How to Use Home Sharing in iTunes 9?

by on September 22, 2009 in iPhone Tips, iTunes

iTunes 9 has addressed a much needed functionality in iTunes – the ability to share your iTunes purchases between your multiple computers.

Let’s say you purchase some of your music via iTunes in your laptop. And your wife purchases movies via iTunes in your desktop. Now, your purchases are getting split up and you have to jump through hoops to get both your iTunes to have the same media you purchased!

Not anymore. Home Sharing lets you easily share and import media you have in iTunes between 5 of your home computers. Only requirement is that they have to be in the same local WiFi network.

How to Use Home Sharing?

  1. Look for ‘Home Sharing’ in iTunes 9. If you don’t see it, enable it by going to Advanced – Enable Home Sharing
  2. Enable it by entering your iTunes user name & password
  3. Click on ‘Create Home Share’ in the main window
  4. Repeat the same steps in other computers in your home where you want to enable Home Sharing
  5. Now, you will see your other computer’s iTunes library – Music, Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, Applications, Playlists, etc.
  6. You can either choose to ‘Stream Music to your Computer’ or ‘Manually Transfer iTunes Content’
  7. After selecting the content you want to transfer, choose the ‘Import’ button in the bottom right corner.
  8. You will see a Settings button in the right bottom corner.
  9. Here you can choose to ‘Automatically Transfer New Purchases’ to your Libraryitunes9homesharing thumb How to Use Home Sharing in iTunes 9?
  10. That’s it!

Just remember a couple of things. Any new purchases you make after setting up Step 9 will automatically be transferred between your computers as long as they are in the same local network.

But, any old purchase you have made should be manually transferred between your computers as explained in Step 6.

Enjoy this new found freedom of accessing all your iTunes content from any computer in your household.


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Shriya is the editor and webmaster here besides writing on iPhone stuff. She also posts lovely recipes at her Indian food blog, SpicyTasty.com! Twitter: @shriya00 - She's also a WordPress whiz: KarShan Media
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    • Evernight

      Hello I am trying to set this up and cant make it work can you help me.

    • Kelsie

      K so I just got iTunes 9, and I enabled my homesharing thing, but it won’t show up on the left hand column with everything else, so I can’t see the other libraries enable in my house…. can you help me?! Thanks!

    • http://www.topiphoneresource.info karthik

      Kelsie, I am seeing the same. I can see my Windows XP share in Windows 7 but not the other way around. I’ll update here if I find out why.

    • tiffany

      i went to edit>preferences>Sharing> and then clicked on “share my library on my local network” you have to do this on all the pc’s and then the Home Sharing tab will show on the left side along with the other libraries that are available. I’m still trying to figure out how to get another library’s songs into my library though, any help there would be appreciated.

    • http://www.topiphoneresource.info karthik

      Tiffany, that’s a great tip. i have to check my setting when I go home this evening.

      Once you see another computer in Home Sharing, (I’m going by my memory here before my Windows 7 upgrade) you should see Folders like Music, Videos, Apps, etc. You should be able to right click and transfer or select it and look for a Import button at the right bottom corner in iTunes.

      If anyone else has ideas, please chime in.

    • Jo

      Hello, I am following the directions – signing on to both computers with my account and when I do “home-sharing” disappears on both computers. Sharing is activated under preferences,etc. As far as I can see I’ve done everything right so am not sure what is the problem. Anyone else have this?

    • Chris

      Hello, have been trying for ages to transfer new songs between computers. I can see shared libraries but new songs are not transferred only staying on the person’s library who bought the song. Is it meant to be this hard????

    • Peter

      Ok I am having fun with this home sharing lark. I have recently bought a custom built apple MacBook pro with the intension of transferring my iTunes library from my 8 yr old desktop pc to it. Also so that I can sync it with my iPhone / Laptop only. I would then delete the old library from my pc. I thought this would be easier than this but oh no it’s beyond my poor little brain to work out. From what I can gather I need to connect the two as a LAN first. I had hoped that I could do this over the Internet but that didn’t work. Anyway any tips on this would be much appreciated.

    • Chris

      I am having the same problem as Chris. I cannot transfer the songs that I have bought off itunes onto another computer. I have tried for ages and it is driving me crazy!

    • Natalie

      hi, i wasnt able to my sharing files either even though i did all the troubleshooting on the apple website but i did what tiffany said and turned it on on my pc and then when i went to my laptop it said that bonjour was installed incorrectly and that i had to redownload itunes.. so i did that and it came up right after i re installed itunes.. so try that out

    • Paige

      I could transfer most of my song but everything i had gotten off the itunes store will not it kept telling me “this computer is not authorized” HELP!

    • Nicola

      I seem to be doing everything right, and have redone it to check. My laptop library appears on my sister’s and father’s computers, but it disapears on mine and I can’t access either library.

    • Matt

      I have transferred all the music I need but i cant transfer apps i have authorized the 2 computers but it says that the computer recieving the apps is not authorized. i did get these apps from another computer if that would affect it at all