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Step 6 Using the Files app
- Open the Files app.
- Tap Browse (bottom right on iPhone; sidebar on iPad).
- Under Locations you see Unraid Drive. The first time, iOS asks Do you want to enable "Unraid Drive"? → Enable. (If it does not appear, tap ⋯ → Edit at the top of the Browse page and switch it on.)
- Tap it. Each server you added is a folder; inside, each mapped share is a folder.
On iPad and Vision Pro you can also drag Unraid Drive into the sidebar favourites.
If a share you expect is missing, check the server page › Shares to show in the app: hidden shares are simply not listed here (see Step 5.9).
| You want to… | Do this |
|---|---|
| Open a file | tap it. It downloads on first open (cloud icon), then opens in the built-in viewer or in the app you choose |
| Save a file from another app to Unraid | in that app use Share → Save to Files (or Export), navigate to Unraid Drive → server → share, Save |
| Upload photos | Photos app → select → Share → Save to Files → pick a share |
| Copy or move | long-press → Copy / Move, or drag and drop between locations on iPad |
| Rename, duplicate, delete | long-press the item |
| New folder | ⋯ menu (iPhone) or the new folder button (iPad) inside a share |
| Attach a NAS file in Mail | Mail → attachment → Browse → Unraid Drive |
| Open a NAS document in Pages, GoodNotes, etc. | in that app choose Open… / Browse → Unraid Drive |
| Free space on the device | long-press → Remove Download. The file stays on the NAS |
| Keep a file available offline | long-press → Download Now (iOS 17+) |
- cloud with arrow: on the NAS, not downloaded yet. Tap to fetch.
- progress ring: transfer in progress. Large uploads are sent in chunks and resume after a network drop.
- exclamation: the last sync failed. Usually the gateway is unreachable; see Troubleshooting.
If you add files on the NAS via SMB or another device, the Files app picks them up when you open or pull-refresh the folder, and periodically in the background through the gateway's change feed. On very large shares (hundreds of thousands of files) the first full sync of a folder tree can take a minute; subsequent checks are incremental.
Browse shares on the server page is a Files-style explorer of the same tree: list or icons (menu at the top right), sort by name, kind, date or size, search in the folder, an Info sheet per item (type, size, date, path, your permissions on that share). Long-press (or right-click on the Mac) for Open (the right viewer for the file: mpv for MKV/AVI…, the EPUB/comic/archive readers, Quick Look for the rest), Quick Look, Share…, Download…, Info, Select, Copy, Cut, Rename, Move…, Copy to… and Delete; Select (toolbar) turns on multi-selection: tick files and folders (Select all, ⌘/⇧-click on the Mac) and use the bar at the bottom — Copy, Cut, Move…, Copy to…, Download, Share…, Delete — on the whole selection, one confirmation for the lot; Move… and Copy to… confirm the destination with a Move here / Copy here button; Download fetches the items (folders recursively) and asks where to save them; the + menu creates a folder, uploads files from the Files picker and offers Paste when something was copied or cut (the gateway copies or moves on the NAS, nothing is downloaded; a folder's long-press menu also has Paste into folder). Everything goes through the gateway with your Unraid permissions; shares marked read-only offer no editing. Quick Look shows images, PDF, text, Office and Apple documents; MKV, AVI, WebM, FLAC and the other formats AVFoundation cannot play open in the built-in mpv player (libmpv + FFmpeg, LGPL); EPUB books, CBZ comics and ZIP archives have readers of their own. On Apple Vision Pro the mpv player is not available: use Quick Look or the Files app there.
- Root and share level are read-only. You cannot create files directly under Unraid Drive → server; open a share first. You also cannot rename or delete a share from Files: shares are mount points managed in the container settings.
- Very large files work (there is no size limit in the app), but remember Cloudflare's 100 MB single-request limit applies only to the gateway web page, not to the app, which chunks uploads.
- Do not point the Photos app "Sync" or third-party backup tools at a share through the Files app; they are not designed for cloud providers and will spin. Use Immich or a dedicated backup app for that.
- Battery: like every cloud provider, syncing happens when you use Files or when iOS schedules background refresh. Nothing runs continuously.
→ See also: Troubleshooting, Security notes