Home sharing on iDevices not loading large library

Hello Lee,

I have the exact same problem. I have two iPads, one running iOS6 and the other iOS7. iOS6 is able to load the library as expected but not the iPad running on iOS7. The problem has to do with the size of your library.

Have a look at your "iTunes Music Libary.xml" and the "iTunes Library.xml" files on the machine running iTunes. Most likely they are over 20MB in size. Therein lies the problem. Somehow the Music and Video app's both have problems parsing large xml files and in turn will timeout before completion.

You can easily test this. Sign on as a different user and create a new iTunes library, import a few items and start the Video/Music app on your iOS device. There is no need to restart, unplug etc. Home Sharing works as advertised when dealing with small libraries. By the way, the sorting problem is fixed in iOS7.

Hi

I have this problem too. Is there a solution?

Hi,

it seems the problem is rectified in the latest iOS 7.1 update. Large libraries are now loaded as expected.

If you haven't yet update, I would recommend you do so. Just an educated guess, but I believe the table-space was increased on the iOS DB.

Cheers.

I agree this latest update doesnt solve the problem. I guess home sharing just doesnt work properly. It must be simple to fix but apple dosent seem to care about this bug

Can you tell me where you got the evidence for this assertion "that large libraries are now loaded as expected"? Did you manage to get it to work?

Strange, it's working on my iPad 3, iPhone4s and iPhone5s. But it takes approx 5 minutes to load.

> Can you tell me where you got the evidence for this assertion "that large libraries are now loaded as expected"?

Did you read my original post? You need evidence? Test it yourself. Again, see my original post.

I am sorry if the way I expressed myself upset you.

Your post said "it seems the problem is rectified". When I read this I dont understand that to mean that it "is" rectified. People often say on this forum something seems to be ok when they have heard that it is ok rather than than they have tried it and it works.

I have tried now several times to get this to work and my experience is the same as Lee Farber, it doesnt work however long you leave it.

I see that Lee has a 3 Tb libary and mine is somewhere over 2 TB. What size library do you have? Perhaps there are still upper limits causing problems.

My libray.xml is 58MB. On my iPad and iPhone it takes about 20 minutes to load the Music and Video apps first time and about 10 minutes each time I open the apps thereafter.

It's so frustrating.

I have turned off Home Sharing on all devices and Mac, quit all applications and shut down everythng, rebooted AirPort Extreme, and turned everything back on and started up Home Sharing.

Same performance. I'm using all the latest Apple devices and AirPort. Mac is 2011. Everything is up to date software and firmware-wise.

I sure wish they would fix this.

My library.xml is 348.6 mb which I guess explains why it wont load at all. 😟

I dont think Apple cares about itunes or home sharing.

Same thing here. Since the upgrade from 7.0.6 to 7.1 loading the home sharing music library takes ages. On my iPod with iOS 6.x it is still very fast. I tested this with iTunes on my Mac and on a Windows PC. Same behaviour. My xml file is about 30Mb.

This was the status as I first realized the problem.

iPhone 4S with 7.1 - slow

iPad 3 with with 7.1 - slow

iPhone 5 with 7.0.6 - fast

iPod with 6.x fast

To make sure is is related to iOS I upated the 5S iPhone also. Bad idea. 😟. Now it is like this:

iPhone 4S with 7.1 - slow

iPad 3 with with 7.1 - slow

iPhone 5 with 7.1 - slow

iPod with 6.x fast

Waitung for the next update...

Updating to iOS 7.1 fixed my large share not loading. My .xml is 58 MB. Thanks, Getting Tired.

@Mantula_Enormous: How long does it take to load the library now? In my case - see post above - it is 2 sec. with iOS 6 an appr. 2 min. with 7.1

I've got the same issue. Library is 1.5 TB. Kids have iPad retinas. 2013 iMac i7. I even have the imac hardwired to my network for maximum speed (as opposed to wireless).

What kills me is sharing worked great...with a huge library...ON FIRST GEN IPADS. Now all our devices are latest greatest, sharing is broke.

7.1 hasn't fixed this for me and I've done all the restarting/unplugging/signing out. It's really kinda getting to me.