After installing 13.2.1 file sharing stopped working on my iMac. Tried turning off/on with a reboot but does not work. Even worse, when turning off File Sharing, the Sharing pref panel becomes unresponsive and the Restart and Shut Down commands do not work. Have to do a hard shut down with the button.
After experimenting I see two bugs connected to File Sharing.
1) Ventura 13.2.1 does not properly handle extended attributes on a shared directory.
2) Macs connecting to a directory with extended attributes shared by Ventura 13.2.1 eventually hang and need to be force-restarted.
As soon as there are extended attributes present on the directory to be shared by Ventura 13.2.1, File Sharing stops working. The connecting Mac (does not need to run Ventura as well, also tested with macOS 12) hangs itself up in an I/O deadlock and unless its network connection is stopped, it will need a forced restart.
Examples:
After adding "Comments" using "Get info" the extended attribute "com.apple.metadata:kMDItemFinderComment" and the connecting machine can connect but hangs after a while. The hangup can be triggered by trying to "Get info" on the mounted share.
After adding a Tag using "Get info" the extended attribute "com.apple.metadata:_kMDItemUserTags: is added. Now I can no longer connect, the share is listed but the connecting machine hangs trying to connect. On the machine serving the share I can not even turn off File Sharing, the Sharing preference does not even load. I could load it again after force killing smbd using sudo kill -9.
After adding a custom icon the extended attribute "com.apple.FinderInfo" appears and kills File Sharing in much the same way.
After clearing all extended attributes using xattr -c, sharing works again.
First and foremost, I think what ever happens on a network it should never ever deadlock the file system of any machine ever. Filesystem lockups should never happen. Ever. This is a bad bug imho, regardless of the bug in the Ventura machine serving the share.
Secondly, I do hope that Apple is aware of this issue. The issue is still present in Ventura 13.3 public betas 1 and 2.
Well I went ahead and installed 13.3 on my MacBook that I have a external hard drive on that I share with my iMac Studio, and the sharing of the external drive is working again for me, I still have 13.2 on my Macstudio at the moment but so far it worked without a hitch. but still wondering if I should update the Macstudio with 13.3 too
If you have Time Machine backups, install a new version of system software and use a TM version before the one that killed file sharing. Worked for me. (Thanks to someone in another thread for the suggestion.)
This is a problem with smb -- the protocol Apple uses for file sharing. We don't know what they did in the latest update, but they broke it. There is no way to fix it except for the temporary solutions that are circulating on the internet and you can try them at your own risk. Bottom line: If you rely on Apple file sharing do not upgrade until this is fixed. Please make sure to complain to Apple so they give it a high priority. Feedback - macOS - Apple.
abromber
Same issues for me.
Never had problems with the old Mac Pro (12.x).
2 weeks a go, I went over to a brand new Apple Mac Studio MAX M1 (Ventura 13.2.1)
This looks to work for me:
1 - Hardware Network UTP cable connection (Network Server: is a NAS (Windows)).
2 - Tune "OFF" WIFI !!!!!
3 - Connection protocol I use: "smb://"
Been working for hour now, without any lose or broken network connection.
Maybe its a conflict between the built-in network card connection in the M1 and the WIFI connection???
According to this site, the issue seems to be related to SMB protocol. The 13.2.1 release is now trying to force implementing the use of SMB 3 from SMB 2 and it seems to have affected the file sharing.
https://www.droidwin.com/smb-file-share-not-working-in-macos-ventura-fix/
I did not try, so use it at your own risk
Hope that this may be useful
I had this with Ventura 13.1 too. I spent MANY hours on the phone up to Level 3 Tech Support, getting into file sharing, permissions etc. In 13.1, I got to a workaround but Apple never solved the problem. Now, with 13.2.1 broke that work around. Trying to figure out how to get back to 13.1 from a T/M backup, but I don't think I can go backwards.
If you're still on 13.1 my recommendation is DON'T UPGRADE if you need sharing to work. My work around centered on the inability to share Documents, Desktop and Downloads folders (in spite of permissions changes). I created 3 folders Documents2, Desktop2 and was able to share those. Since 13.2.1, I can't share anything from the computer (MacBook Pro 2020) that I "upgraded". I can still access my desktop (which still has 13.1). I'll try to get on Apple TS tomorrow with old case number, see if I can get a workaround.
FYI, this happened many years ago and I ended up getting talked through logging in as root user (dangerous, BTW). I've not been able to get anyone at Apple to do that again...
I updated one of my computers, a MacBook Pro 13" 2020 Intel to 13.2.1, leaving my desktop (2019 Intel iMac) running 13.1. On both computers, I disabled SMB under Options in System Setting/ General/ Sharing for my account under Advanced Options (leaving the Share Files and Folders using SMB on - it wouldn't stay off!)
From the Laptop, so far I can reliably can log in and see all folders on the desktop, including Documents, Downloads and Desktop folders that were inaccessible under 13.1
From the Desktop, I was seeing the folders sometimes but sometimes get with the Beachball of Death or a "Loading" message forever when I try to access the contents
What seems to be key is whether I could get access to the Systems Settings/Sharing tools. If not, in addition to sharing problems, access to those tools is only recoverable with a hard reboot; trying from the Apple menu just hung the system on quitting applications.
The Laptop / 13.2.1 seems more reliable with these settings. On the desktop/ 13.1, if access to the remote computer fails ("Loading" message/ Beachball) it again freezes access to the Systems Setting/ General/ Sharing, and can't "eject" the remote computer. This can cause the Laptop to also freeze and stop its access to the Systems / Sharing, which locks the ability to do a soft restart (on both machines).
Doing a hard reboot on the laptop frees up the desktop access to Systems/ Sharing. It seems to me that something in the sharing protocol is unstable, doing a full reboot of both computers seems to help
Next step is to try updating the desktop to 13.2.1 once I have a bootable version of the current HD with 13.1...
I hope some of this helps/ provides guidance as we grapple with this problem.
I've never seen a team so eager to install a new .X-Update in my life. 13.3 seems to have fixed the network-Issue, except for one crash in finder upon loading a large folder (which might not be related, let's see). My days of being shooed from my computer because someone needs some images from the archive are over ;-). Many thanks to the developers working hard to fix the problem. I still would love to have a way to hear what caused it & next time with something like this would really really be awesome to have a .X.1-hotfix. (Except maybe not that many Apple users work in networks and just hum along on their laptops and never had these troubles?) Anyway: Thanks (and a big thank you to all the folks trying to figure out workarounds here and in the other forums!)
Just in case, this solution worked for me: 254343578 (i.e. remove the extended attributes of the shared directories).
Having the same problem as the OP, I can share that SafeMode does not help in any way. None of the fixes people describe online – deleting Custom Icons, turning SMB3 back to 2, Switching FileSharing off, reboot and on again, seems to work. 13.2.1 did not fix this issue which prevails since the Upgrade to 13.2 on all of our Macs, basically making it impossible to work from network-shared folders and drives.
This networking issue is not limited to file sharing. My issue, brought on by 13.2.1, is that I can no longer connect a wired ethernet adapter (MacBook Pro, connecting Ethernet adapter via USB-C Thunderbolt port).
AND, 13.2.1 has my MBP convinced that both of my locally connected printers are offline.
I can connect to my home network via WiFi just fine, and that gets me to my file shares (on a Mac Mini still on Monterey, so serving up files just fine).
I have an identical MBP that is my company's machine and it is still on Monterey. It has no trouble with the Ethernet adapter via the Thunderbolt USB-C port, and it happily prints to my printers.
I can't identify anything else in my environment that has changed. I lost Ethernet and printers as soon as I updated to 13.2.1. My wife, who tends to lag behind on updates, was working fine until she updated to 13.2.1, when she started experiencing the exact same issues (connect to network via WiFi only, it thinks active printers are offline).
I sure hope Apple pays attention to these reports, and delivers a fix soon. This is a pain.
This answer is ridiculously unhelpful. All of us know how to initiate file sharing and select particular disks/folders to share. The issue emerged when transitioning from Monterey to Ventura. This is now a well documented flaw that did not get fixed in going from 13.2 to 13.2.1. And no, restarting with file sharing off and turning it back on dose not help, just as restarting in SAFE mode does not help. Computers with Ventura can still gain access to files on earlier OSs (Monterey, Big Sur, Catalina), but these computers and computers with Ventura cannot access files on Ventura computers, except M1 computers.
Take this and all other complaints about broken ventura file sharing SERIOUSLY and put you best networking software engineers on this to GET IT FIXED.
Yes, see
Or this thread which redirects to it.
(In general, reading answers is a good thing to do in a forum)
Or use dropbox. That worked for me without all the Apple insanity.
sorry, but for me it didn‘t work either!
Tried both proposals with newstarts, no positive result
Shared items seems to be “connected” but are inaccessible.
Shared LINUX items work fine.
Remark to delayed Shutdown: When you disable your shared devices the shutdown works short as expected
Ventura 13.2.1 broke file sharing and related issues
