Remote app not working with Catalina. When will this be fixed. Massive problem for me

Thanks for sharing your solution Dave but unfortunately the solution didn't work on my system. I had already been logged into home sharing on both devices (iMac & iPhone) so I logged out of sharing and then back in on both devices to no avail. The remote app does connect to the Music library on the iMac but selecting a song will not initiate the play function. However, I'm glad it works for you and hopefully there are some others out there that will find this helpful. Perhaps for some of us it has something to do with the fact that we have migrated from the old AppleIDs to the new AppleID. Apple linked the .Mac and MobileMe ids in the background, however, they remain separate IDs. Apple users that migrated from the original iTunes ID, then dotMac, then MobileMe, and now iCloud may understand what I mean.

But it also seems as likely that by moving the sharing function from the iTunes application (if that is where it actually resided) to the System Sharing settings the iOS Remote app link broke somehow. Anyway, enjoy your music!

The Sharing functionality does not enable Remote for me either - I can see and browse my library but not play any tracks. If tracks are playing from my iMac to Airplay 2 devices (initiated on the Mac) I cannot access the controls on Remote app to change volume or skip tracks. If it works for you Dave that is great, and suggests that there may be a way for Apple to fix it.

As an aside, Photos sharing does not work quite correctly for me either - I can access all albums on my Mac not just the ones that I select in the "Choose..." tab. Seems the beta testing of the Share functionality was a bit thin.

Oh **** you are absolutely correct. How ridiculous is that. I was so excited that I could even bring the playlist up that I didn't even try to play a song. So I guess I'll update my post to reflect that. Sorry for getting you all excited.

Perhaps, though I subscribe to Apple Music and still want to stream to multiple devices (thus need to stream from the Mac) and control volume/skip tracks from another room (via iPad and Apple Watch) so the use case exists whether or not you subscribe. Feels more like lack of coordination across dev teams and/or insufficient testing to me.

I believe you to be correct. i too subscribe to Apple Music. But that is another thing altogether to be concerned about. This is the second time they overlooked the Remote app after an OS upgrade. At these prices they should get their coordination together. Project managers?

Then "Music Remote" (or whatever they call it) is expected to be available at the same time.

Using Home Sharing has to load the whole library each time, and it can take a loooong time, and you just can not use de iPhone meanwhile (or you will have to begin load again)

So, I have a crazy amount of music. I’m 51 years old and I burned every single CD I have onto my iTunes collection and stuck the originals up in the attic.

Remote app is useless. I use my phone as a remote control for my Mac Mini, which is basically my media server.

The only reason I’m not converting everything to Android right now is I can still properly access things through the Apple TV.

If anyone has an alternative to the Apple REMOTE app I’d love to hear it.

I have almost the same situation you have. I am using Real VNC to access my Mac mini (server) from my phone. It’s a little clunky compared to the Remote App. But it works good and is a working alternative until the new version of Catalina is released.

For the same reasons of everyone else and until the problems of iTunes Remote & MacOS Catalina are fixed I will not upgrade to Catalina. 2 weeks ago I went back to Mojave and everything is back to normal. Never again will I upgrade until all the kinks ands bugs are fixed. Apple really messed up with this one and can’t be trusted again. Catalina brings me nothing new that is useful anyway. I may not even upgrade!

Thanks! I'll try it out. Them more I think about it the less sense it makes that Apple let the Remote app slip like that. A MacOS music application without an iOS remote simply does not make any sense that I can figure. Just sayin' but I diverge. I will try VNC as an interim solution though. thx.

Yep, it works from my iPad. You're right it's clunky but it works as an interim measure. Very little setup, just downloaded a VNC viewer on the iOS and the turned on the MacOS Screen Sharing setting in the System Preference Sharing settings.

Same here as of Nov 21, 2019. Am absolutely kicking myself that I allowed the upgrade to Catalina to happen. Lesson learned: will let a few months go by while these kins are ironed out before doing the next upgrade.

Meantime it's back to 2010ish time as I manually kick off the music from the desktop and retreat downstairs to wherever I play the music.

Quick question: obviously testing everything on OS releases is a gigantic effort, but it should be well within the realms of capability for a company as large as Apple: databases of functionality, inter-operability, complete with all the automated tests required.

But seriously: does any human actually just play around with this crap at home BEFORE the release?

Or are we customers now the Beta Testers?

Very disappointing indeed. I resorted to using the former iTunes Music folder structure as a Plex Library. Using Plexamp I can now control playback a bit better. Still miss the ole'Remote, but Apple Music is now slowly becoming redundant in my house.

Interesting, you went for Plex. I went for Audirvana. I have used a neat app. called Meta to try and sort out the shambles iTunes made of my (entirely classical) music files. Being old and retired I have been running iTunes in parallel mode (mainly because I can then access the library when out of the house), but as I also pay for Qobuz and usually buy from them as well I am increasingly relying on them for “on the road”. iTunes with its lack of high def music and all the other niggling stupidities (e.g losing Album Booklets - essential for any form of classical songs) is increasingly an irritating irrelevance. Part of the Apple->Microsoft problem I suppose.

Yes. Unfortunately Apple pulled my post due to terms of b program. It is working within that version. Hopefully an OS upgrade will release before anyone else wipes their drive and downgrades to Mojave