Remote Control Your Music
How to use the Apple Remote app on iOS to control the Music app on your Mac (updated, and updated).
Update 2019–12–11: Apple has released Catalina 10.15.2 and iOS 13.3 which, between them, restores the ability for the iOS Remote app to control your Mac based Music library. The instructions below about enabling Home Sharing for Media Sharing still apply.
Update: This works to a point, in that you can actually see your music library in the Remote app, but you can’t actually play anything. This must be a bug. Come on Apple! You’ve really dropped the ball here.
I upgraded my Mac to Catalina (aka macOS 10.15) and amongst the many little changes, iTunes was finally pulled apart and turned into Music and other apps. And, for the most part, there was much rejoicing.
However, I’m one of many people who used to use the Remote app on iOS to drive the playback of music on my iMac’s iTunes. I do this because I know all my music is downloaded on the iMac, and iTunes has no issues playing music via my HomePod, my AppleTV, and my ancient stereo that’s plugged into an old Airport Express, all at the same time. Playing music off the iPhone will playback fine on the HomePod and AppleTV, but won’t allow me to playback to the Airport Express as well because it doesn’t support AirPlay 2.
So after the upgrade, I was upset to find that the Remote app did not support the new Music app on macOS, and insisted on wanting to talk to iTunes. Why Apple oh why have you forsaken me?
I ddg’d about a bit and found that I was certainly not the only person to be frustrated by this. But I’m persistent and refused to believe that Apple would abandon me like that. There must be a way; I must be somehow holding it wrong.
The answer is to enable home sharing.
So, here’s how to fix it.
Step 1: Go to your system preferences and look for Sharing. Click that.
Step 2: Choose Media Sharing and turn on Home Sharing. You’ll need to enter your Apple ID and password.
Step 3: Run the Remote app on your iPhone and voila, there are your music libraries.
It’s crazy I had to work this out myself.
The transition to iOS 13 and macOS 10.15 has been rocky, to say the least, but overall it’s an improvement. But really Apple, would it have hurt to document this change somewhere, rather than force me to work this out myself?
Enjoy.
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