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Apple remote app not working after Catalina update

After Catalina update, the remote app (iPhone and iPad) is not working properly. I can still see and connect to my music library (running on the new music app) and search it. However I cannot play, or in general control, music using the remote app. When I click on a song, nothing happens. Likewise, if I start playing on my iMac, the remote app does not show anything playing although I'm actually streaming to my airplay receiver and sound is perfect. Before the update (running OS Mojave), I never experienced such issue. Thanks for your help!

Posted on Oct 8, 2019 2:29 PM

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Posted on Oct 10, 2019 6:20 PM

The iOS remote has got to be the most used / valuable app on my iPad and iPad. It has worked reasonably well for years, but after updating to Catalina it has stopped working, it only functions as you describe - able to see the library and the music, but unable to see what is playing or control the iMac in any way. I have gone through the Home Share settings on both devices, reauthorized the computer in iTunes, etc.... no success.

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Oct 10, 2019 6:20 PM in response to peurderien

The iOS remote has got to be the most used / valuable app on my iPad and iPad. It has worked reasonably well for years, but after updating to Catalina it has stopped working, it only functions as you describe - able to see the library and the music, but unable to see what is playing or control the iMac in any way. I have gone through the Home Share settings on both devices, reauthorized the computer in iTunes, etc.... no success.

Oct 11, 2019 8:10 AM in response to coopathome

Same here. I’ve used the Remote app for years and to see it suddenly stop working usefully is incredibly disappointing. I do have a thought as to why it took a crash though; splitting up iTunes into multiple separate apps goes against the very nature of how the Remote app functioned. Remote behaved as just that - a sort of “universal” remote for iTunes capable of controlling all the multimedia contained within iTunes. Kinda like getting a universal remote for your home theater system. Everything was working fine until you got a new tv and new Blu-ray player and new sound system. Now the universal remote doesn’t know how to talk to the new equipment.


i don’t know how Apple is going to fix this short of giving Remote much more power over connected devices. Remote is going to have to be able to remotely start and execute the various multimedia apps opening a potential world of remote execution exploits. Or, users will have to keep multiple apps running constantly on connected devices just to be able to use Remote.

Oct 13, 2019 5:34 AM in response to TibbieLover

Hi,


what you suggest is not the solution to my problem unfortunately. My problem is that I cannot control anymore the streaming from my Mac. Your proposed solution entails using the music app on the local device to stream music shared to the local device (instead of Mac to airplay receiver, you have Mac to iPad to airplay receiver, hence the iPad is always committed to this stream, more steps in the transmission chain, iPad streaming music instead of Mac streaming music...). That said, in practice for me this does not work either, I guess because of the size of my library (but for smaller libraries may work). In fact, when I elect my shared library on the iPad it just gets stuck loading for ages (never saw the end of it). But again, even if that worked, that would not be the solution for me.


As I see it, I still hope that the old iTunes remote comes back to life. I still can see my libraries and playlists as they are updated on my Mac, so it's fully live. The "only" missing piece is that music controls do not work.


Thanks for your reply and all the best for your recovery!

Oct 12, 2019 10:06 PM in response to JrFTW

The remote app is probably quite dead...but its parts live on! First, enable 'Sharing' (not Family Sharing!) on your Mac from its new location in settings. Then read this article and use control center to locate your AirPlay device(s):


https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202809


Select a device and exit control center.


Activate the Music app on your iPhone or iPad. Get by the sales stuff and activate Home Sharing, select your library and voila!, the Remote app is back...and with dark mode.


Hopefully I remembered it all...just recovering from 6 months of chemo and radiation, memory and typing are often problematic.


Personally, I like this new setup...but the Music app on the Mac is disappointing. Just tried creating a new playlist and could not find a way to rename it. When I increase the app window size, get larger album art, not more content. Oh well...growing pains.



Oct 17, 2019 9:57 AM in response to gusbapple

Hi Guys.

As a short term cheap work a round @ £2.99 from the Apple App Store I have downloaded Remoter VNC- Remote Desktop for iPad.

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/remoter-vnc-remote-desktop/id369626098.

Once set up on your iPad and you open Apple Music you are cable to see all your Artists, and playlists as it is a mirror image

of your ~Mac Desktop.. I am able to select tracks, artists and playlist and make them play remotely . Not ideal I know but as a short term fix till the Apple backroom boys get it sorted.

Indecently I also have Jriver 25 & Audirvana media players and their remote apps. on pad work fine.

But I still like to use Apple Music app(ie old iTunes) for the genius facility and it always worked fine before Catalina.

Here's hoping for a quick fix and maybe a new Remote app.

Dec 15, 2019 5:43 PM in response to kweirman

With the new update of the iTunes Remote app, Home Sharing with Music on Catalina works again - no need to add the library manually anymore.

Nevertheless:

  • Loading of album artworks is much slower than with iTunes, and on the iPad it can be seen very clearly because there are more album covers to display at once.
  • But the most annoying is that the connection to the library is not reliable at all. Sometimes my iTunes Remote app manages to connect to the Music library, sometimes it hangs forever trying to connect to it, as shown in the picture below.


So for now, I keep both Music and (Retroactive) iTunes side by side and as long as the connection is not reliable.


Nov 3, 2019 6:45 AM in response to peurderien

There is another way (without using the iTunes Remote app) of controlling your music from your Mac or from your iOS device. Once you have Media Sharing turned on in the Mac System Preferences/Sharing.

  1. Be connected on your WiFi network (Mac & iPhone/iPad)
  2. In your Music App, select Library, then Home Sharing
  3. Select your Mac Music Library
  4. Now select what you want to play


  1. On your iPhone/iPad pull down your Control Center
  2. Press the little glowing blue icon (in the music control area)
  3. From there you can select 1 or more of you Apple TV's, Home Pod's.
  4. You can control the volume on each device. (just as you could in the iTunes Remote App)


With this upgrade, there is a down fall with using the 1st-3rd generation Apple TV's. You can only control 1 at a time. With the 4th Gen. and up, you can control all as a group. I am hoping Apple will ether fix the iTunes Remote App / Catalina or create a new App in the near future.

Nov 4, 2019 9:59 AM in response to kevinfromstockton

@kevinfromstockton:

How do you add / sync music to your iPhone ?

I just synced 300 Go of music from (Retroactive) iTunes on my iPhone, just as I did before Catalina.


I did a bit to testing before syncing my music. What I noticed was:

  • If iTunes is running before you plug in your iPhone, an error notification will appear on the top right corner of your screen saying something like your iPhone cannot be accessed because it's being used by another application. My interpretation of this is that "Finder" cannot access the iPhone because iTunes "caught" your iPhone. You should then see your iPhone in iTunes, and you can use it just like before: sync your music (if it's not manually managed), backup your iPhone.
  • If iTunes is not running before you plug in your iPhone, then your iPhone will appear in "Finder", and that is where you backup your iPhone and sync your music on Catalina. The interface for doing this is deported from the old iTunes to Finder.



Dec 11, 2019 12:42 PM in response to peurderien

Solution:

It works now after 10.15.2 update, but you have to link your phone to music app. Here are the instructions: 

Set up the iTunes Remote app for Music on Mac


  1. Disconnect your iOS device from your computer, if it's connected.
  2. On your device, tap Remote on the Home screen.
  3. Tap Settings, then tap Add a Music Library. A 4-digit code appears.
  4. In the Music app on your Mac, click the iPhone button near the top left of the iTunes window.
  5. Type the 4-digit code.
  6. It will tell you that the iPhone now works as a remote.
  7. Fixed!!!!!


Dec 12, 2019 10:10 AM in response to CHADWINK

I’m not that happy with this workaround by Apple.


First, it’s clearly a workaround not a real fix since you need to add the library manually in Remote, why isn’t Homesharing working as before ?


Then, I still face several annoying problems :

  • When importing my music files, Music took more than 5 hours to build the cover art for my albums
  • Even after that, lots of albums don’t have any covert art at all ! And there is no way to rebuild them, I have to manually delete those one by one and re-import them ! I have more than 3500 albums / 73K tracks !
  • In the Remote app, the albums are very slow to appear when I scroll for example. I can see the album cover image appear one by one slowly ! It’s quite annoying. I have both Music and Retroactive iTunes installed on the same machine and hosting the same music files, so I can actually compare the loading speed in Remote. Clearly iTunes performs much faster !
  • This morning, the Remote app couldn’t connect to the Music library anymore (wheel spinning forever). I had to remove the library and add it again for it to connect again. This never happens with the iTunes library.


Conclusion: Apple hasn’t fixed the problem at all, it’s merely a quite unstable and unperformant workaround.


For now I’m keeping Retroactive iTunes. Thanks to the author of Retroactive !



Oct 11, 2019 3:08 PM in response to Jazzmangeoff

Hi, first you have to enable home sharing. Before you would do this under iTunes but now you do under preferences > sharing and tick the box media sharing. This is where you make your library recognizable to your devices as long each of them is logged with your Apple ID. One other thing I realized, but this happened also with Mojave, is that I need to keep my wifi connection on under my iMac (where my library is). Technically speaking I don't need as my Mac is connected to the wireless device with a cable but for whatever reason, especially when the Mac gets idle, I can reconnect from a remote device only if the iMac has wifi on. But this is more of an aside that already happened before. With the above done, you'd see your library under the remote app, but still you won't be able to play files.

Oct 12, 2019 3:46 PM in response to peurderien

I'm having the same issue and also all my music got deleted and all my playlists which get my music thousands of daily plays and after contacting apple they had no idea how to fix any of these issues. They don't know why connect wont work, they don't know where my music went and they don't know where my playlists went. They told me "They'd look into it" well now i'm losing money and can't use key features I use daily. I found how to get my music back but not my playlists and still can't get connect to work. This new Catalina update sucks, I want to go back to Mojave.

Apple remote app not working after Catalina update

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