File Sharing isn’t working

Yesterday file sharing started having issues for no reasons both on my MacBook Pro M1 and my iMac 5K 2017 (both running macOS Ventura 13.2)

More specifically, the Macs are seeing each other in the Finder, but when I’m trying to view each other’s files, most of the time Finder tries to load for a while and then it displays a message that says that there is a problem connecting.

As I said some times it is working (Finder loads folders and files) but only with internal storage. For some reason, while it sees external storage connected, it was unable to load the contents of them even for a single time after the problem started. That’s the case for both Macs.

Also, I’m trying to view the files of both Macs from my iPhone 13 Pro (running iOS 16.3) which has the same problem with both Macs. The only difference is that the iPhone some times can view the contents from the external drives of the Macs.

Of course I tried disconnecting all external drives from both Macs, restarting, reinstalling the macOS on both of them, disconnecting and reconnecting to iCloud, disabling and enabling File Sharing from the system settings, first aid on the SSDs, safe mode. I even tried connecting both Macs to my iPhone using personal hot spot to use it as a router (to see if my home’s router is causing the issue which is a very good WiFi 5 TP-Link one that I have for years) but again same problems.

I have to mention that until yesterday, file sharing was working flawlessly for years. I didn’t changed anything on both macs nor the equipment (router, etc). Also I installed the macOS 13.2 update almost one week earlier from today, and all these days file sharing was working. So it isn’t related to macOS 13.2 either I think.

Any ideas? I don’t want to do a restore on both machines at this time. I’m pretty sure this can be fixed easily, but I have to find out what’s causing it!

It pretty much started in one morning from nowhere!