Published by Steve Litchfield at 14:33 UTC, February 12th 2018

From the people who brought you Tubecast, Video360 and Spoticast , and billed as a 'SAMBA server' inside your phone, the idea here is to share files via network protocols from a Windows 10 Mobile phone to other computing devices around your home or office. No, I've never wanted to do this either, but if you have a use case then knock yourself out, I've included all the details below.

Basically, this allows you to transform your phone on a network drive. It's handy if you don't have an USB key on your pocket, and it works remotely with VLC/Kodi or any SMB Client on another computer. For example, you can copy a video from Windows Explorer to your phone, and read it from VLC or Kodi on your Android TV. LAN drive also has an integrated mediaplayer if you want to read something on your phone.

This is a Xamarin project, by the way, and notice that the developers only needed to target Mobile, since Desktop already has SMB server and Xbox has network restrictions that block this kind of thing anyway.

From the Store description:

Transform your phone as a network drive (also known as "z drive"). Access your phone/device files with common softwares : MAC OS Finder, Windows File Explorer, Android ES Explorer, VLC, Kodi etc. LAN drive is a powerfull and easy SMB server - also known as SAMBA server - designed for filesharing. You could forget your usb key or your usb cable, you will never forget LAN Drive. Copy/paste/rename files and folders on your device with MAC OS Finder, Windows File Explorer, Android ES Explorer, etc.

Access Videos, Photos, Music library in your device as network shared folders.

View your multimedia files with embedded mediaplayer (or external app).

Your device name appears automatically in MAC OS Finder, Windows File Explorer, Android ES Explorer, VLC, Kodi etc.

Manage your device name (NetBios) and Workgroup name.

3 authentication types : Anonymous with popup confirmation, Anonymous and Users with custom rights

Manage users and create your own shared folders with credentials.

View users connected and disconnect them.

Unlimited connections (several users can access your sharings at the same time)

5 languages : English, Spanish, French, German, Italian.

Protocols SMB1 (CIFS) and SMB2 protocol (enable/disable via settings)

There, see? You always wanted to be your phone's sysadmin and now you can do it properly! Some promo screens of LAN Drive in action:

Configuring the SMB server and about to start it; (right) seeing the network drive showing up on a Windows PC!

Setting up user permissions for this on-phone network drive and what folders are shared...

Browsing local files, to save toggling back and forwards from Files; (right) the Settings page, picking the SMB protocols to use.

You can buy this for £2.50 in the Store here. There's also a trial version where bandwidth is limited to 0.5 MB/s (normally 50 MB/s, 100 times faster)

Here's the link for installation for other platforms, by the way.