OS X El Capitan: Use another computer’s DVD or CD drive

Use another computer’s DVD or CD drive

If your Mac doesn’t have an optical drive, you can share another computer’s drive using DVD and CD Sharing, as long as both computers are on the same network. The computer that has the drive you want to share must be one of the following:

  1. Set up DVD or CD sharing on the computer with the optical drive.

    • On a Mac with Mac OS X v10.4.10 or later: Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Sharing, then select the “DVD or CD Sharing” checkbox. Select “Ask me before allowing others to use my DVD drive” if you want to be notified when a computer tries to access the drive.

    • On a computer with Windows: Open the DVD or CD Sharing Options control panel, then select “Enable Remote DVD or CD.” Select “Ask me before allowing others to use my DVD drive” if you want to be notified when a computer tries to access the drive.

  2. Insert the disc into the drive.

  3. On the Mac that doesn’t have an optical drive, select Remote Disc (below Devices in a Finder window sidebar). If you see the “Ask to use” button, click it.

If a disc is copy-protected (such as some DVD movies and games), you can’t share it.

For more information about using another computer’s optical drive, including downloading and installing the DVD or CD Sharing Update for Windows, see the Apple Support article Use the CD or DVD drive from another computer with your Mac.

Last Modified: Apr 13, 2016
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