I am unable to turn on File Sharing on my iMac running macOS Catalina.

I actually found the attached thread useful by manually turning on file sharing using TERMINAL.

Enable and disable file sharing from term… - Apple Community

Here's my synopsis:

1. Close system Preferences (If open)
2. Open Terminal
3. Paste: sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.AppleFileServer.plist and press [Enter]
4. Type your computer password (Typing will not show, do it anyway) and press [Enter]
5. Paste: sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.smbd.plist and press [Enter]
6. Type exit and press [Enter]
7. Once the process finishes, close the Terminal window.
8. Open System Preferences and go to Sharing
9. DONE!

I was having this same exact problem with my Mac Mini running Catalina 10.15.7 and this fixed it!

Now my Mac Mini shows it's shared folders on my Macbook Pro running High Sierra 10.13.6!

Hi everyone, the solution from editor1979 only solve the problem of turn on the smbd and AFP enable share. I'm trying to share a external USB HDD from Mac Mini with MacOS Catalina to use for Time Machine, my client Mac is a Macbook Pro 16" (intel) with Sonoma.

With the editor1979 solution I get to share a disk or folder, but when I try to use to activate a Time Machine from the Macbook Pro with Sonoma with that disk appears this error: The operation couldn’t be completed. (com.apple.TimeMachine.SettingsExtension error 5.)

Searching a solution I found the problem is a security update in MacOS Catalina that change permissions on "smbd" program.

A solution for this is give permissions to smbd to read/write all complete disk:

1. Open system Preferences
2. Security & Privacy
3. Privacy tab
4. Full Disk Access
5. Click on "+" to add an entry (if you can't click the "+" icon, make click on the padlock and authenticate with an administrator account or just type your password)
6. Press Command + Shift + g (or Command + G , see the G is uppercase)
7. copy or type this: /usr/sbin to go to sbin folder, click o go
8. find and choose "smbd" file
9. See that recent added "smbd" is checked
10. Done! your share disk is Ok to use in Time Machine client.

I found the solution in this link thanks to VideoBeagle user: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/cant-connect-to-mounted-usb-drives-over-network-after-catalina-upgrade.2357001/

You can apply this for the AFP (AppleFileServer) program too.

Remember that you can share APFS disk only with smbd, AFP ins't supported anymore for disks formatted with APFS.

I hope this helps.

I’ve been struggling with this problem for two days. I couldn’t check the “File sharing” box either. Then I just started the smbd process with the command in the terminal

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.smbd.plist

After that it became possible to check the box “File sharing”. I restarted the computer, Shared access remained active and now everything is working. Hope this helps.

I could not turn on File Sharing. I just couldn't click in the box.

I added the "sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.AppleFileServer.plist" to Terminal and now it works. Thank you!!!

Exactly the same problem here. I turned File Sharing off to remove my shared external USB drive, but when I put the drive back on that computer and tried to activate File Sharing the check box will not activate. It's not grey it simply won't "check". I can turn on SMB and apple file share from the command line but the authentications fail.

For anyone who is unable to mount remote shared volumes after successfully authenticating with AFP, try SMB instead. Example: smb://mac-name.local or smb://user@mac-name.local/share-name . It seems that AFP is deprecated:

Starting with OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Server Message Block (SMB) was made the primary file sharing protocol, with the ability to run an AFP server removed later in macOS 11 Big Sur.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Filing_Protocol

If you need to run the load/unload scripts frequently, you can setup a simple AppleScript in the global Script menu.

1. open ScriptEditor.app
2. go to Preferences… > General > Script Menu and select Show Script menu in menu bar
3. from the Script menu icon on the upper right menubar, choose Open Scripts Folder > Open User Scripts Folder
4. back in ScriptEditor, select File > New
5. enter the bolded text: do shell script "sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.smbd.plist" with administrator privileges
6. save to /Users/your-user-name/Library/Scripts as "Start SMB" or save to Desktop and drag the file to the Scripts folder you opened in step 3

To run the script, open the Script menu in the upper right menu bar and select the Start SMB script that you created. You will be prompted to enter administrator credentials.

To hide the junk scripts, go back to Script Editor preferences and and uncheck "Show Computer scripts".

O M G

Thank you so much, I thought I flushed $100 down the drain on a new hard drive when I couldn't get my computer to backup to the old macbook running Catlina 10.15.7 on my network. This did the trick. THANK YOU SO MUCH!

faith,

I think Bob Hawkins, rye-guy, ryan_nmr and myself would like to repeat the same thing I told Dustin yesterday:

This is not the problem.

We all had perfectly working configurations until like a couple days ago. Then according to Bob's work (see his second post above), the latest security update on Catalina made the main checkbox to turn sharing on or off not work anymore. So if it's on, it cannot be turned off, and if it's off it cannot be turned on.

That's a strange issue. Can someone at Apple write a bug on Radar for this?

(In my case since that machine could actually get to BigSur I finally upgraded and things work again, but for everyone whose hardware is stuck pre BigSur this is a major issue.)

Apple should fix it because many users cannot upgrade their Macs beyond Catalina. A clean install to a brand new disk containing no previous data generated the problem, without installing any third-party software. Worst of all, this serious bug is not new. It has arisen in the past several times with security updates on different macOS versions.

I too faced this same problem (Catalina on old iMacs seems to be full of bugs - WiFi randomly keeps disconnecting and then refuses to connect).

And I followed the below steps pointed out by editor1979 and it worked like a charm. The 'sharing' issue got resolved.

this works with any of the control panel sharing items. For example, I couldn't get SSH to work either, so I modified the command to reset ssh as well: sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist

Very helpful, thanks @editor1979!

Dustin, that page does not help for this case.

The checkbox to turn on File Sharing never become checked. I have the same issue as Bob on a Catalina device, it just wont turn on.

-No error message, nothing in system.log.

-Only folder I have configured for sharing is my Public folder

-smbd has full disk access in Privacy settings

it used to work, but it doesn't anymore.

Hello Bob,

Make sure that your current user account has the correct permissions using the guidance from Set up file sharing on Mac - Apple Support. Those settings may be preventing you from making these changes or accessing the files.

If that doesn't help, check to see if this happens in another user account. Testing in another admin user account can help to isolate where this occurs. If you don't have another admin user account to test, you can set up a temporary account using the steps from Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac.

In most cases, issues that occur in one user account are related to login items. So, if you find that an issue only occurs in your user account, remove your login items and test again. Check out Remove login items to resolve startup problems on your Mac.

Have a great day!

For me the issue was needing to give /usr/sbin/smbd full disk access in the Security & Privacy control panel.

From this MacRumors thread.

That’s it. Worked! Thank you so much!