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File Sharing: How to set up user's privilege for shared folders on Synology NAS?

Last Updated 4 years ago

Overview

With Synology DiskStation,you can share data and multimedia files with your family in your home network, or even publish the DiskStation to the cloud so your friends can also gain access to your shared files just by using a web browser. But what if there are some files you only want to be read instead of being downloaded or modified? The DiskStation can be configured to give each user his/her own access right to any specific folder on the server.

This article will guide you through the steps to set up user's privilege for shared folders on your DiskStation.

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1. Before You Start

This article assumes that you have done the following tasks for your DiskStation:

• Hardware installation for Synology DiskStation
• Software installation for Synology DiskStation Manager (DSM, web-based operating system of DiskStation)
• Creating volumes and shared folders

Refer to Quick Installation Guide for more information about hardware and software installation. You can also see Synology DiskStation User's Guide for a general idea about topics related to this article.
Note:
If you want to set up advanced access control for individual files, please refer to How to manage Windows ACL permissions from Windows for detailed instructions.

2. Set up shared folder privileges for users

You can easily set up shared folder privilegesfor each different users, either by:

1. Creating a new user and set up the privileges.
2. Modify current user privileges.

Creating a new user account
If you want to create a new user, do the following:

1. Log in to DSM with your administration account.
2. Go to Main Menu > Control Panel.
   
3. In the Control Panel, select User.
   
4. Select the Create button on the top left corner.
   
5. Enter the user information you wish to create.
   
6. Select a user group for reference. If you have previously set up a user group, it will be easier to manage different users later by assigning them to a user group with the same attributes
   Note:
   You can give the new user administrative privilege so there can be multiple admins to manage the DiskStation. Remember it is safer to create a new admin user for administrative uses, and not use the default admin account so malicious hackers won't be able to access your DiskStation easily.
   
7. Here you can find a list of folders currently in this DiskStation. There are 3 different kinds of privileges for each folder you can assign.
   • Read only: User can access this folder, but cannot edit the folder or the files within. For example, you can download or open the files, but not delete, rename, move, create files or folders.
   • Read/Write: User has full access to the files in this folder.
   • No access: User cannot see this folder.
     Note:
     
   • You can select the check box on top of each privilege to have all folders set to the same privilege for faster setups.
   • The settings can be modified later on.
   • You can only set privileges for the first level folders upon user creation.
   • If multiple privilege settings coincide, the priority will take effect regarding the following order:
     No Acess > Read/Write > Read Only
     
8. Assign the storage usage quota for the user.
   
9. Choose the applications you want the user to be able to use. Only the services enabled will show up on this screen.
   
10. Click on Apply.
    

Your newly created user account is now ready to use.
Modify privileges for a user account
If you want to change privilege settings for a specific user, do the following:

1. Log in to DSM with your administration account.
2. Go to Main Menu > Control Panel.
3. In the Control Panel, select User.
4. Choose the user account you wish to modify and click Edit.
   
5. Select the Privileges setup tab.
   
6. You can change the folder privilege settingsfor this user. When you are done, just press OK and the settings will be saved instantly.
   

3. Set up privileges for folders

You can also set up privileges for the folders themselves, or set up individual privileges for different sub-folders, which opens up endless options for which files you want to share, and to whom.
To set up shared folders' user privileges
If you want to set up shared folders' user privileges, do the following:

1. Log in to DSM with your administration account.
2. Go to Main Menu > Control Panel.
3. In the Control Panel, select Shared Folder.
   
   
4. Select the folder you want to setup, and click Privileges Setup on the top.
   
5. Here you can control different privileges for each user account. You can further customize the settings by choosing Advanced privileges.
   
6. Here you can see the advanced settings for this folder. Check the options you want to apply for all users, then choose OK to save your settings.
   

To set up shared folders' user privileges
If you want to set up a specific sub-folder's user privileges, do the following:

1. Log in to DSM with your administration account.
2. Open your File Browser.
3. Select the folder you want to set up the privileges for, right-click it and select Properties.
   Note:
   You can also select the Action drop down menu on the top and select Properties.
   
4. Here you can assign an “Owner” and a “Group” for the folder. There are 3 different kind of privileges you can assign:

• Read: The user can see and download the files in this folder, but cannot edit anything in this folder.
• Write: In addition to access and download files, the user can also upload or modify them.
• Execute: The user can execute runnable programs in this folder.

Remember to check Apply to this folder, sub-folders and files for the settings to take effect.

Note:

• If the first level folder for this sub-folder is set as No Access, then the user still won't be able to use the sub-folders here.
• If the first level folder for this sub-folder is set as Read Only, then the user still won't be able to modify files within the sub-folders.