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About Netatalk

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Netatalk is a Free and Open Source file server that implements the Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) 3.4 over TCP/IP and AppleTalk. AFP is the primary file sharing protocol used on Apple II, Classic Mac OS, and Mac OS X, as well as one of several supported protocols on macOS. A *NIX/*BSD system running Netatalk provides high-speed AppleShare file sharing for Mac clients.

Why Should I Use Netatalk?

If you have a local network macOS, Mac OS X, Classic Mac OS, or even Apple II computers, running a Netatalk AppleShare server allows you to share, collaborate on, and back up files comfortably. The latest macOS at the time of writing (macOS 15 Sequoia) ships with an AFP client, so Netatalk can act as a seamless bridge between new and old Macs.

Compared to cross-platform file sharing protocols like NFS and FTP, Netatalk delivers a Mac-like user experience, with seamless integration of Mac filesystem metadata (such as resource forks on Classic Mac OS) and modern macOS services such as Bonjour, Time Machine, and Spotlight.

Compared to Samba, Netatalk has demonstrably faster transfer speeds, as well as stronger backwards compatibility with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion clients, and earlier.

AppleTalk

Netatalk supports the AppleTalk family of protocols, allowing it to provide AFP file sharing and other services with very old Macs or Apple II computers.

All versions of Netatalk except the 3.x release series can speak AppleTalk.

Community

Netatalk developers and users can be found in online communal spaces like TinkerDifferent or 68kmla. You can head over there if you want to ask for help or share your Netatalk stories.

There is also an official Netatalk Discussions board on GitHub which is the best place to ask for technical assistance.

Finally, the traditional place where Netatalk developers and users interact with each other are the netatalk-admins and netatalk-devel mailing lists. While these lists aren't as active as they used to be, the archives are a veritable treasure trove of decades of Mac networking know-how.

Installation

See INSTALL.md

Docker

See DOCKER.md

Webmin module

An administrative GUI frontend built on the Webmin 2.0 platform is distributed with Netatalk.

See the Webmin README for instructions how to install and get started with the module.

An overview of the module's feature set can be found in the wiki.

Contributions

Bug reports and feature requests should be filed as GitHub issue tickets.

Before contributing code to the project, please read the coding guidelines in the wiki on how to prepare a PR that is likely to be accepted by the maintainers.

PRs are automatically picked up by GitHub CI, which runs the builds, integration tests, as well as static analysis scan on SonarCloud (the latter only for PRs created by project members.)

Security

We would love to hear from you if you think you found a security vulnerability in Netatalk. Please file a security issue ticket with us, and we will follow up with you as soon as possible.

Documentation

To aid in your installation and configuration of Netatalk, a comprehensive html manual is published online.

Additionally, each Netatalk program and configuration file also has a troff man page which can be accessed on the command line, f.e. man afpd.

Wiki

Collaborative articles can be found on the Netatalk wiki hosted on GitHub.

Editing is open to all registered GitHub users. We welcome improvements to existing material, as well as brand new articles on topics concerning Netatalk or Mac networking in general.

Website

The Netatalk website netatalk.io is where project updates and resources are published, including documentation, release notes, security advisories, links to related projects, and more.