Synology

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.