Why is Home Sharing not working with iPhone?

I have a Mac Mini with iTunes 10.2.1 installed, I enabled home sharing in the preferences and the Advanced menu. I also have an iPhone 4 on iOS 4.3, which I enabled home sharing on using the same username and password that my desktop uses.

Both computers are connected to the same home network. When I open up the iPhone's iPod app, however, I don't see any of the songs that are only on the Mac. I only see those that have been synced with the iPhone (i.e. I use this Mac to sync my iPhone).

Solution 1:

Launch the iPod App on your iPhone. At the bottom of the screen, you should see a More button with 3 blue dots.

As you can see here, there is a Shared list item at the bottom of the page. Click that, which should bring you to a screen like:

Click the name of the computer that you see in your list and then all of the videos, movies, tv shows, etc, will appear in your lists for those items.

In other words, the iPod App won't keep the home-shared content separate. You will see the Home Sharing content as if it was integrated with the device.

Solution 2:

It should be in Music under More -> Shared

Selecting your iTunes library then puts it in a home sharing mode and to return to the iPhone's music go to More -> Shared again

How to use Home Sharing on your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad

Solution 3:

I was having this same issue on my iphone. I just noticed that my phone was connected via my guest wifi network. Switched to my home network and the shared icon came back.

Solution 4:

I've had this same situation happen to me. I killed the iTunes app on my iPhone's multitasker, I've restarted my PC, I've disabled and re-entered my credentials repeatedly on the iTunes-PC side as well as the phone side, all to no avail. Home Sharing was there on my phone once before and suddenly it vanished. After hours of turning off firewalls, double checking exceptions in my Windows Firewall and PeerBlock settings, I noticed something. I've noticed my AppleID as "[email protected]" and just "xxxxxx". Instead of trying the @gmail one I tried using just the ID on my PC and my iPhone, and it magically worked.