NAS Access in Catalina issues

I have just installed the latest Version of Catalina 10.15.5 and the only improvement I see is that Finder does not keep crashing permanently when trying to connect to my NAS (QNAP). Connections to my network drives (SMB or AFP) still does not work !

It worked without any issues in Mojave! What have you done ?

I have just bought a brand new Mac Book Pro and I use this notebook to make a living. The fact that I can't use my NAS anymore at all is a disaster.

Here is what Apple support told me: Just go back to Mojave or try to completely reset your Mac and give up your TimeMachine Backups. Maybe it works. Also the issue is probably related to my NAS and I need to contact QNAP. They need to provide a fix. Problem solved for Apple. Wow.

This is an issue that Apple has to fix it ! Why can't you just admit that something went wrong when disabling the support for older SMB Versions ?

Otherwise I tend to believe the silly rumours that this is done on purpose to push your own cloud storage services.

Sometimes I get the question mark too but then clicking on the icon the link recovers and the share is accessible again. More important, I never had Finder crash with this workaround. However I’m not stressing too much the system since it’s an home network with limited number of hosts and shares.

And, please, don’t underestimate the importance of raising tickets with your NAS vendor support. They need to understand that their users do have this issue.

Only then the NAS vendors could play an important role in getting Apple to finally fix this Finder issue.

Unfortunately, I only got a question mark when dragging the icon to the favourites and it is not clickable.

Even when not moving the shares directly. but using the link on my desktop instead.

Is there a trick to avoid getting the question mark?

@Mike_App, you need to get the folder on the desktop by mounting them with “Go > Connect to server...” in Finder. That pops up a list of shares on your folder to mount. That’s what you’ll drag to Favorites in Finder.

i also got the question mark right away before but I think it’s because I was trying to drag the folder from opening the NAS in “Locations”, not sure.

This has been working for me for a week without issue.

I did see the question mark at one point, but clicked on it and it name appeared (I think the drive remounted).

@Datajack, @Cemento,

These instructions worked for me.

FYI: I do have multiple shares, all linked to the same Synology NAS device. Some shares are now accessible via the Side Bar under Favourites, while I left the others untouched. I’m curious whether this will make any difference.

Started texting now; will report back on next occasion.

Hi bsanders44,

Happy at least it's mitigating the pain.

But it's really sad that mother Apple is not willing to fix what clearly appears to be a trivial issue in Finder share management. There's must be a difference in what happens over the hood pushing on the network tab differently from pushing on the favorites one. Something that a SW engineer would fix in day. If only Apple would ask him to do. Really sad story from quality wise point of view.

Regarding the workaround: I can confirm that I'm using this workaround from months and a part from some question marks time-to-time I've never experienced Finder crash. Also TimeMachine is working fine.

I agree with you 100% @Cemento. The fact that this workaround improves my system's stability so much with so little effort seems to indicate that the root cause of the issue could be fixed relatively quickly and easily, if only Apple cared enough to do so.

At any rate, thank you for posting this workaround. It's incredible how much impact this issue was having on my everyday productivity. Not having to reboot at least once per day is wonderful.

PS. I should add that I'm also using this approach on my wife's computer, which is a mid-2013 MacBook Air, also running OSX Catalina, and it's working there, as well. That's in addition to my 2019 17-inch MacBook Pro.

@bsanders44: thanks for sharing

By the way, I am still on Mojave and occasionally have the disconnect popup/dialog too, I just click Ignore and everything is fine. I am mentioning this because maybe it is not related to the Catalina bug.

Finder stability has dramatically improved since I upgraded to the latest Catalina version (10.15.5).

However, reliability for SMB / NAS connections have not improved with 10.15.5. Therefore, this workaround is absolutely essential.

In my case, it works like a charm for several days now. No reboots necessary anymore.

I have the same problem that I usually can't mount my Synology NAS in Catalina via the Finder sidebar. After restarting the computer or after a forced restart of the Finder, it works at first, then later does not work anymore. However, I have had the same problem with Mohave 10.14.x. The problem does not occur with multiple computers that have older systems installed. The problem is also independent of the protocol used, whether AFP or SMB, regardless of the SMB version used. For example, connections initiated by Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) always work without problems.

I can confirm that the Cemento workaround works. Additionally I would like to point out that you can also create a folder containing alias files of the shares from the desktop or the /Volumes folder, so that not too much space is wasted in the sidebar if you have a long list of shares. My folder is called "Servers" and contains all my required shares. This always works and is a good replacement for the network bonjour functionality of the sidebar, which does not work in the Finder after a certain time. The Finder's built-in network display in the sidebar is disabled, so I don't always click on it anymore out of habit. I hope that with Big Sur Apple will finally take care of this problem, which has existed for a long time with various NAS and server solutions. Or is the main focus of Big Sur only on "cosmetics" and making the operating system look iOS-like? I hope not.

Another possibility I found is a software from the macOS App-Store called "AutoMounter". It always works fine and is handy if you have a lot of shares, so that the sidebar is not always too full. Optionally you can also use AutoMounter to set up shares to be mounted automatically. They will mount again immediately if you disconnect them by mistake. This software is an all-in-one solution for me.

For me the problem is with a Netgear Readynas 516 and I can confirm the behaviour for these drives as well, so problem with SMB and AFP and the workaround indeed always works but normal finder behaviour would be nice. I hope many of us join the Big Sur beta program and check and submit bug reports for the NAS connection

If this is a pure Finder problem, would an app like Forklift be a solution?

Of course, it shouldn't be necessary to buy a Finder alternative to avoid a Finder bug, but if I were encountering problems which reduced my productivity I might spend $30 (for Forklift) if that solves it. (By the way, I am still on Mojave)

I got myself fed up with this issue - I use a Synology NAS.

Restarting the Finder works but you loose all your Finder window with tabs, bummer when you just get prepared to make a file copy.

Other that the Finder restart, I didn't find any workaround that worked for me, except one involving autofs - which comes with macOS.

I decide to write down the few steps that got me working here:

hhttps://gist.github.com/bitonio/b1248a4aa1e137bae7d857effeaddcda

Give it a shot if you've exhausted all other options.