INSTRUCTION: How To Use iTunes Home Sharing On iOS 4.3

Other than Personal Hotspot, the iTunes Home Sharing is another prominent feature in iOS 4.3. You may already be familiar with Home Sharing. The feature was first introduced in iTunes 9. But at that time, you can only share the iTunes library between computers over WiFi network. With iOS 4.3, Apple extends the support of Home Sharing feature to iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

So what can you do with iTunes Home Sharing for your iPhone? Let’s say you have just downloaded a new movie on iTunes. To watch that movie on iPhone, normally you need to connect the device with computer and transfer the movie by syncing with iTunes. That’s quite troublesome. Now with iTunes Home Sharing, you can stream that movie from iTunes to your iPhone without transferring. Of course you’re not limited to stream videos. You can also access other content such as music, podcast, playlist in your iTunes library.

Okay let’s dive into the procedures about how you can use iTunes Home Sharing on iPhone.

Setting Up Home Sharing on Your Computer

Before you can use Home Sharing on iPhone, first you have to enable Home Sharing in iTunes on your desktop or laptop computer. Make sure you have upgraded iTunes to 10.2 before proceeding.

Note: If you have already enabled Home Sharing on your iTunes, just skip these steps.

1. Launch iTunes on your computer

2. Click “Advance” and select “Turn On Home Sharing”.

3. Select the Home Sharing icon on the left-hand side of iTunes

4. You’ll be prompted to provide your iTunes account. Simply enter your iTunes or App Store account name and password.

5. Click “Create Home Share” to enable home sharing and then click “Done” to complete the registration.

Enable Home Sharing on Your iPhone

6. On iPhone, tap Settings -> iPod.

7. Fill in your Apple ID and password. Make sure you use the same Apple ID as that in step 4.

8. Go back to home screen and tap the iPod app.

9. Tap “More” in the tab bar and select “Shared”. Your iPhone should let you select your iTunes library. Simply tap on the shared library to access the iTunes content on computer.

That’s it. As you tap the “Songs” and “Videos” in iPod app, it’s actually showing your iTunes content on computer.