The last release was of AFP 3.4 over seven years ago, and since the introduction of Apple’s new file system APFS, it hasn’t been supported for the sharing of APFS volumes, only for the older HFS+.īy default, recent versions of macOS disable AFP connections for file sharing with other Macs. But its use has now been deprecated for six years, since OS X 10.9 Mavericks. That protocol translates between the two file systems.ĪFP is Apple’s own protocol which was originally developed for Classic macOS, and has been widely supported by networked devices including storage such as NAS. The Mac you’re working on, which has connected to the server, then communicates over the network to request the current folder listing, and to transfer files, using a network file sharing protocol, which in this case could be SMB or AFP. You enable File Sharing on the Mac storing that Home folder, then use the Finder’s Connect to Server… menu command on the other Mac (the client), and enter the address of the Mac which is sharing its files. Let’s say that you want to share your Home folder from one Mac to another. These sharing protocols act as intermediaries between the local file systems on a Mac, and a server on the network.

Although AFP hasn’t been free of troubles, it had long been preferred by many using networked storage and file servers. More recently, the most popular have been SMB and AFP, but Apple’s SMB has had something of a rollercoaster ride, and in many versions of macOS has had problems, sometimes to the point of being unusable. MacOS has supported a wide range of file sharing services over the years, including SMB, NFS, FTP, WebDAV, and its own proprietary Apple Filing Protocol, AFP.

Macos smb share