iTunes Tutorial – How to Share your Library on a Home Network

Music Library

Sharing your on your home network is a great way to allow other people to watch the movies you’ve purchased or the songs you’ve downloaded. iTunes is notoriously difficult with sharing, syncing new devices and transferring music but you can actually share things over a home network. Any other machine in your home that also has iTunes will be able to view or listen to this content – though they cannot download it. Sharing your library can completely eliminate the need to burn someone a CD or DVD every time you want them to experience something new. Sharing your entire library across your home network can be accomplished by tweaking a few key settings within the main iTunes software.

Step 1 Open Apple’s iTunes software using any one of the number of different shortcut icons on your computer. These icons include the one on your desktop and the one in your “Start” menu’s iTunes folder.

Step 2 Open the iTunes “Preferences” window by selecting the “Edit” button from the top of the screen, followed by the “Preferences” button. You can also open the “Preferences” window by using the “ALT” and “+” shortcut keyboard command.

Step 3 Click the button at the top of the “Preferences” window labeled “Sharing.” In addition to having the word “Sharing,” this button has a series of blue boxes with white musical notes inside.

Step 4 Check the option reading “Share my library on my local network.” iTunes will immediately share all content in your iTunes library with all other computers in your home.

Step 5 Check the boxes next to the types of content you want to share (if applicable). If you only want to share music and movies, for example, click the option reading “Share selected playlists.” Check the boxes next to only “music” and “movies” to share those types of content on your network. You can also require a password for the sharing process if you so choose. Check the box labeled “Require password” and type your desired password into the box on-screen. Click “OK” to save your iTunes sharing changes.

This is a good way to protect your media if there are younger members of your household and you have songs and films not appropriate for all audiences. Sharing your music and media is a great thing though and you can also use these techniques to sync with other iTunes enable devices like smart TV’s, tablets and other similar gadgets.

Sam Jones, the author, has been re-examining his broadband choices and looking for something that will give him a better home network.