Apple TV/TvOS 13.4: Home Sharing Photos screensaver no longer works

[MikeElmendorf]

I updated my Apple TVs to TvOS to 13.4 yesterday.

On my fourth gen and 4K units the Homesharing Photos Screensaver is no longer working.

This has long been buggy in my experience, but TvOS 13 seemed to stabilize it and make it predictable.

Now, when the screensaver initiates, I just get a white screen (once in a while a black screen).

I've tried pretty much everything:

Restarting Apple TV and Mac.
Turning Home Sharing off and on on both devices.
Signing out of iCloud.
Changing the share folder for photos from the Mac and changing it back.
Resetting the Apple TV and starting from scratch.

It is very strange because the Home Sharing connection seems to be otherwise working. I can see and access movies, music, videos AND photos. If I got into Photos on the Apple TV and tell it to start a slideshow, it works as you'd expect it to for the screensaver. However, the screensaver will not work.Any ideas?

Very frustrating as we love using the TV as a photo frame.

 

[mosesfly]

Mike, I'm having the same issues and had already tried the same solutions prior to reading your post. Very frustrating, since, as you say, all else works. I thought perhaps it was photo limit since I had just over 2,000 photos in the home sharing folder. But, I lowered the number and it didn't seem to matter. Yes, I am a little miffed as well since we also use our TV as our digital frame. I wish there was a way to revert to prior iOS builds.

 

[MikeElmendorf]

So, an update on this:

First, I have an Apple TV 4K at my office that was not updated to TVOS 13.4. It was running the prior release.

I brought it home, hooked it up and the Home Sharing photo screensaver works perfectly. So, the problem is in TVOS 13.4 and not in the new Catalina release.

I have had a number of conversations with Apple higher tier support. They had me run a number of diagnostics on the Apple TV and my Mac and send a bunch of files and videos.

They called back yesterday to report that the engineers are aware of the issue, others are experiencing it too and they are working on a fix.

Stay tuned....

 

[Annie_M]

Thanks for updating us! Hopefully Apple will have a good solution for you soon!

 

[RickFleck]

Hope Apple comes up with a fix soon. I found that if I select a folder from “My Photos” it works, for me at least. But I much prefer using Home Sharing to select folders of photos. Even using “Apple Photos” produces only a black screen for me.

 

[ModCram]

Same here. I have my 4th gen set to update automatically. First use after the update, our screensaver wasn't working. Just a black screen with a rolling light, guess that is when the photo's would be flipping if working properly. The rolling light, which is very faded, reminds me of the "skylights" used back in the day to advertise...for ex. an auto dealership, furniture store, etc. In the meantime I'm using Music Library as my screensaver. Hope they fix it soon.