Help with Tailscale/Remote Access/SMB Shares

Streaming & Network
1

Hi all,

Need some help with setting up remote access. At the moment, I am attempting to ensure that I can use Infuse when not at home (e.g. at work, while traveling, etc.).

I currently use Infuse on 4 devices: Mac Studio (which has wired 2 external hard drives), which are the items I want to remotely access with Infuse), and a MacBook Pro, iPhone, and iPad.

The libraries are set up as follows:

  • Studio - 3 local folders (film, television, “offloaded”) from the 2 hard drives
    • The shared version of these folders are in my library, syncing those from iCloud on the other devices
  • Other 3 - All point to those^ 3 folders using the smb share setup

While at home, I can access my files over the network with this setup, no problem.

I would like the MacBook Pro, iPhone, and iPad to be able to access the Mac Studio/hard drive shares remotely when off of my home Wi-Fi network, and to this end, have put them all in my Tailnet/Taildrive/etc using Tailscale. I can successfully access those files in Finder when off of my network on all of those devices when using Tailscale, in the same way as I would when accessing my shared files at home. If I am off of my home network and turn on Tailscale, and attempt to play these files in Infuse, it doesn’t work (which is as expected).

I have seen people using Jellyfin or Emby in addition to Tailscale (for this/similar purpose, i think?), but I would rather not use them, I prefer to only use Infuse, but if needed, can look into this.

As simply as I can surmise, my situation is this: I can connect to Tailscale to access the media files on my mac studio from anywhere on all of these 3 devices. I could play the video files in Finder/Files, etc, but I want to set up a way to access and play them in Infuse. I am unsure of how to do this, how can I make Infuse point to the Tailscale share?

My questions are:

  • What should I point the libraries to on these 3 devices to ensure they go through Tailscale and can access my files off of my network?
    • If I make them all point to the Tailscale IP of the mac studio, will this mess up my infuse library on there?
    • I understand this may require Tailscale to be always on, but thats fine
  • Should I be using the same server http url I use to connect my devices to Tailscale, the IP of the Mac studio I want to share files from, or something else?

Thanks in advance, all!!!

2
3

makes sense, though I’d like to keep the watch history synced on all devices. Just to clarify, did u put the Tailscale http://100.x.x url as the smb share url (and is a user/pass needed?) to get it to access from anywhere or is there a step I’m missing somewhere?

4

No, Infuse was supposed to support both local and remote sources in its latest version, but that’s not the case. I’ll probably just replace the local IP addresses with the remote ones. I can wait, but not if it keeps getting postponed over and over again.