Mac OS X: SMB links (URLs) not recognized as web content

Mac OS X web-savvy applications, such as Mail and Safari, do not recognize SMB links as web content. However, you can easily connect to SMB servers by pasting a link into the Connect to Server dialog ("SMB" is the name of the Microsoft Windows file sharing protocol).

You probably won't come across this issue, because servers rarely use SMB to distribute web content on the open Internet. However, sometimes a school or other organization might store media files on a Windows server for local access (LAN/WAN), and then give out links that look like this:

smb://servername/example_movie.mov

If you are the administrator of such a LAN/WAN configuration, consider serving content via both SMB and HTTP services. When you intend the content for web-savvy Macintosh applications, provide an HTTP link.

Published Date: Feb 17, 2012