This update is trash. Take it back

No. The second gen single bay My Cloud did not officially support adding additional third party modules/apps in OS3. One had to modify or trick the firmware code (see this link) to remove the block and enable the ability to add third party modules/apps in the OS3 v2.x firmware.

The WD knowledgebase link you posted even states OS3 didn’t support third party apps on the single bay units.

OS3 to OS5 Feature Differences

  • Not all features listed are supported on all My Cloud product models
  • Single Bay My Cloud in OS 3 does not support the installation of 3rd party apps
  • Integrated apps in OS 3 (Backups, iTunes, DLNA, etc…) are now installable from the Apps tab

Yes you had to trick the firmware to remove the unnecessary block to get third party apps but then you could add almost any of the apps available which is well documented on the forums here.

WD likely won’t respond to questions/posts/discussions that deal with unofficial modifications to their firmware other than to say it’s not supported. They expliciedly state that the single bay My Cloud units do not support third party apps. (Beyond the few that are included in the OS5 firmware.)

Although I will never take advantage of this feature (I have a Gen 1 MyCloud, and EX2 ulta units); I find this to be a ridiculous limitation.

I suspect WD actually had to go out of their way to block 3rd party apps on the unit while still allowing their own apps. The easy path; the more customer friendly path would have been to allow 3rd party apps and put in a simple text disclaimer box.

This is on the exact same level as the moronic 8TB drive limit on the WD cloud mirrors. 8TB were the largest drives sold in these units. A number of OS/3 units had upgraded to larger drives with no fuss at all. Now, drives larger than 8TB are not recognized by OS/5 software. Someone had to actually configure that limit. . . .and all it does is *ick off the user base.

Limiting the ability to install apps on the second gen single bay My Cloud is not a ridiculous limitation. Its a marketing point. Many manufacturers do this. The single bay is the bottom of the line so it has the fewest features and that includes the inability to add third party modules.

But in the grand scheme of things WD has made a whole host of decisions with the creation of the single bay My Cloud line that leaves one scratching their head. From the removal of the shutdown option in the v2.x firmware, to the confusion inducing firmware numbering scheme (3.x, 4.x for first gen, then 2.x for second gen), to introducing the My Cloud Home that caused and still causes confusion among customers, to the Backup limitations with the v2.x firmware, to the long running sleep issue, to many other things.

So - - - -marketing point.

You mean that some is going for extra time and effort to maintain product differentiation into products that have not been sold for a few years, and are in “limited support” because of EOL? Nice.

If only they put similar effort into other items like;

  • Resolving sleep (frankly, I gave up trying to make it work)
  • Indexing taking way too long and consuming too many resources (I no longer add media to the one drive I have on OS/5)
  • Creating enhanced functionality (like COPY) to the web apps (Frankly, I gave up on the OS/5 web app several months ago)

But yes. . . I agree with your broader points

I get your frustration. I felt the same thing last week after they took away third party apps for the gen 2 mycloud.

I mean I am at the point that I’m willing and confidently able to put an open source operating system on it just to expand functionality. I wish WD would actually listen and engage their consumers more. They don’t even have to waste time building these OSes and it’s not making them any money doing it. They should sell these NASes with something like debian and then have their own WD apps for functionality. They are 150% there – meaning they are spending 50% more time than they need to limiting the hardware. They already use debian as a base for their OS so their apps are already linux. I get it that it’s a selling point in order to buy more expensive hardware but you need more expensive hardware just for functionality. Example, with a single bay drive, I will never be able to run raid. It’s physically impossible because you need at least two drives. You need a more expensive enclosure and possibly a raid controller which will both increase the price of the hardware.

But if you give a single bay enclosure 3rd party app support you’ll see more entry level customers who would then be more enticed to keep using WD if they like the reliability of their hardware.

A good comparison and WD’s main competitors are synology and qnap. Synology is known for having excellent software. WD software is mind numbing by comparison. Qnap is known for their hardware value to the point that if you look at just the hardware specs in doesn’t make sense to buy a synology. Largely, they have closed the gap between their software and synology but they are still not known for their software. What you don’t see either do is artificially limit their hardware. Neither is known for cheap hardware. I think WD could be a player in hardware value because their main goal should be selling drives.

I think WD needs to realistically look at where they are in the market and what they do well and capitalize on it. I think they should provided an open source OS and make it solely about the hardware’s value and they won’t have to worry about limiting it then. They should be making the hardware as cheap as possible so that you buy hard drives from them because that’s where they make money. They should be giving away 8 bay nas enclosures just so you buy 8 drives from them. Easiest way to make cheaper hardware is use open source software. Less time spent developing code is more money in the company’s pocket.

You see people all the time buy WD elements hard drives or equivalent just to shuck and use the drive in their NAS because it’s cheaper than buying just the drive. So they buy the thing and throw out the enclosure and software. Just sell hard drives cheaper to consumers. Why pretend that this is what they are good at? Their software is largely not ready for prime time and it doesn’t need to be. They need to stop trying to control their customers and start selling them cheap hardware to use their hard drives.

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The single bay My Cloud did not have third party app support out of the box. WD stated from the start that third party apps were not supported on the single bay. It took users time to figure out how to get around the My Cloud OS3 block on the unit to enable third party app support. Just as it took users time to figure out how to do many other things that WD doesn’t support on the single bays. From unbricking it to putting on different OS’s. All are not supported by WD. It will likely take someone some time to figure out how to bypass the third party app block on the OS5 single bay firmware.

There is a reason why Synology and Qnap are more (often much more) expensive than the WD single bay/single drive, or even the multi bay units. One is paying more for a; better, more mature operating system, apps, modules, and hardware.

Lets be honest here. The single bay/single drive My Cloud unit typically ran $40 to $60 USD more than a bare WD Red hard drive if bought by itself. As such the problematic firmware and software reflects that low cost. But at least one was getting an entry level NAS even with problems for a price that was typically less than competitors single bay units (at the time).

Personally when the time came to look for a better NAS than the single bay My Cloud, I went to Synology. I sucked it up and paid more and got a much more capable NAS than a similar WD NAS model. The lower end WD NAS boxes are attractive when it comes to price, but the tradeoff is the buggy firmware and apps.

There’s no block on third party apps on OS5 for the single bay device like there was for OS3. You clearly haven’t looked at OS5 for the my cloud.

Well. . . who in their right mind. . .and who is even slightly slightly knowledgeable, would load OS/5 onto a 2nd Gen MyCloud?

So TRUE. . .I have not looked at it. I just read the Knowledge base article. (Disclosure: Actually, my unit is 1st Gen. I do have an EX2 Ultra with OS/5 on it. I have no desire to load the OS/5 on my other units)

I think I agree with this.
I first bought my MyCloud on sale. . .it was actually only slightly more expensive than a comparably sized USB external drive

For a larger NAS, the real money is in the hard drives; and not the enclosure. What’s an extra $50-100 on an enclosure when you might be tossing $500-$1000 of HDD’s into it?

When I seriously expand my system - - -.- - -well, I will make a judgement on OS/5. And also a judgement on the WD Red drives after the CMR/SMR debacle last year.

Don’t have a v2.x single bay so I can only go by what WD says and what users who have installed OS5 say. Per WD they claim two methods of installing third party apps in OS5 (from the “app store” and “manually”). Further WD states the OS5 single bay My Cloud does not support 3rd party apps and 3rd party apps cannot be installed on a Single Bay) My Cloud.

This likely means that the inability to install is due to firmware coding if the add an app button is disabled/not available, and or if the install an app manually is disabled/not available, or if the app bin file itself won’t let itself be installed on the single bay. If it is a firmware limitation then someone will likely (in time) figure out a way to bypass this limitation. If its the third party module bin file itself then perhaps someone will figure out a way to recompile the module for use on a single bay. Either way its likely an OS5 firmware coding issue that is preventing third party modules (beyond the basic ones included) on the single bay. If this is true then someone will likely be able to pick apart the code to figure out how it’s being implemented and then figure out a way around it.

I would like to confirm that Western Digital has made the process of installing third party very easy. All the apps that are available for My Cloud Mirror, My Cloud EX2 Ultra etc. Can be installed on the My Cloud Gen2 after you compile them for the My Cloud Gen 2 OS5. After that you just click the: “Install an app manually” from the App Store and you’re done.

Something else it appears that has changed in OS5. It appears, per the following WD Staff post, that one can no longer manually set the ports for remote access/cloud access if one’s broadband provider was blocking access to those ports. While the following link/information was posted to the OS5 EX Series, I assume (until I see further info) it applies to all My Cloud devices using OS5. Some will have UPnP disabled in their router’s for security reasons.

My Cloud OS 3 Remote Access used the following ports and allowed the user to manually configure port forward on the device itself.

Internal HTTP	80
Internal HTTPS	443

External HTTP	9000 - 9999
External HTTPS	9000 - 9999

My Cloud OS 5 only uses HTTPS and does not allow the user to manually configure port forward on the device itself.
OS 5 depends on UPnP to manage the forwarding of the ports.

Internal HTTPS	4430
External HTTPS  40000 - 49999
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hey that’s awsome,

Do you have a link of how to compile them ourselves?

or

Is there a repository of them pre-compiled?

Any assistance is appreciated.

Well first you will need to Download this archive from this link:

https://downloads.wdc.com/gpl/WDMyCloud_NAS_Apps_GPL_20201112.tar.gz

You will need a Linux Distro (Ubuntu for example) use a big usb stick 16 or 32 GB
copy the file above on the stick or download it after you boot in Linux from the USB Stick
extract the files from the archive on the Linux desktop and don’t change the folder name ( WDMyCloud_NAS_Apps_GPL_20201112 ) that way it will be easy to just copy the commands and only type you’re user name where you have {Your User Name}. You can also use a virtual machine to install linux. I’ve used Ubuntu on virtual machine.

In the archive you have a basic instructions set made for you by WD on what to do, the example they give is for the Transmission App (WDMyCloud_NAS_Apps_GPL_ReleaseNote.txt).

This is a detailed step by step on how create the Transmission App because the release notes from WD are not that detailed if you’re not great with Linux:

Open Terminal and type these commands (Remember your Password and User Name after you finish installing Linux on the virtual machine or USB stick):

sudo -s

To Install Docker use:

cd /home/{Your User Name}/Desktop/WDMyCloud_NAS_Apps_GPL_20201112/dockerfile/

then type:

sudo snap install docker

or

sudo apt install docker.io

wait for it to finish

then type:

docker build -t gza_build_env .

wait for it to finish.

then:

cd /home/{Your User Name}/Desktop/WDMyCloud_NAS_Apps_GPL_20201112/Apps/

type this to display the supported modules

‘/home/{Your User Name}/Desktop/WDMyCloud_NAS_Apps_GPL_20201112/Apps/MyCloudOS5_mksapkg’

You should see this:

Supported model_name:
WDMyCloud
WDMyCloudEX4100
WDMyCloudDL4100
WDMyCloudEX2100
WDMyCloudDL2100
WDMyCloudMirror
MyCloudEX2Ultra
MyCloudPR4100
MyCloudPR2100
WDCloud

then change folders by typing:

cd armhf

then

cd Transmission

this last command will create the app in the armhf folder for the My Cloud Gen 2 it is a bin file but after the bin extension it will have date like this: WDMyCloud_Transmission_1.09.bin(02092021) you can delete the date after .bin or just use it like it is:

…/…/MyCloudOS5_mksapkg -E -s -m WDMyCloud

for a another app just type:

cd …

and change the folder for example

cd AmazonS3

then

…/…/MyCloudOS5_mksapkg -E -s -m WDMyCloud

and you will have the AmazonS3 app for My Cloud Gen 2

I hope this helps everybody. If you have any problems I will do my best to help.

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Thanks for sharing @mariandag! I didn’t know WD had this toolset for NAS Apps.

I was able to package transmission for MyCloud Gen2 (single bay - WDBCTLXXXXXXX - 10) for OS5 and install it using the “Install an app manually” option that now is back.

Screenshot:

Link to BIN file for @stacks and anyone that needs it.

WDMyCloud_OS5_WDBCTLXXXXXXX-10_Transmission_1.09.bin (transmission version is 2.94)

Feel free to upload it to a stable server. Is my first post and I didn’t see an option to attach files with special extensions.

Hey,

sorry for taking the discussion to a very basic level, but I´m really desperate already.
Mycloud home is not visible any more. I have no access from any app or platform. But it´s listed as active on my main router - as the last 6t months, where it was working perfectly fine. I had a session with WD support which was totally useless. What happened with the strange update? I can´t access my own data from nowhere… any chance to get access again without having studied IT or similar…? I don´t get it…

Thank you!

Do you have a second generation My Cloud or a My Cloud Home? They ARE NOT the same or even similar devices. A My Cloud Home IS NOT supported by OS5 and uses completely different firmware and a completely different operating system than the My Cloud line.

Single bay My Cloud looks like this:

My Cloud Home looks like this:

If you have a My Cloud Home see the dedicated subforum for that device where users more familiar with that unit may be able to assist with your issue.

My Cloud Home

Following this and other advice, I created binary files for the apps in this folder ( WDMyCloud_NAS_Apps_GPL_20201112) and apps in the wdpksrc git repo for WDMyCloud (Gen 2).

So that others don’t have to recreate the steps, below is a link to all of the apps I created.

https://mega.nz/folder/vpMh0IyJ#x6yMAclndrvhYkm_9QHrBA

I hope this is helpful for others.

1 Like

thank you after 1 day searching i find your post <3