NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.

Forum Discussion

Keith_Beef's avatar
Keith_Beef
Aspirant
Aug 06, 2014

Firefly and iPod Touch / iPad ?

I've set up iTunes on a Mac Book to see the Shared iTunes Library on the NAS, but I can't find a similar mechanism on the iPod Touch or the iPad…

Much googling around just gets me explanations of Home Sharing or some other way of streaming FROM the iOs device to another player.

1 Reply

Replies have been turned off for this discussion
  • StephenB's avatar
    StephenB
    Guru - Experienced User
    Yes. The itunes server on the NAS doesn't have home sharing. That's because only Apple can implement it, and they haven't released a linux version of itunes. So no linux NAS has home sharing.

    Apple also implemented the iPad and iPod Touch so they can only access itunes servers using home sharing.

    This means you can't access the media from the built in players in the iPad or iPod touch using the iTunes server in the NAS. :shock:

    What can you do? Basically get apps that can access and play your content directly, and forget about iTunes.

    AVplayerHD is one that can access media from the NAS using ftp. It's good for videos, but the UI isn't great for music There are several DLNA players out there - some are much better for music. GoodReader is a decent general-purpose app which can download files, and then you can play them (sending them to the player you want to use, or playing them directly using the built-in player interface). The best apps for this (in my opinion) aren't free, though there are some free versions of the paid apps which are good enough to test them.

    Netgear does have a free DLNA app for iOS which you can try (why not after all). But I wasn't very satisfied with the user interface.

    Another option is to run iTunes on the mac book, but have the media library on the NAS. Then you can access the media through the built-in players (since the Mac Book does support home sharing). That is free, but only works when the mac book is running, and iTunes is launched.