macOS Sierra always prompts for credentials for network drives

Meaning you aren't having the issue with auto connecting to known shares?

This is exactly the behaviour I see when trying to mount a Synology shared folder after upgrading to Sierra. Interesting is that after returning "not connected", I click in "connect as" and the pop up comes with my credentials filled out. I click "connect" and then it works.

I cannot believe this is a new "feature". Surely it's a bug. Just the old thing of tech companies calling bugs features.

i just got off a chat with Apple support and they said they are aware and working on fixing that.

they informed that i report that via the feedback link http://www.apple.com/feedback/ which i did anyway.

if this 'issue' or behavior were here to stay, i'd expect a lot of Sierra users to have issue with that.

This is very unlike Apple's product methodology.

From a security standpoint, there's no added benefit to the security of the system here since the authentication dialogue fields are already prepopulated and a user simply has to click "Connect" to still gain access.

This is not acceptable for "standard functionality". This removes functionality, adds no benefit and is simply an oversight and it needs to be repaired.

Very curious to read this. Especially the reply from the Apple Support Guy..... I am not sure what is going on on your computers but with me it is....

The Opposite!

My Synology afp supported system ALWAYS mounts on it's own initiative. I don't log in; no nothing it just appears and I can open it. (It is the home drive only, this is the drive that is considered to be 'mine' by the Synology system.)

Other drives can be opened easy by just clicking them to open. Also Time Machine has it's own drive and can make back-ups, but TimeMachine has it's own password on my system.

I tried several time to unmount my 'home' drive but when I do so, it pops up after a while and sits on my desktop again. Only by unchecking 'Show Connected servers' in the Finder prefs it will not show.

Thus I am flabbergasted by reading this thread because it is the opposite from what I am experiencing. Or am I getting this wrong???

I tried several time to unmount my 'home' drive but when I do so, it pops up after a while and sits on my desktop again. Only by unchecking 'Show Connected servers' in the Finder prefs it will not show.

This sounds like a case of something slightly different, using AFP is traditionally an Apple network share and likely not affected - I'm thinking that synology has installed automount daemons of some sort that are bypassing the Finder mount mechanism and keeps remounting the drive in the background.

In my situation, I am attempting to mount an SMB drive on my work's Macbook Pro -- using ControlPlane for automation based on if I am in the office or at home, or the manual command+K (Connect to Server) in Finder to mount the drive and the authentication window pops up and doesn't immediately/automatically connect.

ControlPlane is not the culprit here either, as this issue still occurs exactly the same on my personal Macbook Pro and my Mac Mini Server at home as well. Neither of them have ControlPlane so it's certainly something with the new OS itself.

i had AFP maps when i upgraded to Sierra and experienced the re-authentication prompt as the others have in this thread.

I am unsure whether Peter had done an upgrade or clean install of Sierra or whether that would matter concerning this problem.

i'd kindly ask that if there is a Sierra update put up in the App Store, that someone just post a comment that it was updated, i reverted back to El Capitan and am avoiding doing an upgrade until Sierra bugs are worked out. that might be a while i suspect.

@sakman74 Not completely. I had a problem with my WD MyBook-Live. The problem with that drive was that I kept getting messages when the drive was not connected to my computer. Meaning that went I disconnected my laptop from my network to take it with me, I kept getting these messages. I found out that somewhere in some essential start-up part of the system software, a code had been written to make the MyBook connect to my computer. This was very annoying because the warning would pop up every minute.

Therefor while still on one of the last versions of 10.11 I performed a 'clean' install. And restored only my documents and programs from timemachine. So I cut out all the system settings etc. but I am not sure to which extend other parts of my computer where restored.

After this 'clean' install the warnings were gone. I did not perform a clean install of 10.12.

But I do have a cloud-drive on my laptop that works through my Synology and connects to Backblaze (backup). It could be that this is the reason for my networkdrive to show on my desktop. This did not happen in 10.11 though.

I seem to be having this exact issue too.... problem is that now my time machine backups don't work anymore and I cant open any of the MS Office documents on my NAS. This has completely stopped me being able to access documents and back up my MAC via the preferred method. Surely this is NOT how it is actually meant to be?

Maybe I am missing something here? I am no MAC expert at all, only recently converted over the last year so I don't have good troubleshooting experience with it, but everything here is pointing towards a password issue.

What?? How on earth would this be a usefull or helpfull feature? Can somebody please explain? I bought a Mac Mini yesterday to serve as a home/ small business server and can now better try and bring it back and get my money back! It's no use without being able to automatically connect to network drives, or I will have to find a work-around for something that was, and should be, a normal OS feature. 😠 This is outrageous!

not very familiar with the workings of time machine, question: is it possible to set a share folder on a nas as the storage location for time machine backups ? i thought it only works with physically attached storage like a usb drive.

@Peter,

are you saying that you did a clean install of El Capitan, and just did an upgrade to Sierra ?

when you say that you kept getting these messages, does that mean it was happening in El Capitan ?

in my case, i went back to the El Capitan image i created before installing Sierra - i have no such authentication prompts now.

this is somewhat confusing to figure out what is happening, maybe the keychain is not working correctly ? when i was on Sierra, I had deleted the keychain login for my nas several times, tried authenticating once after that - but that did not stop the authentication prompts from resurfacing again.

in any case, i don't quite miss Sierra, there was nothing really in it that I could benefit from.

I wouldn't quite go as far as outrageous .... but it is definitely a sore point when having to deal with auto-mounting a network share. when compared to windows - macOS doesn't do it as well if you're going to encounter nuances in your ux dealing with it.

as i had mentioned earlier - it's unfortunate that some functionality of that which I sought (such as auto-mount, and then do not display a finder window of the share) had to be bought via an app from the app store. really should be baked into the platform, as others would think.

i am not too intensely into macOS in general, but as years go by i found i can largely find a way to do what i need in order to get by - without dropping much money in the app store to obtain basic functions already built into windows.

Yes Sakman.

I did a clean install when I was on 10.11. But I also restored with TimeMachine. I did not perform a full restore of account settings etc. Only a recovery of documents and the programs that were installed. But I never did a clean install for many years. I found that there was a command line in one of the launch deamons or launch agents, which specifically instructed to mount my WD NAS drive. But it was built in into an apple system-file. So I could not just delete the whole thing. I suspect Western Digital to have written this instruction with one of it's helper files that you may use when you buy their products. So a clean install should take care of that. But whenever you do a clean install don't recover your account when asked in the set-up of the newly installed MacOs. Just click 'no' on all those friendly suggestions that they are there to help you (.........) Then when you face the desktop of the new software, use Migration Assistant to connect to TimeMachine and restore only essential items.

So the problem I described, started under 10.11. It went away after clean install of 10.11.

Then I updated to 10.12. And now I have the problem of automagical mounting volumes that should not mount on their own initiative.... I Do NOT have to give in user name or log-in credentials. But....... under 10.11 I always had to fill out the form..... Even after the clean install.

I don't know if anybody have the problem of not mounting drives have checked their log files to see if anything is blocked or giving problems. I expect that there is a launch-item that should take care of mounting drives and that has been set to false instead of true. This however you can't find in log files.