File Sharing Issues in Ventura 13.2

Hi there apark2005

If we understand correctly, you have an external drive connected to your iMac and you've been unable to access those contents with File Sharing from two other Mac computers. Is that right?

To clarify, have you tried testing by accessing a file stored directly on the iMac instead of the external hard drive? Knowing if that works for you will help in narrowing things down.

It might also help to test this in a newly created administrator account on the iMac. This will tell you if the issue is system-wide or user account-specific. Check out this link for the steps to create the administrator account: Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac - Apple Support

Once you set up the new user, log out of your own account and sign into the new one and test it out, and let us know the results.

Take care.

The version 13.2 has broken the sharing.

We got the same issue in our office and hope for a fix. Tried it on several devices and it works everywhere, except version 13.2

You can connect with a computer on 13.2 but not to a computer with 13.2. Some guess that the problem are custom icons…

For example: Ventura 13.2 File Sharing broken - Apple Community

I have the exact same issue. I spoke with apple senior advisors.

They had me do all of the usual crap, Reset the NVRAM, open in safe mode, activate and deactivate file sharing.

Nothing worked.

Their desperation attempt was to have me reinstall the latest OS so I have a "clean copy".

I have three systems, two Mac Pros and an iMac Pro.

I have reinstalled on my Mac Pro and that didn't work. Now I am going reinstall on my other two Macs and see if that fixes the communication issue.

I have a feeling it will not.

Oddly, I updated the other two Macs (Mac Pro and iMac Pro) on Tuesday on 2/28 and my Mac Pro was still on the last version of Ventura and communication was fine.

On 3/1 my Mac Pro updated overnight and once all three were on the same platform that is when the file sharing failed.

I can see the other computers but I can't connect. Sometimes the other computers can see mine and connect but cannot access any of the drives though it can see the files.

This update was not tested and screwed up any of my business productivity and Apple doesn't have an answer for it.

I have the same issue, and can describe it more precisely after 2 hours on the phone with Apple support.

We have a variety of Macs on our network. Most are running Monterey, but one Mac Studio Ultra shipped with Ventura and is currently running 13.2.1. Most of our computers have external SSD drives attached, and we regularly transfer files among these across the network. The Ultra can view and access documents on any of our computers, but none of the other Macs can view documents at the root level of the SSDs attached to the Ultra.

To be more specific, other Macs on our network can successfully log in to the Ultra and see all of the external drives attached to it. They can access the user folder on the Ultra and any files on the internal SSD, and they can access the contents of any shared folders on the external SSDs attached to the Ultra. What they cannot do is view or access documents at the root level of those drives.

It is possible, as a workaround, to share individual folders at the root level of the Ultra's external drives. This enables other Macs on the network to view and access their contents. To access an entire folder, it must reside inside a shared folder.

As I pointed out to the senior Apple advisor I spoke with, this breaks a longstanding functionality. And it adds additional, time-consuming steps to our workflow: if a user in room A needs to access certain files in room B, he must now ask the user in room A to move those files into a shared folder--which forces both users to interrupt their work. The alternative is to keep all of the files on the Ultra's external drives in a shared folder, but this creates an additional hierarchy to be navigated, and has consequences for how applications locate files, and how we back them up. So this is a bug that needs to be fixed ASAP.

And it is clearly a bug, because if a user attempts to access any of the Ultra's external drives directly--as we have always been able to do--he is greeted with an endless spinning gear that blocks any further SMB activity on the Ultra until the client machine is restarted.

We of course have tried all the usual troubleshooting, both independently and with the assistance of Apple support. Apple found no problems with our systems or settings and conceded that this is an issue with the current version of Ventura. The senior advisor I spoke with was unwilling to call it a "bug," since it is possible to share files on the Ultra's external drives using the workaround described above. Hopefully Apple engineers will see this bug for what it is, and fix it.

I have the same issues between all Ventura devices. This is devastating to my business. The UPDATE today did NOT address the problem. Restarting the devices after turning off sharing does NOT WORK. This is unacceptable. Jobs is rolling over in his grave.

FWIW.....Ventura 13.3 released to the public today.

Verntura 13.3 has solved the file sharing issues I had between my M1 MacBook Pro and my M1 Mac mini.

Both Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner backups are working to the server.