How to fix Home Sharing with new iOS 7 upgrade

I believe I have the same problem with my iPad mini, Model A1432, iOS 7.1. A shared library of 5300 songs, 240 movies takes a looooong time to load. That last part of the blue ring icon seems to take forever. I had to keep the iPad mini from sleeping otherwise I'd have to start the download again. Once it does load, it is a waste of time. The first screen you see is blank until you tap on the jumbled menu at the top. The movie library appears, but all of the protected movies will not play. "Cannot Open. This content is not authorized." For me, that's every movie from the iTunes store. Duh? An old silver Apple TV 1 and ATV2 will stream the protected movies fast and furious from Home Sharing, but they are not equipped with iOS 7. I have an iPad1 that loads the shared library in a fraction of the time. Fortunately, the iPad1 can't be updated to iOS 7. However, the protected movie files do not open on the iPad1 either. (The same purchased movies will play on either iPad if downloaded to memory from an iTunes sync, or streamed from their iTunes account.)

Yes, I've done the Apple ID authorization dance, the Airport Extreme and network voodoo chants, complete device wipes (they are real shiny now) and thrown goat entrails at the brand new Mac Mini purchased as the Home Sharing device (via iTunes 15.1.5). Nothing speeds up loading of the shared library, or fixes the protected movies issue.

Not sure what else I can do. Just wait for a software update as well, I suppose.

To fix the movie problem, first clear off the entrails 😁 and then try the following on your Mac Mini:

Start fresh:

1. Turn off Home Sharing on your Mac Mini.

2. Click on your account icon in the upper left of the window and sign out of your iTunes account from iTunes.

3. Next, and this is the important part, go to the Store Menu and De-authorize this Computer (Mac Mini).

4. Clear the sign out notice and then Authorize this Computer, the Mac Mini.

5. Sign back into your iTunes account.

6. Turn Home Sharing back on.

7. Re-start your iPads and wait for the Home Shared library to load.

This won't speed up your home shared library load times but you should be able to play your purchased movies once the shared library loads on the iPad mini, etc. Hope this helps.

BTW: Credit for this solution, which worked for me, belongs to Apple Support - wonderful folks, very patient and very helpful!! 🙂

Windows 7 64 bit / iTunes 11.1.5.5 / iphone 5 / ipad 3

Have tried all the suggestions on this forum and nothing gets Home Sharing to work for me. Even disconnected router (Virgin Superhub) from internet before disabling its firewall and Norton 360 firewall - again made no difference.

Call me a cynic but given that these problems have existed for many months on Mac & Windows - is it because Apple wants to 'encourage' us to migrate our iTunes libraries to its cloud service that we would then have to pay for?!

I think Apple reliablity is a joke and will seriously consider moving to Android if this farce goes on for much longer 😠

I too have been struggling with the problem of Home Sharing(HS) dropping out intermittently. The evidence from this and other groups is that most of us have had HS working at some point. It then follows that the 'software' is at least capable of functioning correctly. My assumption is that the network environment may therefore be changing in some way that causes the problem.

I see that network connectivity of each device is not normally a problem - given that they nearly all seem to connect to the gateway/router/internet - my thought, therefore, was that network address translation was probably at fault. ie that ip addresses were not 'finding' their destinations and that DNS was somehow at fault.

Sometimes clearing local DNS caches on both PC and OS devices simultaneously 'fixed' the problem... however, it would soon return. I tried an all static IP network (rather than DHCP) and this, too, sometimes worked.

Having read that some of you were having success when IP6 protocol was removed from your NICs, I tried with this switched off on my system. And it worked. My Apple TVs, iPads, iPods and iPhones all HS and sync using wi-fi.

At the moment everything appears to be working correctly - except that Windows Home Groups require the use of IP6, and so connectivity between my home PC is not as simple as Microsoft intended!

Anyway, I'm up and running now. it would be useful if several users tried the same 'fix' to see whether we can build up a body of proof. I remain optimistic!

I've tried the solution mentioned at https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3507281?tstart=0 (disable IPv6) and this has worked for me to - I can now see my iTunes library on my iPhone & iPad. So it looks as if Apple needs to sort out this issue with IPv6. 😐

Although Microsoft gives the following warning about doing this -

Important Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a mandatory part of Windows Vista and later versions. We do not recommend that you disable IPv6 or its components, or some Windows components may not function. For more information, see the "What are Microsoft's recommendations about disabling IPv6?" question in IPv6 for Microsoft Windows: Frequently Asked Questions.

I was thinking that perhaps giving local IP6 static addresses to the NICs might be the answer. I'm currently using a dated home router that clearly doesn't issue IP6 addresses by DHCP. Perhaps newer ones do.

I believe the standard format is fe80::/10 but as everything is local, I expect any old number will do!

If this is a solution, I'm not too sure that Apple can be made responsible for anything that happens at the network and connectivity layers - particularly as this is a problem occurring (for me, at any rate) in a mixed PC/OS environment. I wonder whether fully OS networks have the same issues either with or without IP6 enabled.

Of course, any sort of in-built workaround couldn't hurt.

I updated to iOS 7.1.1 and home sharing started to work again.

Can anyone confirm whether this was an issue addressed by the update? Or is the fact that Home Sharing is now working for you is as an effect of you having rebooted the device and, therefore, reconnected to your network with reset DNS caches etc. I hope not but it could just be a coincidence.. I believe many people have observed temporary fixes as a result of device and router reboots. I don't have access to the update yet and cannot find a copy of the release notes available to the general public anywhere. Perhaps someone with access all areas can advise us.

I followed the suggestions sent by the apple folks a while ago to no avail. After the iOS update to 7.1.1 my iphone recognized my iMac library just like it did before the 7.1 update.

Last time this happened, restarting the Bonjour serviced worked for me. This time, after wasting 90 minutes of my life troubleshooting, I ended up reinstalling iTunes and it finally worked, TG! I don't know what's more frustrating, troubleshooting if it's a Windows or an Apple iTunes/ATV problem.

Same here, home sharing is very slowly and can take up to 10mins, if I am lucky to get a connection with iTunes.

I am using an Airport Extreme, 2 Airport Express, Macbook Pro mid 2012, iPhone 5s, iPad 3rd gen. a PC with Windows 7, iPod Touch 4th and 5th gen. All devices and iTunes have the latest version installed.

What surprises me is that Remote is working fast and direct. No problems with Apple Remote. I still wonder why can't you stream to the device where you use Remote on? Much easier to use I think..

Same issue here and after struggling with Home Sharing for a very long time I have finally found a fix, use Plex instead. The server piece is free and the app is 5 bucks but it just plain works.

I have the Plex server running on a Mac Mini and it found my iTunes collection and presented it as a "channel" to the Plex app, no configuration needed. I still use iTunes to manage music amd movies but Plex picks up where Home Sharing falls short.

This worked for me after many failed efforts to reset router, open and close home sharing on both Mac and iphone, etc. etc. I'm wondering why I had previously been able to open home sharing some times but not others.