How to use Chrome OS’s native Samba client

As reported a few months ago, the engineers at Google have been working on adding native Samba support to the Chrome OS Files app. This is a guide for using this new feature, along with caveats.

Step 1: Enable the feature

This feature is still in the experimental phase as of Chrome OS 68, so you’ll need to enable it. Navigate to chrome://flags/#native-smb in your browser and change the dropdown for “Native Smb Client” to “Enabled”. It’ll prompt you to restart Chrome — go ahead and do it.

Enable the Chrome flag for the native Smb client.

Step 2: Add the Samba share

You can now add new Samba shares via the Files app by clicking on “Add new services” on the left hand side, and then “SMB Shares”:

Click “SMB Shares”.

This will open to the “Network File Shares” tab in your Chrome OS Settings app. Click “Add File Share”:

Click “Add File Share”.

Next, fill in the File Share URL, the Username, and the Password. This part was a little annoying for me because I wasn’t sure what format the URL needed to be in. After trial and error (and googling) I found that the URL should be like “smb://SERVERNAME/SHARENAME”.

I also was incorrectly using the path to the share from my Samba server instead of using the actual share name that I configured in Samba (oops). That doesn’t work.

Here’s what my screen looks like to add my share:

Click “Add” when you’re finished

Step 3: Use the new Samba share

If you go back to your Files app, you’ll now see the new Samba share you added in your left sidebar:

The share shows up in the left side menu of the Files app.

You should now be able to navigate around in the network share and open files.

Caveats

Native support for Samba shares is still an experimental feature on Chrome OS. They may change the way it works, or remove it altogether, and there are some downsides to using it in its present condition. Additional caveats:

• For now, there does not seem to be a way to persist these shares across device reboots. You’ll have to add the share again each time you restart your computer.
• I noticed that clicking text files in the Files app sometimes resulted in an error message in the Chrome OS text editor. This was an inconsistent issue for me though.
• I’m using a Pixelbook on Chrome OS version 68. I’m not sure which version first added Samba support, but if you’ve got an older version you might not have access to this feature.

Conclusion

Many people have reported issues with Google’s other attempts to add Samba support. If you’ve tried that out and it doesn’t work well for you, give this new feature a try. If it works better for you (or worse!), please let me know in the comments.