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I migrated my photo library to an Asustor NAS and now I can’t see photos from Nitro for iPad or iPhone. My photo library is exported from Lightroom, so the folder structure is Y/Y-M-D. Photos are stored in a Photos folder within the Public folder in my NAS. I’m running iPadOS/iOS 26.4 on an M4 iPad Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max. Even after selecting Show Subfolder Contents, I can navigate to a folder containing photos and nothing shows up. Nitro for Mac works perfectly. I’ve tried clearing the cache, deleting and re-installing. I’m aware of the weirdness with the Files app and shared drives, but deleting and re-adding the SMB drives doesn’t seem to fix anything. I’m stumped.
I had the same idea and after struggling to make it work, I did more (some) research and discovered that according to Apple you shouldn’t store Photos library on a NAS. It needs to be on a direct (not networked) attached drive/locally mounted volume. There is a complex workaround using a sparse image and APFS, and the instructions are available through a web search.(not sure I can link here). I tried it on my uGreen NAS but it seemed too risky and complicated so I changed back to using a directly attached RAID.
A Photos Library on a network share is not supported by Apple, as far as I know. However, if you simply want to browse the images stored in folders, that would be different.
Not all NAS work with Nitro on iOS (Mac seems to be fine in general) – I have tested Synology (which worked) and UGreen (which did not work). The basic symptom is that the app can see the folders, but the contents are reported by the OS as empty. As far as I can tell, this is either a configuration issue or bug in the NAS (since some NAS work fine).
To be clear, I’m not trying to relocate my Apple Photos library to the NAS. That would be a nightmare. These are just my Lightroom photos. I’ll try tinkering with SMB settings and logging and see if I can find anything. Is there logging in Nitro which could be helpful?
There isn’t any logging, unfortunately. The app asks iOS for the contents of the directory, and it returns an empty list (zero items). There is no error, so the app cannot differentiate this from a folder that is actually empty.
I emailed the Gentleman Coders support email the content of my diagnostics file, as well as an AI analysis of the file. It does appear to be an SMB issue, but other apps on my iPad are able to see the photos on my NAS share after I disconnect and re-connect the shared folder.
Thanks for sending that. I wrote back to you on email. Some apps work on individual files, while others work with directories (and sub-directories). Apps that work with individual files are not affected by this problem because iOS provides the path to the file correctly. It’s the apps (like Nitro) that enumerate directories that have this issue. If you have Photomator, it has a similar ability to work with directories. Is it able to see all of the files inside and also tell when files are added and removed from the directory? When I tried Photomator in the past with a UGreen NAS (which also doesn’t work with Nitro), Photomator has the same problem – pointing to a bug below the app-level.
I am not using an Asustore NAS, but did a search for SMB issues on Asustore and iPadOS and found this :
https://www.reddit.com/r/asustor/comments/1koetng/iphone_files_app_thinks_shared_folder_is_read_only/Sorry to bump an old thread, but I hit the same problem with my SMB share. On macOS I could copy files just fine, but on iOS the folder always showed up as read-only.
What fixed it for me was adding the SMB domain to the username when logging in from iOS. So instead of just username, I had to use WORKGROUP\username. I hope that helps.
It is not the same, but might be related to the same cause in the Asustore Samba configuration, the page below is about a Samba ‘configuration’ issue :
https://nramkumar.org/tech/blog/2025/08/31/fixing-read-only-access-to-smb-shares-on-ios-18/In iOS files app, you can connect to a SMB server over LAN and use it for storage (read and write). After an upgrade to iOS 18, it looks like Apple changed something where default settings for my samba server on Linux no longer allowed write access to the share from iOS – the share was always showing up only as read-only.
The fix is to add the following to the [global] section of /etc/samba/smb.conf:
vfs objects = streams_xattr
After this, run sudo systemctl restart smb and now you should have read/write access to the share from iOS devices.
If I read the Samba documentation regarding this settings, it makes sense :
The streams_xattr Virtual File System (VFS) module enables applications to store information in Alternative Data Streams (ADS). Certain applications, such as the Microsoft Edge browser, require ADS to operate correctly. For example, if you use Edge to download a file to a Samba share that has no ADS support enabled, the download will fail.
Samba stores ADS in the user.DosStream.ADS_name extended attribute of a file or directory. Therefore, the file system of the share must support extended attributes. For details, see your operating system’s and file system’s documentation.
Thanks – this is really interesting. So, when you adjusted the login by prepending “WORKGROUP\” are you saying literally the word “WORKGROUP” or whatever the workgroup is in the SMB setup? I am unfamiliar with how SMB works or is setup.
If you do this (and potentially these other configuration changes) are you able to view files on a NAS with Nitro?
Hello Nik,
Sorry for the confusion, I did not try the solution myself, as I use Synology NAS boxes. I was interessed in the issue and searched for it, so I could maybe supply an answer or atleast a direction for the solution.
Regarding the prefix “WORKGROUP\” this is AFAIK the default setting for a Samba configuration and the Samba package is used by by NAS boxes for the SMB functionality.Thanks for clarifying that. I tried those steps but they did not work.
I think it’s because the Nitro problem isn’t one of permissions (read write vs. read only). It’s that the NAS is returning an empty list of files, period. Permissions wouldn’t explain that because the files would be visible but not openable.
I did some more searching, but could only find some postings regarding ‘empty directory’ using SMB from an iPad, but no solutions.
The Synology NAS has no issues, so is there is difference in the SMB configuration of Asustore ?
Is AFP filesharing enabled on the Asustor ? I have it disabled since it is an obsolete protocol.There is also a ‘fruit’ VFS module in Samba to improve/fix issues with Apple’s SMB3 implementation and seems to be incompatible with Netatalk AFP :
https://groups.google.com/g/linux.samba/c/qEw8TS1rG-EI saw references to this ‘fruit’ module as fixes for read-only files on SMB shares from macOS.
I have heard of the fruit module, but if it only fixes the permissions issues, then it’s not going to solve this problem. What is interesting is that Files.app is able to see into the folders, but my app (using standard Apple calls, which *should* be what Files.app uses) doesn’t.
I would not be surprised if Apple is using some private API’s in the Files App.
Since Nitro works fine on some NAS brands, the difference between them is IMHO the Samba configuration of the NAS.I have been looking in the smb configuration files of my Synology box and the only Vfs config line I see is : vfs objects=dirsort
I have minimal SMB version 2 and Max version 3.I cannot find anything on specific issue with iPadOS and uGreen or empty SMB folders.
Do other applications have the same issues ?A workaround might be ‘Secure Shellfish’, it can make sshfs connection available to other apps, as were they mapped SMB shares, using the ‘Browse for File’ UI.
I do not know if it works with the way Nitro requests the information, it uses the same API as cloud sync apps, as it is listed in that heading and not as an external server connection.Photomator has the same problems that Nitro has – it can open a file, but when it tries to access the folder, it sees no other images. Nitro treats the network share like any other directory – I wrote a test app that I gave to UGreen to show how my code works fine for local storage on iOS/macOS, on the Mac when talking to their NAS, but fails with iOS/NAS.
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