I had so much trouble making Back to My Mac work with Mavericks. I followed every direction given on Apple’s site, more than once.
I thought everything was set up correctly because I could connect to the host while on my local network. Once I left the local network and tried to connect from another network (at the local coffee shop for example), I could no longer “see” the host computer.
I had intermittent connectivity at best.
After much research and searching, I followed every setup instruction. I also followed every trouble-shooting instruction I could find. I still had trouble.
I did finally get it to work (although not perfectly reliably…I still have troubles connecting).
A few of things to check are listed here:
1 – In System Preferences (on the host Mac), manually re-enter your iCloud ID and password.
2 – If you have multiple routers (all but the main router, which is connected to your internet service provider), check that the others (not the main one) are in “Bridge Mode.”
3 – If you are using an AirPort (Apple) router, make sure that the router is logged in to iCloud (Open AirPort Utility and look under the Base Station tab for this).
4 – Restart everything (even the router in Bridge Mode that you think doesn’t affect anything — it might).
5 – Reboot the computer that you are using to access the host computer. This is important! I am still having issues with Back to My Mac connecting intermittently. Once I reboot my laptop, it still seems to clear up the issue until next time.
This last one (reboot the laptop) was probably the one that did the trick. For some reason, whatever is interfering with Back to My Mac gets cleared up by the restart.
Although I haven’t tracked the problem down completely, once I got Back to My Mac to work within my local network, and rebooted my laptop, I could access the host computer.
