How to Turn On or Off DLNA Media Streaming on Windows

|

|

The article provides a guide on how to enable or disable DLNA media streaming in Windows 11, allowing users to send or receive media on connected devices such as phones, TVs, or game consoles. The steps involve navigating through Control Panel or utilizing Local Group Policy Editor. The tutorial also warns users to only activate…

This article describes steps to enable or disable DLNA Media Sharing or streaming on Windows 11.

DLNA media streaming in Windows allows you to browse, search, and play the media on your Windows computer using a UPnP or DLNA-enabled device such as a phone, TV, or game console.

When media streaming is enabled on your Windows computer, you will receive media from other computers and DLNA-supported devices.

Devices to which you want to share or receive content must be connected to the same network to see Windows-shared DLNA resources.

Below is how to enable or disable DLNA media streaming on Windows 11.

How to enable or disable DLNA media streaming on Windows 11

As described above, DLNA media streaming in Windows allows you to browse, search, and play the media on your Windows computer using a UPnP or DLNA-enabled device such as a phone, TV, or game console.

Below is how to enable or disable it in Windows 11.

First, open the Control Panel app.

When the Control Panel app opens, navigate to the path described below.

Control Panel -> Network and Internet -> Network and Sharing Center -> Media streaming options

In the Media streaming option settings pane in the Control Panel app, click the “Turn on media streaming” button, as highlighted below, to enable DLNA media streaming.

Your network profile and firewall settings will be modified when Media streaming is turned on. So, it would be best to only use media streaming on a trusted network such as your home and work.

The default media streaming settings will stream by default all content ratings from your Music, Pictures, Recorded TV, and Videos folders.

You can change that from the settings window.

If you wish to disable Media streaming in Windows 11, navigate to the path above and click the “Block All” button, as highlighted below.

How to enable or disable media streaming using Windows local group policy editor

You can use Windows’s Local Group Policy Editor to enable and disable features and settings. The same steps above can be done using Windows Local Group Policy Editor.

Below is how to do that.

First, open Local Group Policy Editor by clicking the Start Menu and searching for Edit group policy, as highlighted below.

Under Best match, select Edit group policy to launch Local Group Policy Editor.

In the left pane of Local Group Policy Editor, expand the tree: 

Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Media Player

Then, locate and double-click the setting Prevent Media Sharing in the Windows Media Player details pane on the right.

On the Prevent Media Sharing window, set the option to Not ConfigureEnabled, or Disabled.

  • Not Configured (default)
  • Enabled 
  • Disabled

Select OK to apply your changes.

Close Local Group Policy Editor.

That should do it!

Conclusion:

This post showed you how to enable or disable DLNA media streaming or share in Windows 11. Please use the comment form below if you find any errors above or have something to add.

Like this:



Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.