Conor.P.M

Q: Problems using 'Back to my Mac' with Yosemite

At home I have two Macs, an iMac and a MacBook, both running Mavericks. At work I use a MacBook Pro, also running Mavericks, and when I'm out I use a MacBook Air that was running developer preview of Yosemite.

 

My home iMac has now been upgraded to Yosemite. However when at work using my Mavericks MacBook I can no longer use 'Back to my Mac' to screen share back to my iMac, I get "Connection failed to "Conor's iMac", but I can still connect to the MacBook at home running Mavericks. I've also tried connecting to both Macs at home using my Yosemite MacBook Air but I get the same error.

 

I can screen share between all Mac when they are on the local network, but as soon as I'm using iCloud to screen share the only connection I can make is between Macs running Mavericks. It's almost as if 'Back to my Mac' via iCloud is broken in Yosemite.

 

I've tried disabling and reenabling 'Back to my Mac', signing out of iCloud entirely and then logging in again, but nothing I've tried so far will allow me to use iCloud to screen share between two Yosemite Macs.

 

Has anyone else seen this issue, or have any suggestions?

Posted on Oct 21, 2014 12:54 PM

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Q: Problems using 'Back to my Mac' with Yosemite

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  • by mjkobb,

    mjkobb mjkobb Dec 10, 2014 1:12 PM in response to mrbofus
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 10, 2014 1:12 PM in response to mrbofus

    Will do.  My experience before doing the Yosemite upgrade was that I frequently had to toggle BTMM off and then on again on my laptop (when outside my home) to be able to connect to the computer at home.  It would typically appear in the side bar of the Finder, but attempts to connect to either shared volumes or to screen sharing would fail until I did the toggle maneuver.  Is that consistent with the behavior you've seen, or does it just disappear entirely?

  • by mrbofus,

    mrbofus mrbofus Dec 10, 2014 1:18 PM in response to mjkobb
    Level 1 (17 points)
    Mac OS X
    Dec 10, 2014 1:18 PM in response to mjkobb

    Toggling BTMM off and on never seemed to work for me.

  • by John Galt,

    John Galt John Galt Dec 10, 2014 1:44 PM in response to mjkobb
    Level 8 (49,522 points)
    Mac OS X
    Dec 10, 2014 1:44 PM in response to mjkobb

    My experience before doing the Yosemite upgrade was that I frequently had to toggle BTMM off and then on again on my laptop (when outside my home) to be able to connect to the computer at home.  It would typically appear in the side bar of the Finder, but attempts to connect to either shared volumes or to screen sharing would fail until I did the toggle maneuver.


    That would occasionally be required when switching from one network to another, and is recommended by Apple in their support documentation if the remote Mac did not appear in Shared or if you could not otherwise connect to it.


    It's still not fixed and there is nothing we can do to fix it. Only Apple can do that.

  • by ReneUrs,

    ReneUrs ReneUrs Dec 10, 2014 3:22 PM in response to Brian S. Campbell
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 10, 2014 3:22 PM in response to Brian S. Campbell

    me too... I seem to have thirteen computers now! (1) (2) (3) ... (13) Which one is the real me?

  • by twayneo1,

    twayneo1 twayneo1 Dec 19, 2014 8:05 PM in response to ReneUrs
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 19, 2014 8:05 PM in response to ReneUrs

    Alrighty everyone, i have 10.10.2 installed on my macbook pro and 5k iMac, change is coming as soon as i booted back up i noticed that my macbook pro and immediately connected i need to do further testing but it is looking promising. ill keep you up to date and i will be using the feedback assistant for beta program to let apple know of anything else. so far so good. but I'm not holding my breathe, ill do some testing tommorrow on other networks.

  • by cvilledave,

    cvilledave cvilledave Dec 23, 2014 5:10 PM in response to twayneo1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 23, 2014 5:10 PM in response to twayneo1

    I was optimistic after installing the beta but after a few days BTMM started acting up again.  I can see and access my Macs that are still running Mavericks just fine.  BTMM on machines running Yosemite will work for a few days then they start disappearing from the shared devices list.  Reboot them and they start working for a few more days.

  • by Acme-Toons,

    Acme-Toons Acme-Toons Dec 28, 2014 12:46 PM in response to Conor.P.M
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 28, 2014 12:46 PM in response to Conor.P.M

    I've read most but not all of the posts in this thread so my apologies if this is a duplicate but I wanted to share what I did to get this working (just today) and with 10.10.1.  I had to disable the firewall in security in system preferences on the remote mac.  Once I did that I was able to connect at will.  To be sure this was my issue, I re-enabled the firewall and got the connection error.  When off I was able to connect in seconds.  I repeated it multiple times to be sure, each time I was only able to connect with firewall off.  FYI, all services including the sharing service had an "allow access" while firewall was on.  Other settings were file sharing and remote management on - for listed users.  What was puzzling was file sharing worked just fine to remote mac via BTMM with firewall on, I just could not do screen sharing.

  • by mjkobb,

    mjkobb mjkobb Dec 28, 2014 12:55 PM in response to Acme-Toons
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 28, 2014 12:55 PM in response to Acme-Toons

    Sadly, that's not my issue.  Firewall on or off, I still have unreliable connections.

  • by mrbofus,

    mrbofus mrbofus Dec 28, 2014 1:08 PM in response to Acme-Toons
    Level 1 (17 points)
    Mac OS X
    Dec 28, 2014 1:08 PM in response to Acme-Toons

    Acme-Toons wrote:

     

    I had to disable the firewall in security in system preferences on the remote mac.  Once I did that I was able to connect at will.

     

    My firewall has been off the entire time I have been troubleshooting BTMM issues and that has had no effect in my case.  Are you testing on your local network only or from an outside location as well?  On the local network, BTMM works fine; the issues seem to only occur when trying to connect from outside your local network.

     

    I have turned to using TeamViewer.  It's free for personal use and always works, whether I'm at home, 300 miles from home, or 6,000 miles from home.

  • by Acme-Toons,

    Acme-Toons Acme-Toons Dec 28, 2014 1:53 PM in response to mrbofus
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 28, 2014 1:53 PM in response to mrbofus

    I'm testing to an outside location 100s of miles away.  I guess I'll just keep my fingers crossed that it continues to work for me. 

  • by mrbofus,

    mrbofus mrbofus Dec 28, 2014 1:58 PM in response to Acme-Toons
    Level 1 (17 points)
    Mac OS X
    Dec 28, 2014 1:58 PM in response to Acme-Toons

    Acme-Toons wrote:

     

    I'm testing to an outside location 100s of miles away.  I guess I'll just keep my fingers crossed that it continues to work for me.

     

    Ooh, you're lucky!  I hope it continues to work for you as well; hopefully that's an indicator Apple is fixing (or has resolved) BTMM issues?  I probably shouldn't hold my breath though...

  • by JGmac,

    JGmac JGmac Jan 13, 2015 8:30 AM in response to JGmac
    Level 2 (175 points)
    Jan 13, 2015 8:30 AM in response to JGmac

    It is no longer working for me....actually only worked for a week.  I gave up... frustrated .... disgusted .  I decided to call Apple Joint Venture today.  There has been no change.  I was advised to use a non Apple software or to "revert back to Mavericks."  SERIOUSLY??  This is a MSFT 1990 style fix.

  • by mjkobb,

    mjkobb mjkobb Jan 13, 2015 1:00 PM in response to Conor.P.M
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 13, 2015 1:00 PM in response to Conor.P.M

    Ars Technica had an interesting article today discussing a number of network related problems in Yosemite, including problems with Back to My Mac, that shed some light on the source of the issue.  The summary is that in Yosemite, the mDNSResponder has been replaced with a new daemon called discoveryd.  Ars believes that this new daemon has a number of bugs that are causing the Back to My Mac problem, among others.


    The Ars authors say (and I agree strongly) that it's hard to imagine how Apple could have shipped something so obviously broken, and they (and I) strongly hope that it will be fixed soon.

     

    I would post the link to the article here, but it seems that Apple's moderators frown on that because it also contained some advice for monkeying around with the system to restore some functionality, which does sound somewhat dodgy.

     

    Hopefully they will allow this posting to remain for informational purposes.

  • by RaceTripper,

    RaceTripper RaceTripper Jan 13, 2015 1:40 PM in response to mjkobb
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 13, 2015 1:40 PM in response to mjkobb

    I read that Ars Technical article and I walked...no ran...away from the proposed hack for "fixing" the problems. While it might be helpful in the short term (if it works for you), it will almost surely break your system down the road when you need to apply official updates/upgrades. Then there are all the security implications of hacking the networking subsystem.

     

    It's safer to use a third party solution as a substitute for BTMM.

     

    Software quality at Apple is at its lowest in decades if you ask me. iOS 8 is also flakey as ****. I've been an avid Mac fan since the mid-80s and I don't remember having so many problems with the OS. Apple needs to stop screwing around with their frequent UI/UX changes and get back to building stable software.

  • by pfisher112,

    pfisher112 pfisher112 Jan 14, 2015 12:19 PM in response to Conor.P.M
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Desktops
    Jan 14, 2015 12:19 PM in response to Conor.P.M

    Well, I will provide my update to you all.   Originally, I had an MBA running Mavericks, upgraded to Yosemite and it broke the BTMM connection to my Mac Mini running Mavericks at home.  I took my MBA and wiped it clean and reinstalled Mavericks on it.  On my Mac Mini, I turned OFF the firewall settings and I made sure that on both computers I am logged in to iCloud as noname@icloud.com.  Obviously, I have BTMM checked on both computers. So far, at work, I am able to log into my Mac Mini at home using my MBA.  Obviously, the screen sharing is very slow but BTMM is working.  Here is the strange thing about this, in my router, I don't have port forwarding set to the Mac MIni.  Somehow, BTMM is working though. 

     

    I have another Mac Mini running Mavericks at home that I can't get BTMM to work yet.  I was thinking, can BTMM work on the same network but two different Macs?  I don't see why it can't work.

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