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Resolving Apple TV 2 & 3 Home Sharing Issues

I see that there are many users reporting problems with home sharing.

Unfortunately the problems are there to stay home sharing is actually not functional in full in certain scenarios so I thought I would give a summary of my experience

First of all airplay and home sharing have nothing to do with each other so the fact you have issues with airplay or that airplay works does not warrant any behaviour for home sharing

My set up is as follows

Apple TV 3

iMac

Set of iOS devices iPhone 5/5s/6 iPad 3/Air

Netgear NightHawk 7000

I have the largest iTunes library on the iMac running the latest Mavericks OSX.

In general everything works fine when all devices are awake however the moment the iMac or AppleTV goes to sleep this start creating problems

For who does not know the Apple TV 2/3 has a functionality called bonjour sleep proxy, the AppleTV is always visible on the network and retains and IP address even when it is in sleep mode. The other devices like iMac or MacBooks instead may disconnect from the network and loose their IP going to sleep. So before going to sleep the register with the AppleTV so that the apple Tv can wake those up if needed.

This is the theory so if you then launch remote app or go onto the AppleTV menu and look for computers you should see the shared libraries.

But you don't!

In the remote app the library disappears and when you go into the AppleTVand press computer it starts loading it and then fails or even better tells you home sharing is not active on other devices

Solution:

There are two solution to the problem

1, Set the iMac or other computer power saving to never go to sleep. This is not eco friendly but means the network card stays on and so does the link to home sharing

2. Uss standard power saving settings and use an application like Moka WOL. Register your computer MAC address on this app. When you need your home library go into this app and wake up the sleeping computer. The link to computers will go back to working on the apple TV and all will be normal

I am sorry to say that home sharing just does not work because contrary to what apple says the apple tv (and the extreme routers) fail to wake up any sleeping devices with home sharing on the network although they are aware of the existence once those devices loose an IP address is basically dead end

AppleTv3-OTHER

Posted on Oct 11, 2014 2:01 AM

37 replies

Oct 21, 2014 12:12 PM in response to R C-R

I have tried long time ago deleting the preferences for power saving and schedule sleep but without joy

If this feature was steady there won't be complaints. I may understand a few non advanced issues having problems but not developers

So to me this is a poor implementation that needs fixing meanwhile will use a WOL app to sort it out

R C-R

Level 6

17,782 points

Oct 21, 2014 9:58 PM in response to Interceptor121

Interceptor121 wrote:

I have tried long time ago deleting the preferences for power saving and schedule sleep but without joy

It still might be a good idea to use pmset -g to check the hibernate setting. There are several reasons deleting the prefs file may not actually change that. For one thing, Mavericks caches many preferences for quicker access & under some circumstances may write the cached version back to disk instead of creating a new system default version. Likewise, some power management settings are stored in NVRAM & unless they are explicitly changed through the GUI or CLI will persist through restarts.

It only takes a minute to check, so what have you got to lose?

Oct 22, 2014 12:41 AM in response to R C-R

Maybe I have not been clear

i have done the whole Pmset routine the imac standards are for normal sleep

bonjour wake seems to be an ongoing problem as I had already a time capsule ac replaced in warranty after two weeks on the phone with apple and now going back on consumer right as it could never wake up a wirelease printer

i bought another router (non apple) and the printer has gone back to working fine

since I have had an appletv3 best case I have had spinning wheel on the AppleTv when It would attempt to wake the iMac and had to disable power saving to make it work

the only times it does work is when the iMac is waking for sleep every two hours to register with the sleep proxy and has an IP address, after it goes back to sleep it never comes back

that makes the availability of this solution 15 minutes out of 135 which is 11% chance it Will actually work

poor

R C-R

Level 6

17,782 points

Oct 22, 2014 2:21 AM in response to Interceptor121

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear either. There are two groups of users involved: those for whom home sharing works reliably & those for whom it does not. Some in the second group who would like to be in the first group might read this topic looking for ways of making that happen.

My suggestion to check the hibernate mode of their Macs was intended for that group, not specifically for you.

Richalf

Level 1

0 points

Dec 1, 2014 9:33 AM in response to Interceptor121

I have the exact same issue as you Interceptor121, and I have tried every conceivable resolution to the best of my abilities (which are not as deep as yours by reading your posts) including things discussed in this thread.

All of this worked fine before I updated to Yosemite.

One burning question I have is my set up and I'm wondering if it could be contributing to the problem.

My system:

Imac 27" (late 2009) stores the main iTunes library (actually the library is on a LaCie Porsche external hard drive)

Netgear 3700 Readyshare router is wired via ethernet

in "Bridge Mode" a Time capsule used strictly for Time machine back ups (but is available as a WiFi)

This set up makes me wonder is sometimes it's confusing the system for lack of a better term BUT as I said it all worked fine before I updated Yosemite so I do have my doubts.

At this point I believe this is an issue that can only be fixed by Apple lets hope they are aware and care enough to do so.

Feb 10, 2015 9:50 AM in response to Richalf

Just came across this thread and wanted to add some additional details and get folks thoughts.

So question. Usually tech support tracks bug defects. Did anyone call apple and push to get them to acknowledge the issue and what the bug ID assigned was? It would help everyone to better understand the situation and track resolution?

So there could be two issues. Bonjour does not wake up a Mac Mini correctly. However, ruling that out since I have the issue with my Mac Mini awake I think it's an issue were Bonjour stops working correctly advertising the services from the Mac Mini to the ATV. This would explain why some times restarting iTunes can fix the problem.

To add some further details. The issue I see is on Apple TV "Could not connect to [Library]”. I would like to add some clarity though.

- I have four separate apple TV so it allows me to rule out hardware problems on a single apple tv.

- All ATV are hard wired on GE. So throughput or wireless is ruled out

- All ATV use hard coded IP addresses.

- I experience the issue starting around 7.X software. Not 100% sure but, update back Q2/Q3 last year went from highly reliable to not-reliable

- Running both 7.0.2 and 7.0.3. Latest update did not fix the issue

- Mac Mini Server is not running Yosemite

- Mac Mini Server had problems with iTunes 12.1 and 11.4

- In many causes the Mac Mini is not in a sleep mode

- Problem can persist through ATV reboot.

- Problem can persist even though Mac Mini can ping the ATV confirming connectivity.

- I can see bonjour packets coming from the ATV when I do packet captures off the Mac Mini

Jul 6, 2015 5:36 AM in response to Scurvy dog

After (I wish I had NEVER done that) migrating (I would not call this upgrading) to Yosemite AppleTV-homesharing problems were really driving me crazy.

Things got even worse when I added an Airport Express to the LAN, that appears to frequently take over mac- and IP-address of the AppleTV!!

My Mac Mini iTunes-server never sleeps yet there were times it was really impossible to get the AppleTV, model 3, to find the iTunes Library.

I now have instructed one of my tiny Raspberry Pi's to keep sending ping-packets to all involved (AppleTV, Airport Express, Mac Mini) all day and if one of them is not responding the Pi immediately sends a WOL-packet, and I must say... Things appear to be pretty stable right now... The Pi reports the AppleTV (why???) to be unreachable about once or twice a month, but that's all..

All devices are wired to the LAN, no WiFi. The Airport Express is there for my iDevices only. The Mac Mini reports 'hibernatemode 0'...

Oh... Important to let you know that the move to Yosemite was on about 4 Macintoshes but NOT the MacMini that runs iTunes. The Mac Mini runs 10.7.5.

Resolving Apple TV 2 & 3 Home Sharing Issues