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Catalina Home Sharing not Setting Up

I just updated to Catalina on a new iMac. I was running fine under Mojave but like most of you, I have had some challenges with Catalina. I have a fairly large library of music and videos from my old machine that I migrated over from Mojave.


I know that Home Sharing has been relocated under the Sharing Pane in System Preferences. When I try to turn on Home Sharing it asks me to Authenticate my AppleID which I do, and it seems to start the process but then sends me back to the Pref Pane with Home Sharing not Checked and no sharing going on.


Anyone else had this issue? Any fixes?

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Oct 8, 2019 12:54 PM

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Posted on Oct 8, 2019 6:47 PM

Thanks, this helped me down the path that ended up fixing the issue. I did have to deauthorize all my Macs and reauthorize by going into the Music app and authorizing it. Then I went to the Sharing Pref pane and clicking on Home Sharing and then logging in again. The tick mark was greyed out and the little green active light in the pane did not go on until it actually turned itself on.


It would have been nice to have some feedback during the process initially to let me know that it was having an issue and not just failing outright without "some" error message!


Thanks for the assist.

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Question marked as Best reply

Oct 8, 2019 6:47 PM in response to Matinicus-Rock

Thanks, this helped me down the path that ended up fixing the issue. I did have to deauthorize all my Macs and reauthorize by going into the Music app and authorizing it. Then I went to the Sharing Pref pane and clicking on Home Sharing and then logging in again. The tick mark was greyed out and the little green active light in the pane did not go on until it actually turned itself on.


It would have been nice to have some feedback during the process initially to let me know that it was having an issue and not just failing outright without "some" error message!


Thanks for the assist.

Oct 8, 2019 2:14 PM in response to marurakzur201

I've seen other people post on this problem too. It might have to do with authorizations on your Mac. Here's a quote from this article: https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/10/08/how-to-turn-on-home-sharing-in-the-music-and-tv-apps-in-macos-catalina


"Where it goes wrong


"Apple's built-in Home Sharing isn't gigantically customizable and it doesn't offer a lot of options to choose from, but using it and setting it up is straightforward. Where you may find a problem is when you come to turn on Home Sharing on your Catalina Mac. It's possible that you'll find you can't tick the Media Sharingbox.


"Oddly, even when that is unavailable, you can still go into the sharing section and turn on Home Sharing. You can turn it on, you'll be prompted to authenticate with your password, and you can then choose the options about sharing with guests, but it doesn't matter.


"If you can't first tick that Media Sharing button, your Mac ignores everything you do in the section.


"The issue is likely to be related to authorizations on your Mac. Even if you believe your Mac was authorized to play your iTunes media, the move to Catalina appears to sometimes undo that. 


"To fix it, authorize your Catalina Mac in Music and TV. In our testing, we've found that rarely you may have to deauthorize all of your Macs first and then re-authorize them in Music and TV —and then Home Sharing will work."

Catalina Home Sharing not Setting Up

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