If you’re comfortable with the Terminal, this will certainly reduce the problem but not get rid of it.Īpple does offer a $20 upgrade for macOS that lets you turn a Mac into a more full-featured server, including better controls for folder access. That is, you’d expect you could say, “Shared Folder should always be reachable for everyone who has access to this system,” and yet there’s no simple way to ensure that.Ĭame up with a long command-line invocation you can use in Terminal to set a folder to keep permissions set correctly, but it only works when files are created in the folder-if you move a file or multiple items in, they don’t inherit the right permissions. Apple addsĮxtended file attributes on top of this that can be used by apps or the system.īut despite all the control over who can do what, there’s shockingly no way to lock permissions for a given folder such that everything created in it, modified in it, or added to it inherits the permissions of the parent folder. From here on, you can either simply copy-paste the files or drag them directly on your Mac.Unix generally divides permissions in user, group, and “world,” meaning all other users of the system for read, write, execute, and a few extras typically needed only by system files. Enter the details and hit Connect.Īs soon as that’s done, you should see the Shared folder under the Shared section in the Finder.
Next, you will be asked to enter the username and password for your Windows machine. In the Connect to Server window, either type smb:// or smb://. Open Finder, and from the menu bar, tap on Go > Connect to Server. Whereas, for the computer name, go to Settings > System > About > PC name. To get the IP address, go to Settings > Network & Internet > Advanced Options > Properties > IPv4 address. Now, you need to note down either the IP address of your machine or the computer name. In the Properties tab, tap on the Sharing tab, hit Share in the Network File and Folder Sharing, and hit Share again. To share a file or folder, right-click on it and go to Properties. Now, enable Turn on network discovery and enable Turn on file and printer sharing. Here, tap on Change advanced sharing settings. Go to Network and Internet and select HomeGroup. Press Windows key + X and go to Control Panel.
That said, let’s dive in and look at the steps. Once that’s done, we can move ahead and set up file sharing on one machine (using the built-in utility) and then access the files on another machine. So, in order for us to be able to share files from Windows to Mac (or vice-versa), the first thing we need to ensure is that both machines are connected to the same Wi-Fi network. To give a quick explainer on the process - what we are essentially trying to do with this method is to leverage the potential of Wi-Fi and the built-in share utility found on both Windows and Mac.
If you find yourself belonging to the latter half, here’s a how-to guide on how to share files between Mac and Windows wirelessly, without downloading any third-party software.
While most people are fine with going the extra mile of downloading software to share files, some find it annoying and want a rather simpler way that is pretty straight forward. Generally speaking, there are a variety of different ways to share files between Mac and Windows, with a majority of them requiring the need to download some kind of third-party software on both machines to establish the connection and transfer files.