iTunes 9 home sharing

September 21, 3:13 PMApple Products ExaminerLisa Spangenberg

Previous Next

Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Apple Products Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

iPhoto 9 Home Sharing Log In

My favorite new feature in Apple's iTunes 9 is Home Sharing.

Home Sharing allows you to share the iTunes library from one computer with all the others on the local network. It's a great way for families to keep their iTunes libraries synchronized. Home Sharing is different than the Sharing feature accessed via iTunes Preferences (under the Sharing tab) in that Sharing is essentially locally streaming the content; Home Sharing allows you to actually import or copy the files to your other computers. This works with pretty much anything from the iTunes store, including TV shows, movies, Apps, and songs, but not Audible content.

In order to import purchased content from the iTunes store, you must authorize the computers before they can play the content. You are limited to a total of five authorized computers, including your own.

With Home Sharing turned on, you can:

• Share purchased content from the iTunes store with up to five authorized users on your local network, using Ethernet or WiFi.
• Automatically update multiple computers on the name local network with newly purchased content.
• Copy or import content from the shared iTunes library to other computers on the same local network.
• Keep your computers iTunes libraries synchronized by automatically importing newly purchased content.

To Turn on Home Sharing:

1. Launch iTunes 9
2. From the Advanced menu in iTunes, choose Turn On Home Sharing on the computer whose content you wish to share.
3. Enter the iTunes account name and password.
4. Click Create Home Share. You'll notice a House icon appear in your iTunes Source List on the far right of the iTunes window.
5. Repeat steps 1 to 4 on the other local computers, using the same iTunes account and password as in step 3.

To copy or import items from a shared computer, simply drag the items in question to your iTunes library list. Select the House icon, and you'll notice a pop-up Show menu; you can toggle it to display All items in the shared computer's iTunes Library, or just "Items not in my library." You can set various options like media types to display via the Settings button, and Import files via the Import button.

To automate importing new iTunes purchases, select the computer under the Shared House icon, and select Automatically import new purchases from [Computer Name].