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

Editor1979's terminal sudo commands, worked for me. Thanks!

Relevant Info:

MacBook Air (13-Inch, Mid 2012)

Mac OS Catalina 10.15.7 (19H1922)

Processor 2Ghz Dual-Core Intel Core i7

Memory 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

Issue arose after erase and reinstall macOS in that MacBook Air, it must have downloaded the latest version with that 'Bug'.

This little mishaps Apple let happen on old model OS upgrades.

Not so fast. It kinda worked, but now I'm not seeing all my shares. And the shares I do see, come up as empty. Did I mention this is my home file server? I would love to just downgrade it back to snow leopard, but unfortunately there are a few other tasks this machine does that won't work.

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.

So while your script worked to restart file sharing on my iMac Catalina 10.15.7 (19H2026), I couldn't access an external HD attached to my iMac from my iPhone, despite several reboots of both devices. I was able to access the HD before I upgraded to Catalina.

So, despite the checkbox for File Sharing now being checked, I still cannot access the hard drive from another Mac. I'm seeing that others are having the same problem. Problem not really solved. Sorry for the premature elation.

Hello, Bob!

Somewhat I had the same issues once

You may want to try enabling the file sharing options found in System Preferences.

Try searching "File Sharing" in the search bar and make sure it is enabled on both Macs.

Hope this helps!

(If I am not accurate, I apologise as I am starting out.)

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.

I can get to the terminal window, but it’s so full of text I wouldn’t know where to add the line even if I understood the alphabet soup. I still believe macs are better even if they are this dismissive of this issue. I’ll just have to accept that it can’t be done even though I would find it useful. I kinda get now why Microsoft users believe what they do about macs. Very frustrating.

Is there a video of this somewhere out there? I can open terminal, but I have no idea where to put that command line in all of the alphabet soup. I’m afraid I could make things worse by not getting it e exactly correct.

Thanks editor1979. I followed your recipe but both daemons are on already. I have sharing on some files/directories but not on others. Sharing does not appear on my right-click menu but some files are shared. I already have 10.15.7 and tried installing the update patches but computer says no - apparently my disk isn't suitable. There seems to be a disconnect between daemons and book keepeing on what's shared and what's not.

This seems to be a Microsoft-generated problem. I still can't get onedrive to launch on boot, which forms part of the problem. After manual start, sharing seems to work. That said, Apple introduced another level of script-based access control that I need to get my head around.

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!

Thanks a million to user 'editor1979'!

Who would have thought?

:-)

It seems that many (at least several) thinks are not loaded in the Launch-Daemon on Catalina by default.

How did this happen? Did Apple ship Catalina with these many things missing (I have found other items missing in this same way) from LaunchDaemon on purpose? Do not bother answering me. I think I am getting the pattern.

Also tried re-installing the OS (no help), safe mode (nada), and no on tech support with Apple.

Boom! Solved my problem!