ShareBeacon

ShareBeacon is a macOS Tahoe (26) menu-bar application that keeps SMB shares available over LANs, Tailscale, WireGuard, OpenVPN, and other routed networks. It stores credentials in the login Keychain and is designed to restore Finder sidebar favorites after a share reconnects.

• Multiple independently configured SMB shares
• Per-share automatic reconnect or on-demand mounting
• Shared Keychain credentials reused across shares
• Serialized mount operations and endpoint readiness checks
• Automatic recovery after login, network changes, sleep/wake, and disconnects
• Sleep-aware: pauses all monitoring and mount activity while the Mac sleeps
• Credentials kept out of URLs, configuration, process arguments, and logs
• User-owned mount points by default, without requiring administrator privileges; custom paths such as /Volumes are supported
• Settings window with Shares, General, and Log tabs (live log with level filter)
• Finder sidebar favorite repair with a safe no-op fallback
• macOS 26 or newer, Apple Silicon and Intel

ShareBeacon requires macOS 26 or newer. Releases are signed with a Developer ID certificate, notarized by Apple, and distributed through GitHub Releases.

Install from the ShareBeacon tap:

brew install mjoe/sharebeacon/sharebeacon

To update later:

brew upgrade sharebeacon

Download the latest ShareBeacon-<version>.zip and its .sha256 checksum from the releases page, verify the checksum, unzip, and move ShareBeacon.app to your Applications folder.

• macOS Tahoe 26 or newer
• Xcode or Xcode Command Line Tools
• Access to an SMB server

New shares use a user-owned ~/Volumes/<share-name> mount point by default, so ShareBeacon can create it without elevated privileges. Custom mount points, including /Volumes/<share-name>, can be selected when needed.

ShareBeacon uses a two-part product version, currently 0.9. Release tags use the same format, for example v0.9. Release titles are ShareBeacon <version> (for example ShareBeacon 0.9). Build numbers are separate and increase for each CI build.

swift test
./scripts/build-release.sh

Use ./scripts/build-release.sh --clean for a clean derived-data build, --skip-sign when only an unsigned local artifact is needed, and --notarize to submit the release to Apple notarization and staple the ticket. The --notarize option requires NOTARY_KEY_ID, NOTARY_ISSUER, and NOTARY_KEY_PATH. Release ZIPs include a SHA-256 checksum.

The release build is universal. When a Developer ID Application certificate is installed in the login keychain, build-release.sh signs with it (with Hardened Runtime) instead of ad-hoc. The application does not require Full Disk Access.

Releases are published as GitHub releases on mjoe/sharebeacon and distributed through the mjoe/homebrew-sharebeacon tap. Build and notarize the release locally, then publish it with gh release create together with the ZIP and its SHA-256 checksum.

Passwords are stored as generic-password Keychain items and passed to NetFS directly in process memory. The SMB URL contains only the host and share name. Share configuration is stored in UserDefaults without passwords. ShareBeacon does not use telemetry, analytics, or external APIs.

Finder sidebar state is managed by macOS rather than a stable public API. ShareBeacon therefore treats favorite repair as best-effort: it preserves the user's configured mount path, attempts a non-destructive repair after mounting, and never makes mounting depend on sidebar manipulation.

To create a favorite initially, configure and save the share, mount it, then choose Add to Finder Favorites from that share's menu. ShareBeacon also attempts this automatically after every successful reconnect. If Finder does not refresh immediately, relaunch Finder once.

ShareBeacon respects the Mac's sleep mode. When the system begins sleeping it pauses all share monitoring, cancels in-flight mount operations, and starts no new reconnection attempts. After the Mac wakes it resumes automatically, waits a short network grace period so the connection is ready, and then reconnects shares that are configured to mount automatically. ShareBeacon never keeps the Mac awake or blocks it from sleeping.

ShareBeacon is an independent project derived from othyn/macos-jockey, originally created by Ben Tindall.

• Ben Tindall (@othyn): original Jockey for macOS author
• Valentine Ubani Mayaki (@valmayaki): security-focused fork and mount-manager improvements
• Joerg Mattiello (@mjoe): ShareBeacon maintainer and further development

MIT. See LICENSE.