Apple TV doesn't want to work with Homesharing

[Sill]

I am completely thwarted by tvOS at the moment.

I've been trying like crazy to get my digital music to play through my home theater. I currently have an aTV4K running the current OS, and a 2017 iMac on Mojave. Homesharing is enabled on both pieces. My library is hosted via iTunes on the iMac, from a hard drive attached to my Airport Extreme. I used that same setup to stream my movie library to a previous aTV 4 (but not this 4K).

When I went to iTunes on the AppleTV, it doesn't show my library. It shows my wife's library, with all 2 of the albums she purchased plus the un-deletable U2 album from hell. Her iCloud account is used for app purchases, my AppleID is used for Homesharing. Before we went to Infuse, thats how we watched movies off my local drive, and it worked. Now, I can't get any of my libraries to show up.

I checked in iTunes on the Mac and found that "share my library with everyone on the network" wasn't checked, so I fixed that. My library still isn't showing up.

I figured that maybe I should sign the wife out of her iCloud account and see if iTunes then points to my library. Nope. Now it asks me to sign in so I can use Apple Music. Thats when I noticed that what I thought was iTunes was actually the "Music" app. Apparently they got rid of the music player portion of the iTunes app, and they took the streaming portion and called it "Music"?

I then went to the Computer app - which was how I used to play movies years ago - and tried to find my library that way. I couldn't. Instead I got a message that aTV "couldn't find" my library, even though the name it showed for the library was correct. So it could find the name but not the library attached to the name? Even better, the message I got under that said "Make sure your computer is attached to the same network as your Apple TV". No problem! Thats the network where I have my Apple TV currently pulling media from Netflix and Hulu, and running the Infuse app which can see my movie library, and where an earlier aTV used to play those movies, but this one can't see it?

Is this a simple thing to fix? What do I need to do to play music off my local drives?

 

[Sill]

I can't believe it - I solved this one myself.

I had searched for quite a while to try to find the answers before I posted here, but everything I read told me to do exactly what I'd already done. After my post, I fooled with the settings on my devices for a while, then I took a deep breath and tried some different search terms. I eventually found an article from MacWorld talking about adding the media libraries to the aTV Computer app, and at the end of the article it mentioned making sure certain ports were open on the firewall so requests for the libraries would go through.

We no longer have access to ports by number in the firewall - thats been gone for a few OS versions - but we can still block specific processes and extensions by name. I went into the firewall and saw certain signed extensions were blocked. I chose two - AirplayXPCHelper, and rapportd - and allowed incoming connections.

Bingo, all my libraries show up on the aTV! Now I can get to my next home theater problem.

I'd like to extend a personal thanks to myself for sticking with me and helping me find out what I was doing wrong.

 

[mpainesyd]

Thanks for the tip. I haven't had Homesharing problems so far but will keep your experience in mind.

 

[albusseverus]

tv now states that it requires Catalina for home sharing.
Anyone got home sharing to work with Mojave?

I looked in Firewall blocked services and can't see anything blocked except a couple of apps I've blocked myself, nothing to do with media, or even extensions.

Last couple of days, I've had issues getting home sharing to work Mac to tv devices. Had to turn it off at both ends, restart, turn it on, etc.
Now it just states - Requires Catalina.

Normally I update to new OSs quickly, but Catalina still seems unreliable for my purposes, and the EyeTV 64 bit client still doesn't work, so I've had no compelling reason to update to Catalina, and please don't recommend Plex - it has nothing I want and trashed my library the last time I tried it, so I'm aware of it and I have no interest.

Anyone got home sharing to work with Mojave?

 

[Sill]

tv now states that it requires Catalina for home sharing.
Anyone got home sharing to work with Mojave?

I looked in Firewall blocked services and can't see anything blocked except a couple of apps I've blocked myself, nothing to do with media, or even extensions.

Last couple of days, I've had issues getting home sharing to work Mac to tv devices. Had to turn it off at both ends, restart, turn it on, etc.
Now it just states - Requires Catalina.

Normally I update to new OSs quickly, but Catalina still seems unreliable for my purposes, and the EyeTV 64 bit client still doesn't work, so I've had no compelling reason to update to Catalina, and please don't recommend Plex - it has nothing I want and trashed my library the last time I tried it, so I'm aware of it and I have no interest.

Anyone got home sharing to work with Mojave?

I'd previously had a bad experience installing Catalina on my other iMac (short version: it refuses to boot now), so my main computer is going to stay on Mojave for the foreseeable future. In fact, I think the only way Catalina is going to get through my front door is if I buy a new iMac. I have Homesharing running right now on tvOS 13.5 or whatever the most recent build is - and in fact, I just updated it the morning that I opened this thread. I am not getting a "requires Catalina" message, and its working better than ever here.

There was a security update the day after I got Homesharing working here, and I've been putting off doing the install. I have a bunch of browser windows open to some shopping carts that I don't want to try to rebuild after a mandatory restart right now, so I'm on Mojave 10.14.6 for the next few days at least. What version of Mojave are you on now? Perhaps that update -if you did it - killed Homesharing for you?

BTW, no need to explain your dislike for Plex. I'm with you there. That software is not just a mess waiting to happen, its a privacy risk. You're right to stay away from it, and I tell anyone who cares to do the same.

 

[albusseverus]

Mojave 10.14.6 (18G95)
tvOS 13.4 (17L256) says it's the latest

I'm going to chance the Mojave security update, may not have anything to lose (except my 3rd Gen tv)

thanks for replying - I'm a fan of front row, too. Liked it much better than the tv interface. Ah, the good old days, apple don't make them like they used to.

It was an tv update that killed it. My 3rd gen tv is still working, just the 4k that was hit and miss, so I updated it, not suspecting that Apple would require beta software (I regard Catalina as still in public beta) to work. The 3rd gen had also been hit and miss, but when I tested it just now, it's working fine. See what the Mojave update does…

 

[albusseverus]

Yup, security update fixed it. With Apple pushing Catalina "update" all the time, it's hard to know when there's a genuine Mojave update available.

Thanks for nudging me about the security update.

And I found the place to look… /About, Software Update
And probably /Syetem Preferences/Software Update

This is not news, but solemn reminder to look occasionally if you're not reading Apple software update news.
And a none-to-subtle reminder that if you've turned off Auto Updates until Catalina gets out of public beta, KEEP CHECKING! yourself, because Apple doesn't seem to have a good way to tell you Which updates are available if you aren't in the public beta.

Cheers

 

[jlaylor]

Oh my God, I've been struggling with this for 2 months! I even opened an Apple ticket and they struggled with it for 2 days before suggesting user error (my media was on an external drive).

I had my firewall OFF the entire time. I turned it on, and suddenly my music and movies were available. It appears that catalina has some firewall rules in place even when the firewall is off, so putting the firewall on allows you to specifically allow full and unfiltered access to the movie and music apps.

I consider this a bug and plan to report it as such.

Apple! WTF? hardware and software errors abound. get your act together and stop releasing poorly vetted systems (butterfly keyboards, catalina, etc)

 

[albusseverus]

That’s truly a tale of woe. Thanks for posting here. Hope it helps someone.

Sloppy is the standard for macOS these days.

macOS seems to only get developed…

…so it won’t break iOS compatibility (iMessage should be better on Mac, but it’s actually getting worse by the day, and that’s just one example of many).

…and to develop For iOS

Mac development seems to be infected by iOS dumbness, too. Apple actually thinks Catalyst apps are good apps and the future of (hopefully only some) apps for Mac.