[Help] How to hide third-party App Center apps for standard users in TOS 7?

[eavn]

Hi TOS Support Team & Community,

I am running TOS 7 (version 7.0.1422) and need assistance with user privilege management for installed applications.

When third-party applications (e.g., please see the attached screenshot) are installed from the App Center, their icons automatically appear on the TOS desktop/main interface for all standard users. However, these third-party apps do not show up under Control Panel > Privileges > Application Permissions, so I cannot set them to Deny for specific users or groups.

My goal is to restrict standard users so they can only see and access Photos and File Manager, hiding all other installed third-party apps from their desktop.

Is there a built-in feature, permission setting, or workaround in TOS 7 to hide these App Center apps or restrict their launch access for non-admin users?

Thanks in advance for your guidance!

[snapsh0t]

Do your standard users really need to access the NAS desktop at all? File Manager access can easily be replaced by Windows File Explorer on the PC desktop (or Mac equivalent) and there must be an equivalent to Photos available.

[EriChan]

Thank you for your feedback!

Currently, TOS 7 does not support hiding third-party App Center applications or configuring application launch permissions for standard users. We have forwarded this feature request to our product team for evaluation in future updates.

[eavn]

Do your standard users really need to access the NAS desktop at all? File Manager access can easily be replaced by Windows File Explorer on the PC desktop (or Mac equivalent) and there must be an equivalent to Photos available.

Actually, standard users do need NAS desktop permissions for our workflow.

If standard users are completely barred or restricted from logging into the TOS interface, they will no longer be able to use TNAS PC or TNAS Mobile for automated sync features (such as TerraSync and mobile Photo backup).

At that point, access would be strictly limited to local file protocols like SMB (via Windows File Explorer or Mac Finder). That defeats the entire purpose of our setup, as we rely heavily on mobile photo backups and background file synchronization for normal users.

This is why we need a built-in option in TOS 7 to simply hide third-party App Center icons from standard users' main desktop view.

[Edited]
To add to this point, if standard users are granted access to the NAS desktop, all of those extra third-party app icons also show up directly inside the TNAS PC client interface.

Furthermore, from a security and administration standpoint, standard users should not be exposed to internal system apps or server-level diagnostic information (such as the system status widgets or hardware monitor shown in the attached screenshot) on their home screens.

Allowing administrators to curate or filter the desktop app grid per user/group—or simply hiding non-essential App Center packages from non-admin interfaces—would greatly improve security, cleanliness, and the overall user experience for standard accounts in TOS 7.

[eavn]

Thank you for your feedback!

Currently, TOS 7 does not support hiding third-party App Center applications or configuring application launch permissions for standard users. We have forwarded this feature request to our product team for evaluation in future updates.

Thank you for confirming and forwarding the feature request to the product team!

Additionally, I would like to request another feature regarding user storage management in TOS 7: the ability to change or migrate the location of the homes directory to a different Volume.

Currently, the homes directory is fixed to volume1 by default with no Option/GUI setting to move it. On systems where volume1 is configured on smaller SSDs (e.g., for OS/apps) and main data is stored on larger HDD volumes, having all user personal folders locked to volume1 quickly leads to storage bottlenecks. Allowing admins to select or relocate the homes volume would provide much better storage flexibility.

I hope the product team will also consider this request for future releases. Thanks again for your support!

[Julian]

Hi eavn,

Thank you for laying out the full picture — the TerraSync and mobile photo backup workflow makes it very clear that standard users in your setup genuinely need desktop access, and we won't suggest otherwise.

To clarify how this should work: desktop app visibility is meant to be governed by the administrator through Control Panel > Application settings, and that mechanism is not changing. Your workflow (standard users with desktop access for sync and backup) remains fully supported.

The problem you've hit is that certain third-party apps are currently packaged with an all-users display declaration. Once set, such an app is always shown to every user and cannot be hidden — there is no configuration path for the administrator at all. Having looked at your report, we agree this should not behave this way, and we're treating it as an issue that needs to be fixed rather than an intended limitation. We don't have a firm date to share yet, but your thread is part of the material we're using to shape the fix.

Your point about standard users being exposed to system status widgets and hardware monitor information is also well taken — that's a valid security and cleanliness concern, separate from the app display issue, and it has been noted for review as well.

In the meantime, for the apps currently blocking you, the only available options are to remove them from the App Center entirely, or to check with the respective developers whether an alternative package without the all-users declaration is available. We know these are only interim workarounds, not a real solution — the burden shouldn't be on you to work around how an app was packaged.

Thank you again for one of the most well-documented reports we've received on this topic. If anything about your setup is business-critical, please reach us at support(at)terra-master.com and mention this thread.

Best regards