Home sharing not working properly after iTunes 11

I'm replying to the original post. I use a pro core duo Mac Mini running iTunes, managing the music library of a separate in-network NAS. Using iTunes 10, this provided me a flawless means to listen to all my music across all my machines within my Home Sharing network at any given point, even my iPhone. However, since the "upgrade" to iTunes 11, I find myself experiencing the same intermittent loss of connection to my Home Share. My Mac Mini is set up to fall asleep after 15 minutes of inactivity; when this happens, the Home Sharing loses connection.

Now, I'm sure I'm just like the rest of you, and have absolutely no interest in changing the sleep patterns of my media center computer (Mac Mini).

This problem is not isolated to Windows environments. This problem is not isolated to Mac environments. This problem appears to be a widespread deficiency in the new source code that probably runs the backend of iTunes 11. The problem, to me, appears to be a simple fix (were I one of the mysterious wizard-sorcerer-senior-engineers in the iTunes department of holy Cupertino): whatever protocols that were running in the iTunes 10 (and earlier) environments that allowed the software to override the operating system's energy saver settings simply needs to be included in the next patch for iTunes 11. While 11 looks very different from 10 and earlier, I have a very hard time believing the two software's are so different that restoring this functionality wouldn't be as simple as simply hitting a switch or amending a half dozen lines of code.

Then again, what do I know? I pressed the download button, just like the rest of us, and I clicked accept on the iTunes

EULA Agreement. For all I know, part of that agreement was "Home Sharing will no longer function, but will sit there as an icon and look pretty."

Very thorough and I think spot on reply. The only thing I disagree with is that it is a sleep issue. I just think its a coding error. They need to HURRY up and fix this.

The same is happeing with my MPB, iTunes and ATV, all with the latest upgrades. I am sure they will fix this soon.

Tried the filtering disabling mentioned by another user. That didn't seem to work. Restarted apple devices, restarted itunes.

Worked for me: Restarted my router and home sharing is back.

Strange.

tried uninstalling itunes 11 and reinstaling itunes 10.7... that was a no go 😕, can someone from apple please get on this soon, this is very frustrating

Same issue here. Everything was working correctly until upgrade to iTunes 11, I could play content from my computer to my ATV without worrying about my Mac going to sleep. iTunes 11 does NOT keep the computer awake.

Work around (which *****, but is better than nothing):

* Open the Terminal and run: caffeinate -i -t 10000

The '10000' is the time in MS that you want your computer to stay awake. This command actually works very well, your computer stays up, but your screen does turn off if you aren't using it (vs. that cafeine app, which keeps everything on).

This was the LAST time I'm EVER going to apply a large upgrade to an Apple program on day one. I love them, but man are they terrible at these big releases.

I have tried everything here and and I am sorry to report no lasting success. Home sharing is just simply not working across any of my devices - 2x iPad (3rd & 4th generation), iPhone 5 & Apple TV (3rd generation), MacBook Pro (mid- 2010), Mac Mini (late 2012) and ancient, little used PC with Windows 7. All this supported by an AirPort Extreme, multiple Airport Express connections and a network the that's served we'll in the past. All devices are slap bang up to date with OS, patches, upgrades and, tellingly where appropriate, iTunes 11. While I have no doubt that whatever the issue is, and I can't see it being my home network since nothing has changed, it will be fixed I am just so disappointed.

When people ask me why I converted to Apple 3 years ago it has always been easy to say "it just works" because mostly it did just that. Now I find that the key features of the whole network and the array of Apple devices, largely to consume my extensive media collection at leisure, in any room of my choice, just does not work reliably. At best I get 10 minutes of music before it drops out, video is unreliable and, much worse, without signing in and out of home sharing the information delivered to each iOS device is just rubbish, 3 artists with wrong identification, about 20 albums equally badly labelled and only a few hundred 'songs' - this out of a collection of several hundred ripped CDs all present in iTunes Match and countless purchases.

As for the proclaimed advantages of iTunes 11 and deeper integration with iCloud - no evidence of that here. TV programmes and Movies shift from 'Watched' to 'Unwatched' across devices and at random, a 10 track download on the base machine (Mac Mini) shows only 3 on one iPad, 4 on another and 6 on the iPhone.

My biggest complaint? That I have been let down & very badly by sloppy delivery - Maps was bad enough but the reasons for going early made sense and the alternatives get me by. iTunes and home-sharing is a the core of how I use my kit and if that doesn't work I don't know why I bother.

I have high hopes of the much touted fix release, I know I should perhaps have waited until it settled before committing to iTunes 11 but this really has to stop. Before you can 'dumb down' all of this so it is a consumer no-brainer it has to work.

If anyone finds a resolution that does not involve fiddling with firewalls on my router, signing out and back in, switching off and on again or performing some mysterious rain dance (I mean Terminal) I would be interested. I would be much more interested in hearing Apple saying "Sorry we screwed up, we know it is broke, we will fix it in x days time" - not too much to hope for is it?

Apple needs to recognize this issues immediately, I'm a huge fan of Apple products like paulgarb said, it's a good product cause it works, every tv and mobile device in my home are linked because of homesharing, but now it does not work with no seemingly simple solution to solve the issue anywhere in site. I have always stood by Apple products and always recommend them, however I hope I did not put my foot in my mouth, my father has just spent a good amount of time scanning old family pictures and now he wishes to share them on his tv, tried multiple solutions for him with the devices he already has, none would work (ie streaming through googletv, ps3...) so I told him the simple solution is to just get an appletv for $99, he said fine get it for me for Christmas, usually I have a hard tie getting a gift for him, but now I finally have an opportunity to get him a gift I know he wants, but with homesharing issue apple has yet to acknowledge I feel appletv might be a moot point for him. Im praying that my father has not update his itunes yet. It would a great gift if apple could acknowledge the issue and fix it before the 25th.

FYI - I spoke to Apple support earlier and this is still not an acknowledged issue. Ergo, no one is looking into it.

They have 'offered' to call me back when at home to go over my setup that was working fine in IOS5 but not IOS6 as the setup MUST be the issue. Not sure if I made things worse by pointing out that I'm and IT consultant and have worked with Apple systems for more years than I'd care to admit to.....

The support tech I spoke said that her home sharing works fine. Hmmmmm.

I'd suggest that EVERYONE puts in for a support callback (you can go through the iPad option and chose the 'I should get an exception for updating to ios6' option) and get them working.

I find this news even more disappointing - iCloud sync, Homesharing and Match are all, as far as I can see, destoyed in my set-up.

Now I am willing to believe that the common factors - iTunes, iOS 6 - may be doing something different in terms of communication, and that my router may not be up to whatever that is. If that is the case, and I can test it by changing the router to an Airport Extreme, I would be even more annoyed than I was before.

I will test the whole thing tomorrow or Wednesday, rigourously, as indicated by 15 years of software testing experience - planning will be key, evidence collected and serious bug reports submitted.

On another note I am very pleased that the support tech isn't experiencing similar problems - perhaps she might then understand why we are incandescent with rage because ours isn't working and the only 'change' is untested Apple software being released into the wild before it has reached a suitable level of quality.

Message was edited by: paulgarb Added iOS 6 as a possible contributory factor

Hi, I just want to add that I updated my ipad2 and iPhone 4S tonics 6.1 about a month ago and ever since I can not access my iTunes on either of them.

iTunes is on my windows 8 pc and AirPlay works from there, but I can not share to my iPad or iPhone.

I can't even get the option to connect. My iPad just says buy music from the store.

This really *****. I have been using this everyday for two years no for the last month I get this.

Is this going to be solved?

I've noticed a few errors during this week using Apple products for home sharing. (Mountain lion on macbook and iPad 2 & iPhone 4 both iOS 6)

1- movies and videos homesharing through ipad seems to work pretty well, however movies' tagging isn't. (I see any photo cover of a movie in another movie. Pretty disgusting) and also noticed about the sleep issue.

2- music home sharing is a disaster! In the iPad I cannot search a song because it hangs the app. Browsing through categories, in artists category its missing 90% of the artist (ergo songs too) total i have, but in songs or albums doesn't. clearly a bug.

This has nothing to do with the network configuration, because i ve tried home sharing in different wifi nets that used to work before itunes 11.

I hope someone has the same issues and that apple fix this soon.

Sorry for my english

I have the same problem with iTunes 11 running on my Macbook Pro 2008 OS X 10.8.2. and ATV3. It worked a bit more consistently before but now looses connection mid-streaming. This is just painful.

Installed Windows Media Center for Windows 8 and Home Sharing now works.

Installed Windows 8 64 on my PC about a month ago and Home Sharing stopped not working on my Apple TV, iOS devices or with other PC's. Rebooted numerous times, updated router firmware, etc. etc. but none of it worked until I installed Windows Media Center.

Media Center is no longer a standard feature of Windows 8 but you can download it for free until the end of the year.