Views on “Mac-like” routers

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Level 1

21 points

Views on “Mac-like” routers

Hi there,

Looking for opinions and experiences…

I just went through (hopefully it’s over) six months of router heck. Basically, it went like this:

My faithful, 10+ year-old AirPort Extreme finally dropped dead on me late last year. Without going into the painful details, potential replacements included one that didn’t match the description and one Chinese piece of junk that I couldn’t set up. I went through a couple of refurbs (one of which, a Linksys, worked well — for six months), and settled (I think) on a Wavlink that I just received, that’s actually not a refurb.

A feature that I insisted on was a USB port for networked storage. I noticed that some of the routers I tried (e.g., the Linksys) treated the USB drive as I, a long-time Mac partisan, expected, namely, that when the drive mounted on my Mac, it would have the volume name that I had assigned to it. However, with two of them (including the Wavlink), the drive mounted with some generic name that I couldn’t change. In addition, with the Wavlink, I was unable to change the username for that drive; the username is “usbuser”, and that’s that (I could choose the password). Similarly on the Wavlink, the volume mounts as “sda1”. I was told by Wavlink that this is due to how the firmware is configured, and there was no way to change it. (I made an appropriate feature request.)

The question I want to put out is, Which brand and model of routers has the most “Mac-like” interface, and is the most Mac-friendly? What kinds of OS do routers use? Netgear looks very Windows-like, or maybe some flavor of Linux. Similarly for Wavlink.

I’m genuinely curious about what people think about that.

Jeff 🤔😉😊

iMac 24″

Posted on Jul 9, 2025 12:57 PM

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Answer 1

Phil0124

Level 10

214,507 points

Jul 10, 2025 10:40 AM in response to Jeff Mark

The OS or Firmware a router may be running is not really relevant as you can't actually access it directly. That's just what operates the router internally, not what you see when you access the the configuration panel.

What you see when you go to a router's config address is a web interface, not related to whatever firmware the router is running which can be any number of things, some yes, related to Linux.

The interface you see, is basically just a web page. Some more intuitive than others. Hardly any will look or work like macOS at all. You probably should not look for something like that.

I have a TP-Link Archer A7, that works fine, and has a iOS and iPadOS app for some configurations, and yes a config website for the more nitty gritty settings. Including changing what name the drive appears as in the network.

It also has an iOS and iPadOS app for the more basic settings, which excludes the connected USB drive.

The main issue you will encounter with routers is the support for the drive's formatting. Most will support fat32 and NTFS, maybe exFAT. Not many will support Mac's native HFS+ and pretty much none support mac's APFS at this time. This is only an issue if your current drive is formatted for Mac directly.

Depending on budget, I'd say Tp-Link or Netgear should work for you, though the interfaces may be not to your liking.

Examples:

click here ➜ TP-Link AXE5400 Tri-Band WiFi 6E Router (Archer AXE75) - Amazon.com

or

click here ➜ NETGEAR Nighthawk WiFi 6 Router (RAX36) – Security Features, AX3000 3 Gbps Wireless Speed - Amazon.com

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Answer 2

VikingOSX

Level 10

122,148 points

Jul 10, 2025 11:25 AM in response to Jeff Mark

Apple's AirPort Extreme routers and Time Capsules were purposely designed for Mac operating systems, including that USB port out back. Non-Apple brands assume you are using a Windows PC, and don't count on frequent firmware updates either. That is especially true of Netgear.

Since I have a Synology server in the basement from which I can access storage content from a 13 TB drive, I don't need to hang a USB drive onto the back of my router (in this case, a Synology RT6600ax). I didn't do that even with my fourth-gen AEBS router when it was installed.

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Answer 3

Camelot

Level 9

57,897 points

Jul 10, 2025 02:09 PM in response to Jeff Mark

I'm kind of with the other voices here - 99.9% of the routers out there will cater to the mass market (i.e. Windows) and won't have a native MacOS solution. The AirPort Extreme was an outlier in that respect.

That's not to say they won't work with MacOS, but it's not likely to be their priority.

In addition, IMHO, network people are good at networking; storage people are good at storage. There is very little crossover - therefore most 'routers that do NAS' do so while meeting a pretty low bar (which I think is what you've seen... poor UI, limited user/access controls, etc.)

I lean towards Viking here - a separate NAS may be a better all-round option, especially if it's important to your workflow/security. Better MacOS/iOS support/integration, better performance, and, since it's separate, you're free to upgrade your router any time without disrupting your storage (and your storage will keep working even when the router bites the dust).

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