How to share music and photos between users

selfbuilder1

Hi i have recently added another user onto my mac and i want them to be able to access the music i have on itunes and the photos on iphoto. I have tried changing the access to these folders allowing the other user access but when the other user logs into their account they still cannot access my music and photos.

Thanks for any help.

chrislad

For iTunes, go to Preferences, Sharing, Share my Library. It'll show up under shared libraries on the other Mac in iTunes.

No idea about photos but I assume it's something similar.

selfbuilder1

Thanks for the quick reply. I have tried out your suggestion and it works perfect if I am logged in and have itunes and iphoto running. However if i don't have this done the other person is unable to access the music and photos.

chrislad

It's not possible to have it any other way. The only suggestion would be something like Apples Time Capsule which is a 500gig or 1Tb drive with a built in WiFi router.

selfbuilder1

Thanks Chrislad for the help.

Sad Professor

You *can* do this but you'll have to move both libraries out of your user directory. /Users/Shared would be the ideal place. You would then have to direct iTunes and iPhoto to the new location of their libraries. I've never actually done this but Apple have a guide for doing it with iTunes and iPhoto.

selfbuilder1

Thanks a million will give it a go.

chrislad

Sad Professor wrote: »

You *can* do this but you'll have to move both libraries out of your user directory. /Users/Shared would be the ideal place. You would then have to direct iTunes and iPhoto to the new location of their libraries. I've never actually done this but Apple have a guide for doing it with iTunes and iPhoto.

Still need to have a Mac logged on though.

kevteljeur

Sad Professor wrote: »

You *can* do this but you'll have to move both libraries out of your user directory. /Users/Shared would be the ideal place. You would then have to direct iTunes and iPhoto to the new location of their libraries. I've never actually done this but Apple have a guide for doing it with iTunes and iPhoto.

I've done something very like this, since I use two accounts on one notebook. There are a couple of potential 'gotchas', however. The first is that you're only likely to be able to access the library one user at a time. That shouldn't really be a problem, but if one user has the library open and then the other user logs in, the library will be locked from the other user. The second problem is that occasionally the permissions are set entirely to one user, often after updates. Then the other user can't access the library until the permissions have been fied.

Idleater

can you not store the physical music files and picture files in a shared location and then have each user maintain their own itunes library in their own user space?

I have mine set up this way (with the music on an external drive) and it seems to work nicely and it means that each user can maintain their own playlists.

I *think* this works even when one user is logged in, and then another user does the fast user switching but I am not 100% sure.

I haven't had any problems with the shared photo library either, but I did have to modify the permissions on the folders for it to work properly (initially both could see the photo library but only the creator could edit it).

L.

ZENER

This is what Apple say about it for iTunes.

As for iPhoto this is their answer.

ZEN

Edit: Sorry Prof, didn't see your links the first time I read through the thread.

chrislad

I completely misread this thread. I was going on the basis that the second user was on a second Mac. My bad.

Talisman

The problem you have is that the iTunes and iPhoto libraries aren't designed to allow concurrent access for multiple users.

iLounge article about how iTunes stores the library.

You could partition the Macintosh HD and use the newly created partition as the place to store the shared library. That should get you around the headache of the file and folder permissions in the Users/Shared area.