A new Chrome extension finally brings native Samba share support to Chromebooks and other Chrome OS devices.

The free add-on allows SMB and CIFS file systems to be mounted and accessed directly through the Chrome OS File Manager app.

Remote files and folders can be opened, edited and deleted through the file manager as both read and write support is fully baked in.

LM, LMv2, NTLM and NTLMv2 authentication protocols are supported. Authentication by domain is not supported, neither are encrypted network shares, NetBIOS over TCP and anything that isn’t using a unicode character set.

Accessing network file shares and third-party cloud storage services is increasingly easy in Chrome OS. Dropbox, One Drive and Box are supported, as are SFTP and WebDav shares.

The Chrome File System Provider API is to thank. This API allows pretty much any network file system to be integrated into the Chrome OS file manager.

Install SMB/CIFS File System Provider from Chrome Web Store