Setting up a HomeGroup with Windows 8

While recently blogging about using my Surface to share media from my desktop to my Xbox it occurred to me. Some people may not know how to setup a HomeGroup, and it would be very useful to have step by step instructions to ease the adoption of sharing Music and Videos across all of you’re Windows 8 computers in your home.

This is very simple, just follow the steps below.

  1. Open your Charms Menu (bottom right corner using mouse | Swipe in from right side of screen using touch)
  2. Click Settings
  3. Click Change PC Settings
  4. On the left side of this screen scroll to bottom and click HomeGroup
  5. Under Libraries and devices select what you would like to share
  6. Under Membership if you do not already have a HomeGroup create one, if you have one go to the machine that host it and get the Password to join it and enter it there.

Once you have completed that you can access you’re shared content on any computer that is a member by simply opening the File Explorer and under Home Group you will see the users sharing content. You can also add additional files by modifying you’re libraries to include folders in other locations than the default.