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Home Sharing from Mac - suddenly overnight error message "Failed to connect..."

I have been sharing for years videos and tv series via home sharing from my iMac and MacMini to my AppleTV and iPhone - this worked fine until yesterday. Suddenly (update?) Home Sharing fails from the iMac. I checked the settings (Catalina) and everything seems okay (and was working just some days before) - but now I cannot connect to the iMac home share.

It shows up in the overview of e.g. the TV app on the iPhone along the MacMini share - but when selecting the iMac home share I get "Failed to connect. Please check your network and try again". Sharing from MacMini works. Also access from AppleTV or MacMini to the iMac fail. Any ideas?

iMac Pro, macOS 10.14

Posted on Sep 21, 2020 11:52 AM

Best reply

berndfromkrefeld Author

Level 1

8 points

Posted on Sep 22, 2020 1:10 AM

I found the solution - but it is very strange:

Up to now the firewall on the MAC was turned off.

I turned the firewall on and denied "integrated software to receive incoming connections".

Then I stopped and started home sharing.

Then I was asked if I'd allow "mediasharingd" receiving incoming connections - which I agreed.

-> now sharing works

REMEMBER: I never touched the firewall setting before - it suddenly blocked mediasharingd which caused the confusion. Most probably a Catalina update this week?

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Home Sharing from Mac - suddenly overnight error message "Failed to connect..."

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