Turn on Home Sharing and share your music library with all your Apple devices

Home Sharing for macOS is a feature that enables sharing media libraries between devices within the same network, such as streaming music, videos, and photos between different Apple devices.

Home Sharing allows users to easily access their media from different devices, enabling a seamless multimedia experience at home. This way you can access your music library on an Apple TV or iPhone.

Enable Home Sharing in macOS

1. Open  ▸ System Settings
2. Navigate to ‘General’
3. Choose ‘Share’
4. Turn on ‘Media Sharing’
5. Check the ‘Home Sharing’ option
6. Sign in with your Apple ID and click ‘Turn on Home Sharing’

Do you have a Mac with macOS Monterey or older? You can then find this option via  ▸ System Preferences ▸ Sharing ▸ Media Sharing ▸ Home Sharing.

From now on you can use media sharing to stream music and movies on your network, which means that other computers and devices that are suitable for Home Sharing (for example the Apple TV and iPhone) can play your media library from your Mac.

This is especially useful if you don’t use Apple Music and still want to have access to your entire music library. Please note that the Mac on which you have activated sharing must turned on and active and not in dormant mode.

Additional home sharing options

Not only can you share your music library, you also have the option to update play counts. Play counts (the number of times an item has been played) for items in the Media Library are updated as the items are played on other computers on your Home Sharing network or on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

You also have the option to share your photos with the Apple TV. Check the option and click ‘Choose’ to enable your entire photo library or choose specific albums to share.

Finally, you can also share media with guests so that users on the same network, but with a different Apple ID, can also access your music library. You can set an additional password if necessary.

Use Home Sharing on other devices

Once you have activated sharing on a source (for example your Mac) you can consult the media library on your network. Before you can do this, you must enable home sharing on the receiver. To do this, follow the steps below:

Enable Home Sharing iPhone and iPad

1. Open Settings
2. Navigate to ‘Music’
3. Tap ‘Sign in’ at Home Sharing
4. Sign in with the same Apple ID as the source

Then open the Music or TV app, go to the ‘Library’ tab and open ‘Home Sharing or the name of your library’.

View shared media library on Mac or PC

If you have activated Home Sharing on a Mac, you can also view its content on a Mac or PC. Since macOS Catalina, the shared library then appears in the sidebar in the Music & TV app. If you still have iTunes installed, you can consult the library by clicking on ‘Music’ at the top and choosing the desired library.

Activate Home Sharing Apple TV

1. On Apple TV, go to Settings > Accounts > Home Sharing
2. Select ‘Turn on home sharing’
3. Sign in with the same Apple ID as the source
4. Open the ‘Computers’ app to view the media library

Enable Home Sharing through iTunes

If you still use iTunes on your PC or have macOS Mojave or older installed on your Mac, you can enable Home Sharing via iTunes. Open the app ▸ go to the menu bar ▸ Open ‘Archive/File’ ▸ Home Sharing ▸ ‘Turn on Home Sharing’.