The Discovery Desktop app, which allows you to mount a WD My Cloud drive on your computer,will be discontinuedin June of 2023. This decision is sure to upset customers, who are now forced to manually enable local access on their My Cloud devices.
According to Western Digital, the Discovery Desktop app is a “legacy software product” that is “no longer consistent with the company’s customer experience ecosystem.” In June of 2023, WD will end support for this app, meaning that there will be no new features or security updates.
Discovery Desktop may continue to work after June of 2023. But WD says that the desktop app will eventually break due to incompatibilities with My Cloud OS updates. (That said, even if this app continues working after June of 2023, I suggest ditching it. The lack of security updates will leave you vulnerable to ransomware and other attacks.)
To be clear, Discovery Desktop isn’t an amazing app. But it’s an incredibly useful app, especially to inexperienced My Cloud users. Manually setting up local network access on a My Cloud device can be a confusing task, but Discovery Desktop made it easy!
Western Digital’s instructions are incredibly messy—I had to dig around a bit to find itsguide on local network access. So, to keep things simple, I’m going to summarize these instructions here:
If any of these steps fail, please ensure that you’re logged into your local network. Disable anything on your phone or computer that my interfere with local network access, such as a VPN. And double-check that UPnP is enabled on your router.
Note that you can set up local network access for multiple users, each with their own unique login credentials. This is a privacy feature that allows you to isolate each user’s files. (Though you can set up shared folders.)
Again, WD will end support for Discovery Desktop in June of 2023. Even if the app continues working after support ends, you should avoid using it, as its lack of security updates will leave you vulnerable to hackers and malware.
