How to Connect a NAS to iPhone and Sort It From Bed

How do you connect a NAS to your iPhone so that a home archive stops being a folder you’ll “sort someday” and becomes an evening feed? Picture David. At home, under his desk, a network storage hums. Tens of terabytes, maybe a hundred. Twenty years of photographs, family videos, scanned albums of his parents, music, films, series he has been downloading for years.

And in his pocket, an iPhone with 128 gigabytes, three of them free.

Everything most precious is in the same room with him. And at the same time infinitely far: to reach it you have to sit down at a computer.

How do you connect a network drive to an iPhone?

iOS does it itself, in the Files app. It has an item “Connect to Server”: you enter the drive’s address on your home network, a name and a password, and the drive appears in the list of locations, next to iCloud Drive and the phone’s folders. No middlemen are needed.

How do you turn a network folder into a feed?

Next, David opens Spohad and adds a folder from the network drive as a source, choosing it right in Files. That is it: now an archive of tens of terabytes is a feed on the phone.

Nothing is copied to the phone in bulk. Spohad loads files as you scroll them and doesn’t clog the device’s memory. The terabytes stay where they were.

In bed, not at the desk

The biggest change is where this happens. Before, sorting the archive meant an evening at the computer that David put off for years. Now it is fifteen minutes before sleep, lying down, one hand.

The feed brings frames from different years mixed together. A 2006 graduation. A scan of his mother’s photo from the seventies. Twelve nearly identical sunset shots: eleven to the Trash. A video from the dacha where his grandfather mends the fence.

Decisions are not applied right away. David sorts, then looks at Changes and presses Save. Files move into folders right on the network drive. How a family archive of five terabytes is sorted the same way is in How to organize a family photo archive.

Can you watch videos and series from a NAS?

Yes. In the same folder lie the series David once downloaded and never finished. Spohad shows video right in the feed: tap, and the episode plays on the full screen. Videos in common formats play straight from the drive; very long files may need a moment to start.

You get a home cinema in your pocket, with no subscriptions and no episodes loaded onto the phone.

Music, books, documents

The drive holds more than photos and videos. There is music, books, scans of documents. Spohad opens those too: songs play with their cover art, PDFs and books open in a reader that remembers the page. For music in detail, see How to sort music on your iPhone.

Nothing leaves your home

It matters what Spohad does not do, too. It does not upload your archive to itself; it has no server. It does not require an account. Files go from the network storage to the phone and back over your home network, as if you had opened them in Files. The archive stays exactly where it was: under the desk.

What you need to know

The network drive has to be reachable by the phone, which usually means you are at home, on your own network. One extra folder in Spohad is free. If you want to connect more places (several drives, a USB drive, a cloud), that is Pro. If you don’t want to browse but to free up space on the phone by moving photos to this drive, read How to free up space on your iPhone.

Quick guide: how to connect a NAS to your iPhone

1. Open Files → “Connect to Server,” enter the drive’s address, name and password.
2. Make sure the drive appears in the list of locations.
3. In Spohad, add the folder you want from the drive as a source.
4. Scroll the feed: sort, caption, watch videos.
5. Press Save, and the files move right on the drive.

Tens of terabytes no longer gather dust under the desk. They are in your pocket, and you finally get to them. See what the feed looks like on the home page.