Sharing Files Between Mac OS X and Windows

Popular belief is that Windows and Mac could not be more different and will never work well together. In a lot of ways, that’s true. There’s no native way to use most iCloud features on Windows, the filesystems often conflict in services like Dropbox due to a difference in naming—what’s hidden and what isn’t—and so on.

Despite all this, Apple still built OS X with a function that allows file sharing with Windows. It’s hidden in System Preferences, though, and most people don’t know how to use it. In this tutorial, I’ll show you the basics of sharing files with Windows using OS X’s native solution, as well as a few alternatives.

How File Sharing Works

Every computer has the ability to share files with another machine over a network, whether it’s a local area network (LAN) or wireless local area network (WLAN). The devices use the router as a connection point to transmit files to each other.

The term file sharing makes this technology sound limited—you can actually share entire folders with people on the same network as you. iTunes uses this technology to share your media library with other people on your network.

File sharing can often be a faster way to keep computers on your network updated with the latest files for a project. People usually use it with one platform or the other, not Mac-to-Windows or vice versa.

It can, however, be a better way to collaborate in the office or give files to a friend without a USB drive or any external hardware aside from a network. If you don’t have a network or the Windows machine you’re using doesn’t have Wi-Fi, you can always use a direct Ethernet cable instead.

Users and File Sharing

Before you proceed, it’s important that you know administrator accounts have access to the entire Macintosh HD.

On the Windows side, you’ll be prompted to log in to an account on the Mac for file sharing. If you use your administrator account, it will have access to everything on your computer. If you’d like to restrict the access, you can do so by adding a new user account and giving it access to those files. The Windows machine will then use its credentials and be sandboxed to those specific files and folders.

Adding a user account may be necessary if you need to keep some things private.

Another important note about administrator accounts in file sharing: they have read and write access. If you don’t want the Windows machine to have the ability to add, remove, or modify something on your Mac, ensure that you use an extra user account.

Setting Up Native File Sharing With Windows

Configuring Windows file sharing is a pretty straightforward process and only takes about five minutes. Below is a step-by-step guide to getting started.

1. Ensure you’re connected to the same network as the other computer(s).
2. Launch System Preferences, select the Sharing pane, and unlock it if need be.
3. Select File Sharing from the sidebar, but don’t check the box beside it just yet.
4. If you chose to use the user-based file sharing method, you’ll need to set which folders to share. Under the Shared Folders menu, add a folder you would like to share by clicking +, locating it in the file browser, and double-clicking it. There may be a delay when clicking + while the system loads settings. By default, your user’s Public folder will be the only thing shared. You can copy items into it to share them.
5. Click Options and check the On box beside your user in the Windows File Sharing box.
6. Check the On box beside File Sharing in the left pane to switch it on.

Accessing the Files from Windows

Once you’ve set up file sharing on the Mac, accessing it is the second part of the challenge. Once again, I’ve compiled a quick step-by-step guide to make sure you can access the files.

The whole process is pretty quick.

1. Launch Windows Explorer and click Network in the left pane. You may be asked to enable network visibility. You need to do this in order to access the files on your Mac.
2. Find the Mac. It may be named something different than it is in System Preferences. For example, my computer’s local network name is FluffyMittenBook, but it appeared as MACBOOKPRO–14D8 on the Windows machine. You’ll find the machine under the Computer section of the Explorer window.
3. Double-click the icon for the Mac. You’ll be asked for a username and password. These credentials will be the same as the ones associated with the user account from which you are sharing the files. To check the username, head to Finder and look at the name beside your home folder. Be sure to use the exact same name—it’s case-sensitive.
4. Upon successful authentication, the Windows computer will be granted access to the folders that you have shared on the network. If you logged in with an administrator account, you’ll see its public folder, home folder, and the Macintosh HD, along with any other folders you shared.
5. To test the connection with your Mac, try transferring a file from it to the desktop. If you have administrator access to the Mac in File sharing, you can also try transferring something to the Mac. These should be relatively fast, but it all depends on the speed of the router and computer WiFi cards.

OS X File Sharing Alternatives

It’s important to mention the other options available to Mac and Windows users. I’ve compiled a short list of the two best tools for the job below, along with a short description of why they’re useful. You may have your own preference, which you’re free to mention in the comments.

• Dropbox. I use this cloud-based service for everything from photo backups to large file sharing. Most people don’t know that it has local network sync as well, so you can transfer large files from one computer to another quickly if they’re near each other.
• Google Drive. This service is similar to Dropbox, but has more space for free and is powered by Google’s absurdly-vast array of servers. It has native apps available for both Mac and Windows, but unlike Dropbox it does not offer local network sync.

More Sharing

In this tutorial, I’ve described file sharing from Mac to Windows, common issues you may encounter, and some alternatives to the integrated options. For more on the topic, refer to “A Beginner’s Guide to OS X File Sharing”.

Share Mac files with Windows users

To let users connect to your Mac from a Windows computer, turn on file sharing and enable SMB sharing.

Set up file sharing on the Mac

On your Mac, choose Apple menu

> System Preferences, then click Sharing.

Select the File Sharing tickbox, then click Options.

Select “Share files and folders using SMB”.

In the Windows File Sharing list, select the tickbox next to the user account that will be used to share files with Windows users, enter the password for that user, then click OK.

Choose View > Network, select your active connection, then click Advanced.

Click the WINS tab, then enter the workgroup name used by the Windows computer.

If you don’t know the workgroup name, on the Windows computer open Control Panel > System and Security > System. (Windows computers normally use either WORKGROUP or MSHOME.)

Click OK, then click Apply.

Provide the information Windows users need

To connect to your Mac, Windows users need the network address for your Mac, and a username and password to use to log in to your Mac.

To find your Mac computer’s network address, choose Apple menu

> System Preferences, click Sharing, then select File Sharing. The address appears below the “File Sharing: On” indicator, and looks similar to this example: smb://17.212.167.33/.

Create an account on your Mac for each Windows user. To create accounts, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Users & Groups.

If you want to use an account that existed before you installed the latest version of macOS, you may need to reset the password for the account in Users & Groups preferences.

Because the passwords of user accounts used for Windows sharing may be stored in a less secure manner, turn off the account when it’s not being used. Before you turn off Windows sharing, turn off all the accounts you enabled. Otherwise, the passwords are still stored less securely.

How to share files between Mac and Windows 10 without using any software

Although there are several methods like using Team Viewer, Cloud storage, etc. to transfer files between Mac OS X and Windows 10, you can send a file from Mac to Windows without any software. All you need to do is to turn on File Sharing on Mac OS X, and you are good to go. To get things done, follow the following steps, which are quite easy.

Send files from Mac to Windows PC

Before getting started, you should know that you can execute these following steps only when your Windows computer and MacBook are connected to the same network, i.e., Wi-Fi router.

To start, you need to connect both computers to the same network. After that, you need to enable File Sharing on MacBook. To do that, open System Preferences. You can d0 that using Spotlight search or go to the Apple logo in the navigation menu bar > System Preferences and click on Sharing option.

As you want to share files, you need to turn on File Sharing. Following that, click the Options button and select the following checkboxes-

• Share files and folders using SMB
• Share files and folders using AFP

You will find an IP address on the Sharing window, which looks like this-

You need this IP address. So, copy it somewhere.

Following that, open up your Windows computer and press Win+R to open the Run prompt and enter the IP address like this-

You will be asked for the username and password. Enter your MacBook’s username and password correctly, after which you will see this window.

From here, you can access all the MacBook’s files from Windows computer.

Hope this simple tutorial will be helpful for you.

This post shows you how to transfer data from Windows PC to Mac using Windows Migration Assistant Tool.

Date: May 13, 2018 Tags: Mac

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Sudip is a student who loves to engage with the latest technology & gadgets. Apart from writing about all things technology, he is a Photoshop junkie and a football enthusiast.

How to mount a Windows shared folder on your Mac

So you’ve made the switch to Mac, but kept your old PC, and now you’ve got both connected to your home router. How do you access your Windows files from OS X?

Sure you could set up an FTP or SSH server , but that’s overkill for a regular home network . Turns out that Mac OS X can connect to Windows shared folders very easily. Read on to find out how.

How to set up a home FTP server

If you’ve been following the the Lifehacker Home Server Series of articles, you know how to do…

Set up sharing on your PC. To get this going, make sure your PC is set up for file sharing . In Windows, choose the folder you want to access from your Mac, and right-click to get to its Properties dialog box. From the sharing tab, turn on sharing, and choose a name for the shared folder. (This is the name you’ll see on your Mac.)

If you try to use a name more than 12 characters long, Windows will warn you about some operating systems not being able to grok it. To be safe, stick with something less than 12. Here, I’m sharing the «My Documents» folder as «PC — My Docs.» Also, check the «Allow network users to change my files» if you want to save files to this share from your Mac.

Determine your PC’s IP address. You’ll need to give your Mac an address to look for this shared folder, so get your PC’s local IP address from the command line by running ipconfig . In my setup (shown below), that address is 192.168.1.102. Write that number down.

UPDATE: Several readers have pointed out that you can use your PC’s name versus its IP address to connect to it. Using the name is a better method than IP address because the IP can change if it’s assigned dynamically, but the name won’t unless you change it.

Connect to the server on your Mac. Now, on your Mac, from Finder’s Go menu, choose «Connect to Server.» Enter the IP address you just obtained from your PC, preceded by smb:// , as shown:

UPDATE: To use your PC’s name instead of IP address, replace the number with the name. So if your PC’s name is «MyWindowsBox», you’d use smb://mywindowsbox (not case-sensitive).

If it finds your server, you’ll get prompted to enter your network credentials — by default, your Windows username and password:

Once you’re in, you’ll get to choose which shared folder you want to mount on your Mac. In this case, we’re going to choose the «PC — My Docs» share:

Share Files from Mac OS X to Windows PC’s Easily

If you have a mixed network of Mac and Windows PC’s, chances are good that you’ll be wanting to move files between the two operating systems. The easiest way to share files from Mac OS X to Windows is to enable Samba support for a given user account on the Mac. This tutorial will how to share files between Mac and Windows PC this way.

Samba (SMB) may have a funny name but it’s essentially just Mac OS X to Windows file sharing support. Because it’s not required by all Mac users or for Mac-to-Mac sharing, it’s actually a separate unique sharing option within Mac OS X File Sharing panel, and enabling it allows a Windows PC to connect to the Mac without any additional software. Let’s cover exactly how to enable this feature, and then how to connect to a shared Mac from a networked Windows PC so that you can swap files back and forth with ease.

Enable Mac to Windows File Sharing in Mac OS X

First you need to enable the Windows to Mac file sharing functionality, this is a simple preference toggle in Mac OS system settings on the Mac:

1. Launch “System Preferences” and click on “Sharing”
2. Click the checkbox next to “File Sharing” to enable it
3. Once File Sharing is turned on, select it and then click on the “Options…” button
4. Click the check box next to “Share files and folders using SMB (Windows)”
5. Now click on the checkbox next to the user accounts you want to share or access from Windows – when you click to enable SMB sharing on a user account, you will be asked for that users password
6. Click on “Done”

With SMB enabled, we now can connect from the Windows PC to the Mac. If you already know the Macs IP address you can skip this first part of this and go directly to the Windows PC to access the shared users directory.

Connect to the Mac File Share from a Windows PC

With SMB and Windows File Sharing enabled, you can now connect to the Mac from any Windows PC. First you’ll get the Macs IP address that you need to connect to, then you’ll connect to that from Windows:

Back at the ‘Sharing” system preference panel, take note of your Macs IP address as seen below, discard the afp:// portion and pay attention to the numbers in the format of x.x.x.x

From the Windows PC connecting to the Mac:

• Go to the Start menu and choose “Run” or hit Control+R from the Windows desktop
• Enter the IP address of the Mac in the format of \\192.168.1.9\ and choose “OK”
• Enter the shared Mac OS X users login and password and click on “OK”

Access to the shared Mac directory and user files appear as any other folder within Windows. You’re free to copy or access individual files, or perform more substantial tasks like moving an iTunes library from a Windows PC to a Mac.

This process of connecting to the Mac should be identical from Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 10, and Windows 8 or RT, and enabling file sharing on the Mac is the same in MacOS Catalina 10.15, MacOS Mojave 10.14, macOS High Sierra 10.13, macOS Sierra 10.12, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, 10.7 Lion, 10.8 Mountain Lion, and OS X Mavericks 10.9, and El Capitan 10.11, OS X Yosemite 10.10.x. SAMBA has been a supported Mac protocol for a very long time, so technically you will find that older Macs and OS X versions will also be supported by this.

Connecting to a Windows PC from a Mac

Going the other direction, you can connect to a Windows Shared PC very easily from a Mac running Mac OS X:

1. From the Mac OS X Finder, hit Command+K to summon “Connect To Server”
2. Choose the “Browse” button to browse the available network shares, double-clicking on the share to enter a login
3. OR: In the “Server Address” field, simply enter the IP of the Windows share to connect to preceded by smb://

For example, to connect to a Windows share at 192.168.1.115, the smb address would be: smb://192.168.1.115

Note that an issue with some versions of Mac OS X Mavericks causes smb:// to use Samba2 rather than Samba1, which may cause connection errors with some servers. If you run into such a problem connecting to a NAS or SMB Windows share from OS X 10.9 Mavericks, you can forcibly use Samba1 with the cifs:// prefix like so: cifs://192.168.1.115 – this is not the case with Mac OS X Yosemite or other versions of MacOS and Mac OS X.

What about the .DS_Store files?

Depending on the Windows PC settings, you might see a bunch of .DS_Store files on the Mac file system. These are normal but if you’re peeved by them, you can disable .DS_Store files by entering the following defaults write command in Mac OS X’s Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true

If you want them back, just switch that to ‘false’ at the end.