iTunes remote for iPhone dont work with Catalina

Terrible, non-intuitive UI...

Here's how I got it to work. (on Catalina 10.15.2 and iOS 13.3):

1. Have the Phone and Mac on the same network.
2. (on the iPhone) Open "iTunes Remote" App
3. In upper right, tap [Settings]
4. Tap "Add an iTunes Library". (It will show a 4 digit code) LEAVE THE IPHONE ON THIS SCREEN
5. (on the Mac) Open iTunes... oops, I mean the "Music" app
6. Look under the heading "Devices" for the name of your Phone (with a black square "play" icon next to it). Your phone will probably also be listed below it with a "phone" icon... ignore that.
7. Click on the "Play" icon and name of your phone.
8. The Mac will now show you a screen where you can enter the 4 digit code from Step 4. Enter the code.
9. Done. You can now control Music from your Mac with your Phone.

Oh, what a terrible road this has been.

Hope this helps.

I utilize my remote for iTunes EVERY DAY as iTunes has run daily for the past 18 years!!! I need a remote and am NOT happy that Apple or the 3rd party hasn’t thought ahead!!! Come in, you are Apple, not Microsoft!! Act like it!!!

Unfortunately the "iPhone music" app is buggy compared to the simple, light-weight, and responsive Remote app. I have 1662 Albums (23400 Songs) in my library, stored on my iMac. Remote would start up in a flash from my iPhone or iPad and present a streamlined purpose built interface for quick scrolling through all of it. It was fast as light. (Still is fast as light, but the Play buttons don't work anymore, now that Catalina/Music has broken it). When I try to use the Music app + Home Sharing, it takes over 5 minutes to load the library, the artwork doesn't seem to ever cache so then it takes more time to load that, and it seems to forget the artwork when I scroll past it and so reloads it again as I'm trying to navigate, causing the interface to stutter. Further more, Playlist based on rules seem to be broken. Playlists assembled "manually" display properly but the rules based lists show the entire library as their contents. In principle, the Music app + Home Sharing might be a solution, but it won't be until it's as fast, fluid and reliable as Remote was.

I just installed the latest update for Catalina... at first the remote app still didn’t work, but I succeeded in getting full functionality: you need to connect the remote app manually and not with home sharing.

to do this: open remote app => tap settings in upper right corner => add iTunes library => in the music app in your Mac: look for the remote app symbol (arrow with your iPhone name) and enter the 4 digits and you are ready to use the remote app...

Try these steps:

• On your Mac, go to System Preferences ➔ Sharing
• Make sure that "Media Sharing" has a checkmark next to it.
• Make sure that "Home Sharing" has a checkmark next to it.
• On your iPhone or iPad, open "Remote."

When I did this, my Library was there (in Remote) right away.

I can scroll through my Mac's Music (previously called iTunes) library.

However, I can't play anything! When I tap on a song, nothing happens! 😡

Screenshot:

Hello,

Last week I decided to contact Apple support about Remote not working. They took me up through 5 levels of support. At the last level an apple senior support person admitted that "at present iTunes remote is not supported in Catalina" and that "They are aware of this situation" and ""have received "many" complaints about this situation as the remote app does not work with the iPhone or Apple Watch"". They asked me to to provide feedback through http://www.apple.com/feedback, Which I did. Not sure if they were just blowing me off or trying to get the problem documented. If you have not already done so, I would like to suggest that everyone here submit a feedback form. The more complaints they receive, I believe, the higher the likelihood is of iTunes Remote app being "re-supported".

Separately, I have noticed that the new Apple TV app on my iPhone allows me to select a home movie on my Mac, that used to reside in iTunes and now is in the Mac "TV app", and then Airplay it to an Apple TV (just like music in the the Music app) BUT I can then shut off my iPhone and the content continues to play on the Apple TV like it would on iTunes Remote. I would be interested if anyone else finds this so. It's odd they would use a different interface implementation for what is essentially the same content.

for those who might have been hopeful that macOS 10.15.1 update might have a fix...it does not. I also updated to iOS 13.2. No dice. this is both sad and frustrating. As noted in a couple other posts, the Apple Feedback page hasn't even been updated yet to replace iTunes with Music. Still highly encourage everyone who wants this functionality fixed to submit feedback. I submitted mine under macOS https://www.apple.com/feedback/macos.html

This problem may get fixed! So don't lose hope.

The last I heard, the Remote app was a one-person project, the creation of a single Apple software engineer who has been maintaining the app, as time permits, for many years now. If this is still the case, then I don't see any reason to suppose the app won't get updated in due course.

Submitting feedback would still probably be helpful: https://www.apple.com/feedback/

From Tuog66

Nov 4, 2019 4:50 AM in response to peter.zarrella

Download link and instructions for Retroactive can be found on the author’s page: https://github.com/cormiertyshawn895/Retroactive/releases

iceonaboy wrote:

I did what you said and everything was already ticked. Remote won't work still. My original post was that the music is behaving strangely. I find songs greyed out and cannot play them on my phone, as they are not available in my country or region. They play fine on the Mac and they played fine before Catalina. Then there is this issue with starting loud then getting quieter. Whats going on with Music with Apple? Much more of this and my next phone will be a Samsung!

See this post on erratic syncing.

tt2

See this post on erratic syncing.

Thanks for that but strangely today all the affected tracks are working ok now. I have no greyed out tracks and I did nothing. This has lasted for a few weeks since I downloaded Catalina. I have no idea how some tracks were greyed out and are now ok. It was weird as well because the greyed out tracks were following no order. I would have a whole album and one track would say cannot play this in your country or region. Still, the music is behaving now but I am still not convinced about the benefits of Catalina. I much preferred iTunes the way it was, or even better, when it had cover flow. What is going on with the lack of artwork? That is an important part of music pleasure.

Well… I was able to get my Apple Watch also to work (temporarily)! Here are the steps that took...

1. Turned OFF Firewall on my Mac. YES, the Firewall as @aerosol indicated.
2. Open Remote on my Watch
3. Selected “+ Add Device”
4. Opened Music app on Mac
5. Entered 4-digit code
6. BAM
7. Turn on Firewall, Continued to work!

BUT - Once I went back into Remote on the Apple Watch and reselected the music Library

Calling Apple support now…

There are a number of steps to follow. I've tried bringing together other responses from this thread into a single answer.

You need Catalina 10.15.2

On your phone, iOS 13.3

Make sure you update to the latest Remote App version (it's still called "iTunes Remote")

On your Mac, open the Firewall from SystemPreferences->Security&Privacy->Firewall

You probably don't want to turn the FW off, just change it to add an exception:

On your Mac, go to Music App Preferences, Advanced, Forget All Remotes (if it says you have any).

On your Mac, turn off Home Sharing here: SystemPreferences->Sharing

On your Phone, turn off Home Sharing in Settings->Music (if your Apple ID Email shows up here, it means it's turned on)

Now:

1. Have the Phone and Mac on the same network.
2. (on the iPhone) Open "iTunes Remote" App

-- t thus point, you hopefully don't have any existing libraries showing up in the Remote App. If you do, click the Edit menu in the app and remove it/them.

3.) Because you have no libraries hooked up now, the app should default to a page that asks whether to Use Home Sharing or Configured Manually. Choose to manually configure

4.) You get a code

5.) Open Music on the Mac - see the image below, you have an opportunity to feed in the above code

6.) It should tell you can now control Music from the app

7.) The app should now display your music library

Hopefully, if all has been done correctly, Remote App should now be working.

To enable the Apple Watch, open the Remote app:

1. Add Device;
2. Get a code;
3. In Music, find your watch listed in the left-hand column, feed in the code;

You can now control music from your watch