Connecter
A macOS menu bar utility for managing SMB network share connections. Connecter mounts and monitors your network shares automatically, with smart retry logic and network-aware behavior.
Features
- Automatic mounting — shares connect on launch and reconnect after sleep, network changes and interruptions
- Menu bar status — at-a-glance connection state with per-share quick actions
- Secure credentials — passwords stored exclusively in the macOS Keychain, never on disk; the share list can be rebuilt from the Keychain (“Recover from Keychain”)
- Smart retry — exponential backoff (×2, ×4, then 5 min) with configurable auto-disable after repeated failures, and a notification when a share is switched off
- Network-aware — pauses checks while offline (
NWPathMonitor) and re-checks every share as soon as connectivity returns
- Server-aware — probes the SMB port before every mount attempt, so an unreachable NAS costs nothing (no NetFS calls, no failure count) and shares come back within one check interval of the server returning
- Stable mount points — reuses a stale
/Volumes/<share> left by an interrupted mount instead of ending up at /Volumes/<share>-1, so saved paths keep working
- Launch at login — via
SMAppService, off by default
- Activity log — filterable log of all mount/unmount/error events, also written to a rotating file
- Notifications — optional macOS notifications for connection events
- Localized — English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese and Simplified Chinese (String Catalog)
Requirements
- macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later
- Xcode 26 or later and an Apple Developer account for signed builds
Building
- Clone the repo
- Open
connecter.xcodeproj in Xcode
- Set your development team in the project signing settings
- Build and run (
⌘R)
No external dependencies — only system frameworks (SwiftUI, AppKit, NetFS, ServiceManagement, Network, Security, UserNotifications).
App Sandbox and distribution
The app runs inside the App Sandbox with the network.client entitlement, as required by the Mac App Store. Everything the app needs works there:
| Capability | How it is done |
|---|
| Mounting | NetFSMountURLAsync (the mount is performed by macOS's NetAuth agent) |
| Unmounting | FileManager.unmountVolume(at:) via Disk Arbitration |
| Port check | Non-blocking BSD socket (PortProbe), no external processes |
| Mount detection | mountedVolumeURLs + volumeURLForRemountingKey |
| Open in Finder | The share's smb:// URL is handed to Finder |
| Log file | Library/Logs/Connecter/ inside the app container |
One thing a sandboxed process cannot do is signal other processes. On macOS 27 the system's NetAuth agent can stop answering mount requests; a non-sandboxed build restarts it automatically, whereas the sandboxed build shows the user how to do it (killall NetAuthSysAgent NetAuthAgent) and retries afterwards. AppEnvironment.isSandboxed selects the behavior at runtime, so the same code base can also be shipped outside the store with Developer ID signing and the sandbox turned off.
See docs/app-store-checklist.md for the submission checklist.
Architecture
connecterApp.swift — @main, scene setup, AppDelegate
ContentView.swift — main window, toolbar, share list, NetAuth recovery
Managers/
MountManager.swift — mounting, monitoring, retry logic, NetAuth diagnosis
PortProbe.swift — sandbox-safe TCP port check
KeychainManager.swift — secure credential storage
LoginItemManager.swift — launch at login (SMAppService)
NetworkMonitor.swift — NWPathMonitor connectivity detection
LogManager.swift — structured activity logging (memory + rotating file)
NotificationManager.swift
Models/
ShareConfig.swift — share configuration + connection state
AppSettings.swift — user preferences (UserDefaults)
AppEnvironment.swift — sandbox detection, version info
Views/
MenuBar/ — menu bar extra and status items
Shares/ — share list, cards, add/edit form
Settings/ — preferences window
Log/ — activity log window
Common/ — window sizing, styling utilities
Localizable.xcstrings — String Catalog (en, es, de, fr, it, ja, pt-BR, zh-Hans)
PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy — privacy manifest
Where data lives
| Data | Location |
|---|
| Share list and settings | UserDefaults (es.guzman.connecter), inside the app container when sandboxed |
| Passwords | Keychain internet-password items (protocol SMB, security domain es.guzman.connecter) whose attributes carry host, share path, user name and display name |
| Activity log | Library/Logs/Connecter/connecter.log |
Every share gets a Keychain item at launch and whenever it is saved (the secret is empty for shares that rely on a password saved by Finder), so Settings → Keychain lists what is stored and Recover rebuilds the list — for example after moving to the sandboxed build, whose container starts empty. Items are created as synchronizable so that, once the app is signed with the Keychain Sharing capability, they also follow the user to other Macs through iCloud Keychain; without that entitlement macOS refuses synchronizable items (errSecMissingEntitlement) and Connecter stores them locally.
Privacy
- Passwords are stored in the macOS Keychain and never written to disk in plaintext
- No analytics, telemetry, or network requests (other than your configured SMB shares)
- No data leaves the device
Feedback
Bug reports, questions and ideas are welcome, in English or Spanish:
Before posting: this repository is public. Remove passwords, user names, server names, IP addresses and Tailscale or VPN host names from anything you paste, including activity log entries.
License
Connecter is open source under the Apache License 2.0. You may use, modify and redistribute the code under its terms, which include keeping the copyright notice and the NOTICE file.
Name and icon
The license covers the source code only, not the name “Connecter” or the app icon. If you publish your own build or a fork, please give it a different name and icon so it isn't mistaken for the official app.
