Apple file sharing is by far the easiest way to share files if you have 2 computers on the same network. For example we have a MacBook in our family room and I have a Mac Mini in my study. Sometimes I find myself wanting to access files from the other computer. With Apple file sharing you can easily access your second computer from your first one and copy across the files you need without having to go into the other room. Here’s how to set up Apple file sharing.

 1. Setup file sharing on your computer that you want to share from.

You only need to do this once.

Go into “system preferences” and click on the “sharing” icon.

You will see a sharing menu like the one below. Click on “File Sharing” to share your files from your computer. Then you have to choose which files to share. Click on the plus button ( you can see it circled in red below) and then select the folder on your hard drive that you would like to share. As you can see I have shared my entire user folder which contains all my files so that I can access them all from another computer.

Under ‘Users’ make sure that ‘Read and Write’ is selected for your user. You can see here that for Wayne Connor (me) I am able to ‘Read & Write’ which means I can access files from my computer and also put files onto the computer.

2. Access your files from another computer.

Now whenever you want to access the files on your other computer, you just need to go to the ‘Go’ menu and select “Connect to Server…”

Now you need to Click ‘Browse’ and you will be given a list of all the computers that you are able to access. Probably there will only be one – the one you shared in step one above. Select it and then click on ‘Connect As’

It will ask you for a name and password. You need to put in the username that you usually use to log into the computer that you are connecting to. (This is the same as the ‘User’ you gave ‘Read & Write’ access to up in Step 1. So I would need to login as “Wayne Connor.” The Password that you need to enter is the password that you normally use to log into that second computer.

That’s it! Your second computer will now appear on your desktop, just below your hard drive. You can copy files to it or from it just as if it’s right there!

Now here is an extra hint. The computer that you want to connect to needs to be turned on, and awake. But you can set it up to automatically wake up when you want to connect to it.

To do that going to system settings, Energy Saver and select the little box that says “Wake for network access.”

This will cause your second computer to automatically wake up when you try to connect to it!