple: please pay attention here – this is a rather poor user experience!).
So this is where ConnectMeNow is supposed to come in. I just got tired of doing all this manual labor.

On that note: The Finder is even with ConnectmeNow not the best way to get to your mounted network shares.
When using ConnectMeNow, the easiest way is by going to the “/Volumes/” directory on your Mac where you’ll find all mounted network shares that are active.
More about that later, since ConnectMeNow also allows you to create your own directory where a mount should be placed and ConnectMeNow has the option in the menu to reveal the mount in Finder with a single click.


Quick overview of Features
I think ConnectMeNow has quite a lot to offer,… to name a few:

• Protocols support for SMB, AFP, NFS, SSH, SSHFS, WebDAV and FTP.
• Dark Theme support
• AutoMount at startup, after a network change, and after waking up from sleep or standby
• Support for Fallback servers, for when a server is not available
• SSHFS (OSXFUSE) support with password entry or SSH keys
• SSH support with automatic password entry or SSH Keys
• Assistance to generate and install SSH keys on your server
• Mount, unmount, and Reveal in Finder from the menu
• Open or Close SSH connections from the menu
• Indication in the menu if a connection is active or not
• Grouping options in the menu
• Official Mount (Apple API) or Fast Mount support
• Mount in /Volumes/ or in your own prefered mount directory
• Mount/Unmount notifications
• Detection of Mount, Unmount, Standby/Sleep/Wake up, and network changes
• Sharing of configurations amongst multiple Mac’s
• Optional Ping and/or Wake On LAN before mounting
• Run script after mount completion
• Configuration backup and restore options