Share Folders Over Your Network From a Mac (SMB)

Moving files between machines with AirDrop gets old the third time you do it in an hour. If two computers share a network, your Mac can serve folders directly: any Mac or Windows PC can mount them, browse them, and copy both ways. The feature is File Sharing, it speaks the standard SMB protocol, and it takes about five minutes to set up properly.

Turn on File Sharing

1. Open System Settings → General → Sharing.
2. Switch on File Sharing.
3. Click the ⓘ (info) button next to the toggle to configure what is shared and to whom.

The info sheet shows your Mac's address for other machines — something like smb://Your-Mac.local — plus two lists: Shared Folders and Users. Out of the box, each user account's Public folder is shared and nothing else.

The path is the same on Ventura, Sonoma, and Sequoia. (On older systems it lived at System Preferences → Sharing.) To stop sharing entirely at any point, flip the same toggle off — that is the whole undo.

Choose folders and set permissions

1. Under Shared Folders, click + and pick the folder to share. Add as many as you like; remove one by selecting it and clicking −.
2. Select a shared folder, and in the Users column set each person's access: Read & Write, Read Only, or Write Only (Drop Box) — that last one lets people deposit files they cannot then browse.
3. The Everyone row controls guests. For anything private, set Everyone to No Access; connecting will then require the username and password of an account on your Mac.

Permissions here ride on top of the file system's own permissions, so a folder you cannot normally write to will not become writable just because a share says so. When in doubt, share folders you own.

One Windows-specific step: in the same info sheet, click Options…, confirm Share files and folders using SMB is checked, and under Windows File Sharing enable the account that Windows machines will log in with (you will be asked for that account's password). Skipping this is the classic reason a PC can see the Mac but never authenticate.

Connect from another Mac or a PC

From a Mac: the sharing Mac usually just appears under Network (or Locations) in Finder's sidebar — click it and Connect As…. If it does not, press Cmd+K in Finder and enter the address from the info sheet:

# by name (Bonjour) or by IP address
smb://Your-Mac.local
smb://192.168.1.25

From Windows: open File Explorer and type \\192.168.1.25 (the Mac's IP) in the address bar, then sign in with the enabled account. Find the Mac's IP under System Settings → Wi-Fi → Details, or see our guide to finding your Mac's IP address.

Sharing only works while the Mac is awake. If your shares vanish periodically, the Mac is sleeping — enable Wake for network access in Energy/Battery settings or keep the machine plugged in and awake for serving duty.

Keep the scope tight

File Sharing opens a real door into your Mac, so share the minimum: specific project folders rather than your home directory, No Access for Everyone, and Read Only wherever write access is not needed. Turn the whole service off when a project ends — the toggle remembers your folder list, so switching it back on later restores everything as it was.

Mount it every morning?

If you reconnect to the same share daily, stop doing it by hand — our guide to auto-mounting a network drive at login makes the share appear automatically every time you sign in.