Synology NAS and Teamviewer Beta Guide

TeamViewer is a remarkably well known and well-established tool for those that are looking to access a PC, Mac, portable device or really any supported computer system remotely. Remote access and remote control of computer hardware is not a new thing and has in fact been around for several decades since the very early days of the internet. However, early versions of remote PC access were at a command line level and by no means user-friendly. Programs such as TeamViewer have changed this, providing users with a remarkably easy graphical user interface and simple two-stage login to access machines anywhere in the world.

When it comes to accessing data from anywhere in the world, Synology NAS is another big, big brand favourite. Therefore, it should not come as a huge surprise that many users requested the ability to connect these two popular platforms for ease and convenience, for greater control of their technology and storage network. Although originally available as a third-party unofficial plug-in, the official TeamViewer application for Synology NAS is now in beta and can be downloaded in the official Synology app store under betas

In order to understand why TeamViewer for Synology NAS is such a good idea, you have to make sure that it suits your needs. For a start, this is not about using the NAS to access your TeamViewer client list (at the moment, anyway). This is the other way around, giving you the ability to add a Synology NAS to your existing list of connected PC, Mac, mobile and other computer systems that are associated with your TeamViewer acount. For reasons of convenience, it is quite appealing for many of you to be able to flick between multiple remote locations as well as perform scheduled updates and repairs from afar on your devices and a NAS server can sometimes be problematic to access in areas of complex firewalls and increased security.

TeamViewer, as it is quite a Swiss army knife of remote access, gives users a far more reliable network backdoor access to a NAS drive in offices or homes with more aggressive or unusually complex network protected environments. It will not violate your security credentials, and still requires a great deal of validation before you are given access (by both the device itself and the owner of the drive). Nevertheless, the appeal of adding a Synology NAS to be user-friendly one portal access point that TeamViewer provides cannot be understated in its usefulness.

Using the TeamViewer beta application is remarkably simple. simply download the beta from the Synology application centre and installation takes little more than 2 clicks for the full setup.

Once installed, run the application and a pop-up window will appear on your Synology NAS and it will detail the TeamViewer ID and password.

Now you must ensure you have installed a TeamViewer client application on your PC or Mac system, as well as signing up for a free or commercial account to ensure stable access. TeamViewer is still a free application for the most part and does not strictly require you to sign up a fully-fledged account. However, the Synology NAS will require you to use a signed up TeamViewer account and to link this Synology NAS drive to that account, to ensure safe access and user clarification/permissions.

Boot up the TeamViewer client application, sign in, and click the option to add a new device

From here enter the login credentials from the Synology NAS you obtained earlier on TeamViewer

Then add the Synology NAS and it will appear in your available client machines on TeamViewer.

Before you go ahead and click quick connect, you will need to link this NAS to your TeamViewer account like so.

Once linked, click connect and TeamViewer will access the Synology NAS and give you a slightly more compact but equally usable window to access the Synology diskstation manager graphical user interface.

from here you can conduct any operation via TeamViewer that you would normally be able to do locally over the network and/or over the web browser.

As TeamViewer for Synology NAS is still in beta, a number of the popular features such as Wake-on-LAN, remote shutdown, file share and more are not supported in this beta, but I do not give it long before the full range of control options that TeamViewer provide to the majority of devices are extended towards a connected Synology NAS.