Q: Back to my Mac works intermittently only
The "Back to my Mac" function only works intermitently, and I'm at a loss as to why.
Here's the current, and very common situation. All Macs are on Mavericks unless otherwise noted.
- I'm at home, connecting to Macs in my studio. Same ISP, FWIT
- Yesterday I was able to connect from my MacBook Air to my studio iMac, no problem. Today, I can not. I get the "server may not exist" error

- Currently I can connect to another Mac in the studio, and to another Mac in my home (home one not on Mavericks), no problem. So it doesn't appear to be a BTMM network issue.
- The iMac I can't connect to is online, which I have verified by using the live view function on Witness (security camera type software) on the Mac. It's showing me a live view of the studio, so it is (at least partially) functiona.
- The Mac that I can connect to in the Studio is also currently locked by Witness, so it shouldn't be that Witness is blocking it. Regardless, yesterday when I connected just fine Witness was on, and I've connected successfully hundreds of times while Witness was locked.
Unfortunately this is a common occurance. I'd say maybe 1/4 of the time I want to connect to my iMac, I can't. It may or may not connect at a later time, or it may not work until I'm back in the studio and can reboot it. In fact tomorrow (Sunday) the iMac will reboot on schedule, so I'll find out if I can connect using BTMM after that.
In the meantime… any ideas on why on earth this happens? How to avoid? How to fix remotely? Or barring all that, a good replacement service? This is getting old. And frankly I still can't believe that I can't access BTMM from the iPad!
thanks
-Joseph
iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9)
Posted on Apr 5, 2014 12:22 PM
Kappy,
Thanks again for trying to help. The connectoin isn't wireless; all my studio Macs are hard wired. The home MacBook Air I'm trying to connect from is wired, but that isn't where the problem is. Or, is it… (more in a moment).
Also FYI this isn't an issue unique to Mavericks. I've had this problem with BTMM for as long as I can remember, across many systems and OSs.
However… I got it to work. Guess how… by rebooting my MacBook Air! (The Mac I'm connecting from) I never would have expected that to be an issue since I was able to connect to other Macs from here. I'll be sure to try that next time this happens and will report back here to see if it helps again. Totally bizarre, IMHO.
Thanks again, and I will likely be rebuilding this Air from scratch soon anyway. Although as I said, I've had this issue pretty much ever since BTTM came out.
cheers
-Joseph
Posted on Apr 5, 2014 9:19 PM