Nowadays, it’s not uncommon for you to have two or even more computers at home. For me, I have an iMac which is my primary machine and a laptop to carry on-the-go. I use iTunes on both machines to sync with iPhone and sometimes purchase iPhone apps on these two computers.
You may also have a similar setup at your home. Let me ask you. How do you share media (e.g. song) and iPhone apps between computers? Let’s say you have purchased an iPhone app via iTunes on your desktop. How do you transfer it to your laptop?
Since the release of iTunes 9 in September 2009, Apple introduced a new feature in iTunes called Home Sharing. It allows multiple computers (up to five) in the same local network to copy and share music, movies, apps and other media between computers.
It’s not a hidden feature. But even Apple has updated the iTunes to version 10, not every user have tried it. Here I’ll walk you through this fantastic feature and show you how you can transfer apps between computers easily.
In the walkthrough guide, I’ll show you how to transfer the apps from desktop to your laptop so you keep the app library in both desktop and laptop in-sync.
What Do You Need to Use Home Sharing?
Before we start, make sure you have the following three things:
1. Both computers are installed with iTunes 9 or later.
2. You already have an Apple ID associated with an iTunes or App Store Account. (I think you should but just a kind reminder).
3. Both computers are connected to the same local network either via Ethernet or WiFi.
Enabling Home Sharing on Your Desktop
1. First, open iTunes on your desktop.
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 Laptop
1. On your laptop, launch iTunes.
2. Go over the above 5 steps again to enable Home Sharing on your laptop. Make sure you use the same iTunes account to login Home Sharing.
3. For the first-time setup, you’ll be prompted with message “Home Sharing could not be activated because this computer is authorized for the account. Would you like to authorize now?“. Simply click “Yes” to confirm. iTunes will then show you a message telling you that the authorization is successful.
Transfer Apps from One Computer to Another
If you successfully complete the above procedures, you should now be able to access the desktop’s iTunes library from your laptop computer.
1. Just click the Home Share to connect to under Shared on the left-hand side of iTunes.
2. Select the “Apps” folder and pick the app you want to transfer. Say, let’s transfer the Cut the Rope app. Just click on it and drag it to your own library to transfer the app.
Obviously you’re not limited to transfer apps from other computers. You’re allowed to transfer other media such as music, movie, TV shows, etc.
Automatically Transfer Apps Between Computers
The above procedures let you transfer app (or other iTunes content) manually. iTunes actually offers an option for you to transfer these content in an automatic way. To enable automatic transfer,
1. Just select “Home Sharing” library and select “Settings”.
2. Select the content for automatic transfer.
In case you want to turn off “Home Sharing” after the app transfer, just click “Advanced” and select “Turn Off Home Sharing”.
As always, feel free to leave me comment if you have any question. I’ll try my best to help.
I’ve run into a problem Home Sharing apps. I have two PC’s running Windows XP. I can share music files just fine, but only SOME apps. The transfer hangs up partway through — seemingly always at the same place for each app that fails. I’ve got the latest version of iTunes. I’ve seen similar issues in forums, but haven’t seen a solution. Seems like this may be an issue with Windows XP. I’ve had a similar problem transferring some Quicken files between computers over the network, ie, always hanging up at the same place. Sorta like there may be something in the file CONTENT that XP finds “distasteful”. The solution for me getting those Quicken files from one computer to the other was to copy them over on a USB memory stick; can I do the same thing with iTunes apps?
I have same problem… Music library visible… but not the apps! when I tap on shared libraries… no list of choices show… it just downloads the music library. Thanks.
i have followed all the steps that you have given and home shring has been set up.
But i am still stuck as, my apps have not trabsferred from my desktop to my laptop.
Also now that i have set up my home sharing does this mean that i can sync my ipod with my laptop and not loose all the current infromation off my ipod.
Please let me knwo
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Thanks for the wonderful instructions but I am also having the same problem finding my aps on my Mac. I turned on home sharing and it transferred my music but I can’t get my aps to come over. Any help would be great! Thanks again!