Home Sharing stops working with fast user switching

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Home Sharing stops working with fast user switching

I have a late 2013 iMac running Mavericks. The main account has my iTunes library with Home Sharing enabled. The AppleTVs and IOS devices can see the Home Share and it works well. But, it stops working when user accounts are accessed on the Mac.

For instance, as soon as I select "Login Window..." from the fast user switching menu, the share is lost. I did not log out, iTunes is still running. I simply showed the login window. All IOS and ATVs loose the share. Switching to another user also stops the share. It's as if iTunes is completed halted and not allowed to run in the background.

When moving from the login screen back to the user account where the iTunes library is located, the home share is restored. Likewise, moving from a 2nd user account back to the main account where iTunes is runnning restores the home share.

I have a MacPro running Mountain Lion, and it works fine. The iTunes library is always available for the devices, even if multiple users are signed into the Mac, or if the Mac is on the login screen.

Any work around for Mavericks? It competely breaks the entire media ecosystem if every device looses the home share if someone tries to use their account on the Mac.

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)

Posted on Jan 1, 2014 11:03 AM

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Answer 1

Jun 8, 2014 7:55 AM in response to Travis Carter

My wife's laptop just died, and we moved her account over onto my iMac from a time machine backup. This is the first time we've used multiple accounts on the machine, but I'm running into the same problem. When we switch to her account, homesharing breaks. This is a pretty big problem as we use the iMac as our DVR and watch things from it on our AppleTV.

I am actually slightly heartened to hear that it works the way you'd expect in Mountain Lion though, perhaps that means this could theortically be fixed at some point.

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Answer 2

Jun 8, 2014 8:05 AM in response to Brandonshire

And just like that I may have found the solution! IT suddenly occured to me that one of the settings that got changed when we imported my wife's profile was a change to the sleep settings. Previously, I had had my iMac set to never go to sleep, since it shares our media with the rest of the house and runs eyeTV to record TV shows and such. For a little while after my wife's account was imported the settings to changes so that the computer would go to sleep after 15 minutes. I'm not totally sure why, but I think having that set up somehow meant that when we switched accounts my other account just "went to sleep" and therefore stopped sharing the iTunes library. After I noticed the change and switched the computer back to "never" for sleep the problem seems to have stopped.

So perhaps check your sleep settings? That seems to be the only change I can think of that got things working correclty for me. I'll keep digging though and see if I can find any more helpful info. Good luck!

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Answer 3

Sep 2, 2015 2:28 PM in response to Travis Carter

Hello Travis

Did you ever solve this problem? I used to have Home Sharing switched on on my 2009 iMac 27" running Mountain Lion in my Daughters account and she could access her movies etc on her iPad whilst the machine was switched to my account using Fast User Switching. Then at some point it no longer worked. I can't say for sure if it coincided with an iTunes upgrade or maybe an OSX upgrade but it has been off for a while (possibly since around the time of your post). I am now on Mavericks with whatever latest version of iTunes and it is definitely still off. Nothing to do with computer sleeping etc, no obvious settings to blame. I would say it had been deliberately disabled in an upgrade but it is surprising how few people have posted about it.

Anyway, any info on progress (or otherwise) you made would be appreciated.

Just had a thought actually - I wonder if it relates to other users having Home Sharing on. I'll turn it off in my account and see what happens.

Chris

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