Problem with Apple TV and Home Sharing

Hello Jazzichic,

Thanks for using the Apple Support Communities!

I understand that your Apple TV is experiencing an issue staying connected to Home Sharting. We know situations like this can be frustrating, but we are here to help!

To begin troubleshooting, I suggest reading over and working through the suggested steps from the following article.

Get help with Home Sharing - Apple Support

Cheers!

This link is a great start but unfortunately, I'm way past this and am having the same issue on all three of my Apple TVs (gen 2, 3, and now 4). I am constantly told to turn Home Sharing on, it is already on, and still nothing. I've tried restarting, logging out of iTunes, turning Home Sharing off and on, rebooting my router, and I always get the same message - Cannont Connect to Library. So frustrating.

I am experiencing the same problem. At first I thought it was because I was connecting to my PC, but the same thing happens when on my wife's MacBook.

We have come across the following order of events that seem to consistently lead to a successful connection (so far):

1. Reboot AppleTV
2. While rebooting, turn off home sharing on your computer and then turn back on again
3. On AppleTV, go to Computers, and hopefully your library shows up

This is very frustrating having to do this every time! Fix this Apple!!

This is a user forum, you aren't addressing Apple

IF on wifi try connecting ATV via Ethernet

Hey everyone, spent a long time on the phone with Apple last night - this ultimately ended up being a third party (McAfee) firewall issue. I've still not fixed it - but by purely turning off McAfee Security Console (provided by ATT U-verse) I'm now up and running! So check your firewall folks. Good luck!

OMG THANK YOU! I have been fighting my new Apple TV for a week trying to figure this out. I was just about to call apple support and see what they could tell me when I decided to try the discussion board one more time. I just turned my McAfee firewall off and presto there's my library!

So glad that helped!

I agree with Lane. I had the same problem, so after reading her post I checked my Norton Security program and turned off Vulnerability Protection. I went to Apple TV and tried again and voila, I was connected to my iTunes Library. So simple! Thanks Lane. Hope this helps anyone using Norton.

Another update - after having some time to play around with this - this is what I did:

Opened up TCP Local Port 3689 either direction, any local IP address

Opened up UDP Local Port 5353 either direction, any local IP address

Allow all ICMP message types either direction, any local IP address

Turned Firewall back on

Restarted Computer

Restarted Apple TV

Opened iTunes

Connected Apple TV to Library

Bingo.

I will add - I'm not sure if the either direction or any local IP address are the best choices, but those are the first I tried and had success with.