Catalina: Home sharing not working - tried everything, please help

jorhh wrote:

Long story short:

On my iMac (where my music library is kept, running Catalina), I am unable to get Home Sharing for my music to work.

My MacBook on the same network (also on Catalina, signed into same iCloud account) won't show the iMac's music library (or the required little downward arrow next to "Library" in Music).

A bit longer:

I have tried signing out of and into my iCloud account (my registered iTunes account), I have tried de- and re-authorizing my Macs, I have re-started my Macs several times - no luck there.

The weird thing is that the "Media Sharing" checkbox in System Preferencens -> Sharing -> Media Sharing stays greyed out (whatever I do).

I have tried simply selecting the "Home sharing" checkbox in the same preference panel - then the "Media Sharing" box also gets checked and my iMac displays the message along the lines of "Home sharing is now turned on" ... but it simply isn't.

The library doesn't show up on my other Mac on the same network. (Only when I select the "Share media with guests" box, the library suddenly appears on my other Mac - but that's supposed to happen with only "Home sharing" selected ...)

See if there is anything, lots to sift through:

How to connect with File Sharing on your Mac - Apple Support

Use Home Sharing to share media from a computer to other ...

Set up media sharing on Mac - Apple Support

Change Media Sharing preferences on Mac - Apple Support

Set up file sharing on Mac - Apple Support

I explored this on my MBP macOS 10.15.3 as a test and was successfully able to check all the boxes you mention—however I have no way to verify if it is truly working or not.

You can try a Safe Boot to clear system caches:  https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

You can try resetting NVRAM/PRAM http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379

and Try resetting the SMC https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

If you stair stepped your way to Catalina, ie 10.15—>10.15.2—>10.15.3

you can try reinstalling the combo update on top of your existing macOS 10.15.3

Combo update macOS 10.15.3 https://support.apple.com/kb/DL2030

You could try reinstalling the entire macOS from Recovery on top of your existing mac OS

It could simply be a bug in Catalina as well.

Apple Feedback http://www.apple.com/feedback

Feedback assistant to file bug reports: https://feedbackassistant.apple.com/welcome

please post back your success or failure...

.

jorhh wrote:

Any ideas?

Put a call into Apple Support—

provides phone numbers based upon your location.

*Contact Apple for support and service—https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201232