Android Police

Synology will sell you network attached storage, and it will give you no shortage of Android apps to access it with. Recently the company has updated several of those mobile bits of software with support for DiskStation Manager 6.0 Beta. This is the latest version of the operating system you can install to one of those aforementioned NAS boxes, which you're welcome to download if you have the right hardware.

Around these parts, Synology is better known for its NAS boxes, which are storage drives that you access over the network and that come with a slew of optimized Android apps dedicated to accessing videos, photos, audio, documents, files, and notes from your mobile device. But it looks like Synology is casting a wider net with the release of the new RT1900ac router.

Synology, purveyor of network attached storage, has brought updates across the range of their Android interfaces for their products. Perhaps most interesting and useful is the latest update to DS photo+, which now allows you to stream photos and video via Chromecast or DLNA from your Synology NAS. If you utilize the private cloud setup offered on many of their devices, this could allow you to take your personal media to work, friends, or wherever else you may want to go.

DS Cam is Synology's interface for interacting with its surveillance camera from an Android device. Version 2.5 adds a number of new features, most of which require Surveillance Station 7.0. One is the ability to control the lens, specifically auto-panning, auto-focusing, and tracking objects. With two-way audio, instead of simply hearing what's going on, you can now project your voice through the camera's speaker as well.

These days, there are tons of way to store files. Locally, in the cloud, on the network...or any combination of those. Personally, I'm a cloud storage kind of guy - ever since Dropbox and Drive have been a thing, I've relied on them to keep everything in sync across all of my computers and mobile devices. Keeping my most-used files accessible whenever and wherever I want has changed the way I use my gear (for the better).

There are many reasons not to want to hop aboard the cloud computing bandwagon. One reason is the lack of internet access in all the places where you need it, and there's nothing you can really do about that. But another common complaint is the need to trust another company enough to manage your data, and there are ways around that. Synology NAS (network attached storage) users get to build their own cloud without having to give up all of the convenience that comes with the likes of Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, SugarSync, or whomever else comes to mind. Now the company has rolled out a bunch of new stuff.

Dropbox and Google Drive may be all the rage these days, but some people don't trust their data to such overlords. Cloud? Cloud! I'll host my own files, thank you very much. It's not too difficult anymore. Those that own a Synology NAS will be happy to know that a whole host of updates have rolled out to make accessing and managing files from Android all the better. These improvements coincide with the release of Synology's DiskStation Manager 4.3 beta.

Last week, Synology released a couple of new beta apps – DS Download and DS Video – for owners of its NAS boxes. Now it's added a third app, called DS Cloud, that allows Synology NAS owners to sync files to their Android device for offline viewing.

If you own a Synology NAS (network attached storage) box, then life just got a lot better for you. Why? Because the company just released a pair of apps for your Android device that will let you control/access certain aspects of your NAS unit.

Users of Synology branded NAS (network attached storage) boxes have been pleading with the company for a long time to add Android support for direct file management to the existing suite of apps - DS Audio, DS Photo+, and DS Cam. While having apps dedicated to remotely playing music, looking at pictures, and monitoring cameras is great, the primary functionality one would naturally want from a pile of hard drives attached to the network is, well, file management. Think Dropbox, except instead of the cloud, you use your own NAS box.