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betterNAS

Mount remote machines as native Finder volumes on your Mac. Install a small agent on any box with files you care about, and it shows up in Finder like a local drive. No sync clients, no special apps - just your files, where you expect them.

The plan is bigger: phone, laptop, agents, all seeing the same filesystem. A modular backup layer you actually use day-to-day, and a way to run agents on your own hardware without handing over the keys.

Getting started

One account works everywhere: the web app, the node agent, and Finder. Set up the node, confirm it is online, then mount your export.

Prerequisites

  • - A betterNAS account
  • - A machine with the files you want to expose
  • - An export folder on that machine
  • - A public HTTPS URL that reaches your node directly (for Finder mounting)

1. Install the node binary

Run this on the machine that owns the files.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/harivansh-afk/betterNAS/main/scripts/install-betternas-node.sh | sh

2. Start the node

Replace the placeholders with your account, export path, and public node URL.

BETTERNAS_CONTROL_PLANE_URL=https://api.betternas.com \
BETTERNAS_USERNAME=your-username \
BETTERNAS_PASSWORD='your-password' \
BETTERNAS_EXPORT_PATH=/absolute/path/to/export \
BETTERNAS_NODE_DIRECT_ADDRESS=https://your-public-node-url \
betternas-node

Export path - the directory you want to expose through betterNAS.

Direct address - the real public HTTPS base URL that reaches your node directly.

3. Confirm the node is online

Open the control plane after the node starts. You should see:

  • - Your node appears as online
  • - Your export appears in the exports list
  • - Issuing a mount profile gives you a WebDAV URL, not an HTML login page

4. Mount in Finder

  1. 1. Open Finder, then Go > Connect to Server.
  2. 2. Copy the mount URL from the control plane and paste it in.
  3. 3. Sign in with the same username and password you used for the web app and node agent.
  4. 4. Save to Keychain only if you want Finder to remember the password.

A note on public URLs

Finder mounting only works when the node URL is directly reachable over HTTPS. Avoid gateways that show their own login page before forwarding traffic. A good check: load /dav/ on your node URL. A working node responds with WebDAV headers, not HTML.