Apple TV Won't Login to HomeShare

slight update, I was also advised on a workaround to allow me to access my iTunes library until they fix the problem.

all you need to do is to create a new Apple ID WITHOUT two factor authentication. In iTunes go to home sharing & sign out of your existing ID. Sign into home sharing with the newly created ID (just in the home sharing section, nowhere else) then finally turn on home sharing on the Apple TV and use the newly created Apple ID and it will allow you to stream your library as before.

hope this helps somebody

Success! Finally I was able to connect to HomeShare. It turns out that since a while ago Apple requires s refresh of your iTunes credentials every month or so. I had not noticed that the computer where the iTunes Library, to be accessed by the Apple TV, was located was requesting a credentials verification. Once I verified the credentials I was able to connect, not using the option of using the already logged on iTunes credentials, (that failed), but going the route of choosing another account and putting in the same account, using the password and appended verification code, (generated locally by my iPhone). So, another thing to check is to make sure your iTunes credentials are valid in the computer housing the library you want to connect to.

I took on board that 30 second time limit to enter the 6-digit code. The only way I could achieve that was by connecting my bluetooth keyboard to the tv, and literally running from my pc with the code to type it in after entering my password within 30 seconds. The wonders of modern technology.

Amazingly, it did the trick and Home Sharing is working now. I don't trust it to continue if I turn if off, but at least something worked for the time being.

When signing in an an older device you need to enter the password and code together, and there is a time limit. To avoid exceeding the limit you need to enter the password, then request the code, and add it to the password.

Well, then that seems it must be on their authentication side then, unable to validate most likely due the two factor authentication. I believe the base iOS version of the Apple TV 3 is some version of iOS 7. The newest form

of two factor authentication showed up in iOS 9. Maybe the solution is to make a separate account without the two factor authorization. Newly created accounts have a two week grace period to turn off two factor authentication, and any account after that or that has enabled Apple Pay can no longer turn it off. So I wonder if creating a new Apple ID, and turning off two factor authentication, will then allow home sharing to work. I will try to test out this theory tonight.

Well, I did find a solution but it involves breaking up with Apple. So Apple because you refuse to support my Apple TV for home sharing and yet want to charge $160 for a new one, I have decided to to move my entire movie collection from iTunes to PleX. It wasn’t a pain and very simple to setup. But since Apple TV 4 and up are the only ones able to download apps, I’ve boxed up my Apple TV and got a fire stick for 1/4 of the cost of a new Apple TV, downloaded plex to the fire stick and I’m up and running again. So if your ok with breaking up with iTunes and Apple TV, this is a nice fix. Plus I can now access my entire library remotely, which wasn’t even possible before.

I saw someone mention my previous post on switching to plex and thought I would share this for anyone who was interested due to some trial and error I learned. I also agree with another user that this is frustrating because I also live in the Apple ecosystem and everything is Apple. I just never got around to getting an Apple TV 4K because my 3rd gen worked and there was no reason for me to upgrade because the new features like downloadable apps and games isn’t my thing. 

That said, while I could have just went out and bought the new Apple TV, I got a fire stick just out of spite because I feel this was their not so subtle way of urging me to upgrade. 

However, from the start I hate the fire stick and love it at the same time. The love is that it allows me to download the app like plex to stream my movies like I used to on my Apple TV. The bad, is the dang advertisements and app and movie suggestions. This is where I miss the Apple TV, but I guess that’s what you get when you go from a $160 product to a $40  product. 

But I digress. So setting up the plex system was pretty simple and easy to do. I moved my iTunes media folder contents like movies and tv shows to a new location and named it plex media server. I then directed the server to that location and it did its scan and everything was up and running. Installed plex on the fire stick and connected and now I’m back to streaming my content again. I can also stream remotely using the plex app for both fire stick and iPhone and iPad. 

Just a tidbit for those penny pushers like me. Plex is free but has a paid subscription. If you try to watch movies on an iPhone or iPad app it will want you to pay for the plex pass or $5 one time unlock fee. So the work around is to install an app called infuse and it lets you stream from your plex server as well and has a better mobile interface. I personally like the infuse app interface in mobile better than plex, but the plex interface is great on the fire stick. 

There is another option to keep using your Apple TV’s 3, because both the iPhone and iPad app of infuse and plex allow you to airplay from your device to the Apple TV. I however, didn’t want to do this every time so I got the fire stick to use the plex app on. One side note is infuse does charge $0.99 to enable the airplay, the plex app does not. So you can run both on your phone to avoid paying any fees. 

One final thought on issues I did encounter is Subtitles that are not hard coded would play in the middle of the screen and I also noticed this in iOS 13 as well so not sure what’s up with that. My subtitles were added to my files with iFlicks so that could be why. However, in regards to the iOS 13 subtitle issues, never had this issue in iOS 12, so it’s recent. The solution was to remove the subtitle from the mp4 or m4v file and just place them as a separate .srt file within the movie folder.

For example. 

Batman (Name of Folder)

Batman.m4v (name of movie)

Batman.en.set (name of subtitle)

Plex does have a detailed article for helping with this. It is also the same for tv shows. You also need to set up subtitles in plex to read forced subtitles for foreign parts and it will auto select it for you so you don’t have to set them manually. They also have a good support article on that.

One other issue I found is that plex wants you to name movies with the year, for example (Batman 2006.mp4). I did not change mine unless I had movies with the same tiles, such as remakes, because it would then group them together. If this occurs it’s a simple fix, the movie will show a purple square next to the title in the upper left. Click on the movie and hit separate files, and then just click unmatch on both and rematch them for the correct movie. Plex will fetch metadata or you can just use your own. Also see their support article on that. 

One final note on tv show naming if you get any issues of grouping, plex wants you to name tv shows like (Batman.s01.e05.mp4). Again I didn’t do this unless I had a metadata issues that caused a tv show episode to be out of place. 

So other than that Plex was a great switch and I’m enjoying it. It is also nice to use the infuse app as well. It is also great to be able to stream my content remotely from home using the plex app or the infuse app. 

Sorry for the long post but if this helps someone avoid a headache or get back to enjoying their library then it was worth it. 

I had a Homesharing error message on my ATV3 yesterday. I tried restarting iTunes on the Mac, then restarting the Mac without success. Then tried restarting the ATV3 and it worked!

Hopefully it will continue working this evening.

I spoke with Apple support today and this is a known issue for 2nd and 3rd gen ATV and due to two factor authentication. It will need a new software update and can’t confirm how long this will take. You should be able to log in to iTunes and iCloud which allows some functionality by combining two factor code with Apple ID password but not as good as streaming homeshare files.

If you look back I posted the “official” workaround earlier, which is to create a new account without two factor authentication

Given we are up to 7+ pages on this complaint, we need to make it more widely known, so that Apple puts some effort into fixing it.

I have already sent a note to the Wall Street Journal tech section and the TWIT IOS podcast (https://www.twit.tv/shows/ios-today), with an explanation and links to this forum topic.

If everyone else can do the same thing (sending emails to tech websites that cover Apple or posting on Reddit), we might get some action. If it is just from me, no-one will take notice, but if lots of people go on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and post to Apple pages, they will want us to go away and will fix it. The media is always looking for controversy, and this will give it to them (APPLE USERS OUTRAGED!)

If it is only on this forum topic, we might as well just yell at the clouds.

Apparently Apple screw clients with 3rd gen Apple TV. I spend an hour + yesterday with a bunch of "genius" over the phone they don't even have an idea of what's going on. Apple engineers resolution is to purchase an AppleTV Gen4.

By the way the know about this issue since 08/25/2019 and they told me they focus on newest model problems, homes sharing is a no go as of today and login to iCloud it might be a server problem, " too many stuff going on today with the release". Good luck!!!

Update 4Gen AppleTV works fine.

For future troubleshooting:

I notice that nowhere in your entire list do you mention resetting or testing your router. Words such as "firewall", "blocked ports" come to mind. Saying it works fine for other things is meaningless.

Final step: Ask a neighbour to send any sort of message with attachment to Apple, using **your wifi*** with **his** device.

This would eliminate problems with your router. If it is your router, factory reset it.

There is a very active thread on this: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250592472

You're confirming what we're all experiencing: there is no way to get Home Sharing set up at this time on an Apple TV 3rd generation. Hopefully Apple will fix it. That's great to hear though that your Apple TV 3rd generations already signed in with Home Sharing functioning are continuing to work.