Sneak Peek: How iOS 4.3’s iTunes Home Sharing Feature Works

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Have you ever wanted to watch a movie from iTunes on your iPhone without actually syncing anything?

With iOS 4.3 and iTunes 10.2, your dreams will come true. iTunes Home Sharing is a new feature of iOS 4.3, which will be released to the public on March 11. It was demonstrated earlier this week at the iPad 2 launch event.

Home Sharing will allow you to easily share your music, videos, and photos to any iOS 4.3 device over your local WiFi network. This eliminates the need for third-party applications or transcoding software.

Here’s how it works:

This is a feature that I’ve always wanted, and it’s finally nice to see Apple give it to everyone.

The process is very simple, and it starts out in iTunes 10.2.

  1. In the “Advanced” menu in iTunes, click on Turn on Home Sharing.
  2. Enter your Apple ID and password, then click on Create Home Share.
  3. Finally, click on Done.

The rest of the process will take place on whatever iOS device’s you’d like to use Home Sharing with.

  1. Open up the stock Settings app.
  2. Find the settings for iPod.
  3. You’ll see a few text fields for Home Sharing. Enter your Apple ID and password here.
  4. Open up the iPod app, photos app, or the video app.
  5. It may take up to 30 seconds for your shared libraries to show up in these applications.

That’s it! Within 30 seconds, you’re able to share all of your iTunes content (music/photos/videos) to your iOS 4.3 devices (as long as you’re on your local WiFi network).

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iPhone 4

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