Future of Home Sharing

[AaronBossig]

Currently, I keep my media on a computer running iTunes, sharing it with the Home Sharing feature. Although not the most elegant solution, it's worked. I have no personal desire to change it.

However, I do need to upgrade my hardware and while doing some troubleshooting, I find reports that Home Sharing is no longer a feature in newer releases of iTunes (or whatever it's called these days). Is this accurate? Is Apple officially sun-setting that feature? I'm sure I can get it back up and running with a bunch of software kludges, but I'm trying to look to the future and if rebuilding this as a Plex server is the best move long-term, this is a really good time to start.

 

[galad]

I don't know about Windows, but on macOS it has simply been moved to System Settings -> General -> Sharing.

 

[priitv8]

I don't know about Windows, but on macOS it has simply been moved to System Settings -> General -> Sharing.

It morphed from an application service to an operating system service, so to say.
And luckily, the client side of things is still there in tvOS 18 and all other iOS-es too. Inlcuding the HomePod 1st Gen.

 

[rx7dude]

It still works but it's not as reliable as it used to be. Really slow to load if you have a big library. I gave up and moved to Plex.

 

[Boyd01]

I have a 2014 Mini with my library on a 4tb external SSD, using iTunes with home sharing on Mojave. Still works fine, but I'm also concerned about an eventual migration to something newer. Will continue putting this off, but just waiting for the day when iTunes will no longer connect to the store.

As has been said, Home Sharing still exists, they just changed the name to Media Sharing and put it in System Preferences. But I have no idea what bugs may be involved.

Shared video playlists have never worked for me on the Mac since they made the switch to the TV app in Catalina. I have a lot of video playlists on the Mini and they all work perfectly on my two Apple TV's with home sharing. But if I try to access them from a Mac in the TV app, the shared playlists are all empty. This is a bug ("feature"?) in the TV app however and not a problem with Media Sharing.

 

[AL2TEACH]

I'm sort of confused but on Apple TV this Media/Home Sharing would it be the Computer icon?

 

[Boyd01]

On newer versions of MacOS (starting with Catalina, IIRC) you would turn on media sharing in System Preferences on your Mac to share your library, then you use the Computers icon on your Apple TV to access it.

 

[AL2TEACH]

the Computers icon

Thanks was just wondering because I never called it sharing/home or it's been so long since it was set.