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Feature Request: Family Sharing w/ individual payments, shared iCloud storage upgrades, more

elcapitan-ios9-setup-family-sharing

I’ve never been a Family Sharing user, Apple’s feature that allows families to share iCloud account access for things like photos and music on both iOS and Mac. But I recently decided to upgrade my Apple Music account to a family plan to take advantage of the discount as I encourage family members and friends to try out the service; that required me to activate the Family Sharing feature that Apple uses to manage family plans for Apple Music.

While you can choose to ignore most of the features of Family Sharing — photos, calendars, and reminders can be accessed through shared folders in their respective apps — once it’s activated, there aren’t any granular settings for each member to disable sharing on a per-feature/app basis. But the even bigger issue is that all purchases from any Apple ID in the family go to a single credit card of the admin (or parent) of the group. In other words, I’m now paying for every app, song, book, or anything else that my family group members purchase from Apple on top of the subscription costs for Apple Music.

The rest of Family Sharing features — like shared photos, calendars, and reminders — are all or nothing. If you’re an admin or individual in a Family Sharing setup, you can’t opt out of any one feature or choose to delete, for instance, the shared calendar or reminders list from within those apps. 

Those things are a little easier to ignore than the payments situation, but my overall experience with my Apple Music plan highlighted how Family Sharing could desperately use some granular controls on an individual basis.

modern-family-sharing

It’s probably not as big of a deal if you’re a traditional family setup where parents want to moderate their kids’ accounts and therefore would likely want to be the one paying for and approving purchases made. But it’s a disaster in a non-traditional setup, like me and my adult siblings wanting to share an Apple Music account and nothing else — I don’t want to pay for my adult’s brother and sister’s app and iTunes purchases, or have to deal with having to send them the receipts and have them transfer me money for each purchase they make. Apple already has an option to share your iTunes, App Store, and iBooks content with your family, but it doesn’t relate to billing at all.

elcapitan-system-preferences-icloud-setupfamilysharingSo it’d be nice to have the ability to share, at the very least, an Apple Music subscription while still maintaining the ability to individually pay for our own purchases otherwise. Or perhaps just allow us to have an Apple Music subscription without being tied to Family Sharing at all. But the problem doesn’t just end with purchases for iTunes, and Apple could really improve Family Sharing overall with some more granular controls for individuals within a family…

For example, iCloud storage upgrades are another thing tied to a Family Sharing group. While you may or may not want to pay for your entire families storage upgrades, there are also many that would like to share storage through a family setup. Currently, the admin of the family gets billed, while everyone’s iCloud storage remains separate.

And there are other features not related to purchases that I’d like to see with an option to ungroup and have managed individually — the mandatory stuff like calendars and reminders lists that you can’t currently remove. As Family Sharing continues to add in more features like the addition of Apple Music subscriptions, I think it’s necessary for Apple to begin adding more individual support for features and payments.

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Comments

  1. codemonkey85 - 8 years ago

    Dear Apple: at *least* give us shared Notes and the ability to share files from iCloud Drive, please!

  2. Doug Aalseth - 8 years ago

    Absolutely. One of my beefs is with sharing of Safari Bookmarks. My wife and I can either share all of our bookmarks or not at all. Meaning that I see hers and she sees mine on our phones, iPads, and Macs. The alternative is to have all of those devices separate. How about being able to set sets of bookmarks. That way my phone, iPad, and Mac would have one set backed up to iCloud, and her phone, iPad and MAcs would have another.

    • George Pollen - 8 years ago

      Along the same vein, we’d like to share all of our photos automatically but none of our bookmarks. This is a huge, obvious hole in Apple’s services. More discrete control over sharing is needed.

    • iJonni - 8 years ago

      What are you talking about? Family Sharing doesn’t share Safari Bookmarks. You must sharing the same Apple ID is which what your issue is…

      • Doug Aalseth - 8 years ago

        The article also was about Shared iCloud Storage.

  3. I agree. It’s ridiculous. I have the Apple Music family plan and would love to share with my kids, but I’m not going to be the one responsible for all the app purchases. In fact, they don’t want it setup like that, either.

    • 3rdngoal - 8 years ago

      Why do you have the family plan if you aren’t sharing it with your family?

    • barthrh (@barthrh) - 8 years ago

      Never gonna happen. You could always go to the Spotify family plan. Oh… wait… there is none because they can’t create the concept of a singularly financially centralized family.

  4. Agree with this 100%. I stopped using a Family plan for this very reason. I still have visibility to the family reminders and am unable to remove the list from my device, something I would also like to see fixed.

    • Darren Ray Olstad - 7 years ago

      1. In reminders app > Create a new list > Name it whatever suits you
      2. Under settings > reminders > Set your default list to the name of the new list
      3. In reminders app drag the shared list to the bottom and rename it if you like and from now on just ignore it.
      4. Do this on all your family phones and nobody will see anyones’ reminders and the ONLY downside is you will see that annoying shared empty list that you can’t delete
      5. Thats the best I could do.

  5. Josh Taylor - 8 years ago

    Able to upload photos and video from phone to cloud, AND THEN DELETE FROM SAID PHONE. COME ON APPLE!

  6. Brian Stevens - 8 years ago

    I agree that they need additional features including the capability to have a shared “Family Address Book/Contacts.” I will say as a workaround you can have your family members buy and load itunes/apple gift cards as that is individual to each member and it will pull from there before it pulls from the “parent” credit card account. This is how my mother-in-law and sister-in-law are setup to manage their family sharing accounts.

  7. Double post, no way to edit. Nice.

  8. uniszuurmond - 8 years ago

    Please, please, PLEASE! Where I live, unlike in the US, we don’t share finances. Every partner and every child in the family looks after theit own well being. I believe Apple is missing out by not getting the non US market.

  9. Álvaro (@alayal8) - 8 years ago

    I totally agree on the payments. But maybe from Apple’s POV you are holding your family in the wrong way….

  10. Brian Stevens - 8 years ago

    Odd… posted a comment but didn’t show up. Must block first time posters for moderation?

  11. Rhys Morgan - 8 years ago

    I’ve already submitted a Radar about this to Apple ages ago, and they said this is how they intend for it to remain set up.
    I hope with more pressure from more people, they’ll change their minds!

  12. darkenv2 - 8 years ago

    I’m in the same boat. Decided to sign up for Apple Music with my family and now EVERYTHING is charged to my card. We’re all adults and have our own debit/credit cards so it’s incredibly annoying that I pay for everything. Would absolutely love to see Apple fix this.

  13. iSRS - 8 years ago

    The “Family Sharing” aspect will always be tied to the Credit Card. Basically, Apple got content owners to agree to “well, the same person is paying for it all anyway” aspect.

    But iCloud Drive support is 100% in Apple’s control. We should be able to share that. I pay for 200 GB right now. My wife and kids each have run out of iCloud space for backups. I’d like to share that.

    This would also allow my wife access to all our photos stored in iCloud Photo Library.

    Those two are the first two in the “no brainer” category, because this is content 100% in my control or Apple’s. No Content Owners, etc.

    • shareef777 - 8 years ago

      You nailed it. I don’t understand the argument from these posters. The whole premise of the family plan is for parents to share/manage their kids. How does it make any sense to allow adults to link their accounts and essentially start giving away copies of apps.

  14. applegetridofsimandjack - 8 years ago

    The only reason I don’t use family sharing is because of the shared credit card. Really infuriating

  15. chrisl84 - 8 years ago

    Apple does this for a reason….because its Family sharing…..not friend sharing. They are discouraging friends from linking accounts and splitting the bill between buddies.

    • applegetridofsimandjack - 8 years ago

      They could just make it that the family name which was used for all credit cards all have to be the same. Maybe allow just 1 ‘family’ member to have a different family name (for the girlfriend for example).

      Problem solved

      • In what world does this solve any problem? Marriage, divorce, and other circumstances mean last name is not a good indicator of family.

      • applegetridofsimandjack - 8 years ago

        You didn’t get at all what I meant.

        I think that if me and my wife get a divorce, that I will remove my wife from the family plan anyway.
        And if not, then so be it. Apple will have a couple of hundreds or thiusands of people who take advantage of this.
        But again, I think that if a married couple get a divorce that the person managing the family sharing options will remove their ex-wife/husband by themselves.

        And if the divorced wife/husband finds another life partner, they can be allowed into the family plan of their new partner (share apps and videos and the other things) but not allow their credit card to be added, so she/he will have to use the credit card of their new partner to make purchases.

        And Apple could just make it that both those situations can’t coincide. So it’s doable :)

    • shareef777 - 8 years ago

      We live in an entitled society. Apparently a parent buying an app and allowing their kids to use it, equates anyone buying an app and allowing anyone (long as it’s someone they know) to use it.

  16. Ken Humphlett - 8 years ago

    I would like my child to have to ask for paid apps. The fact that there is only ask to download every app or they can just buy what they want is ridiculous.

  17. Richard Lynch - 8 years ago

    iTunes gift cards in individual iTunes accounts that are part of the family sharing are charged first before the shared credit card. My family uses the gift cards to resolve this issue.

  18. PMZanetti - 8 years ago

    Its family sharing, not ‘you and your buddies trying to cheat Apple out of a few bucks’ sharing. The arguments for more features make sense, but the argument for granuler control is ridculous and goes back to my first point.

  19. hiksfiles - 8 years ago

    Did you really only come up with this feature request today!?

    I’ve only been an iPhone user since January 2015 and found this feature to be lacking from day 1!
    Seems like a no brainer to me at the time and couldn’t imagine no one had come up with this before…

    Let met make some more obvious suggestions just in case :
    – Ability to use free “disk” space on iDevice for use just like a USB drive. The files stored in this space don’t have to be visible to iOS
    – Same thing with iCloud Drive
    – User profiles so that I can have a personal profile with, say social media apps, and a professionnal profile where I’d only find productivity apps. Data could not be share between profiles. Pretty much the same thing as user accounts on a Windows machine.

    These are just 3 that came straight outta my head while typing this. There are more that I can think of…

  20. bpmajesty - 8 years ago

    Well, I agreed 100% with the last feature request. I disagree with this feature request. This article is one big complaint of the author wanting to get Apple Music at the family sharing price for his adult kids….
    As a husband and father of 3, I have family sharing. My family loves it. There are 2 things that I see. One, if a person has their own card or can pay for their own stuff, then they should have their own iTunes. Conversely, if you don’t want to pay for someone else’s stuff, then take them off of family sharing. Two, many of issues that I see in the comments are people who do not have their iCloud/family sharing accounts properly set up; family sharing ≠ everyone using the same Apple ID.

  21. freerange5 - 8 years ago

    As some others have said, shared contacts is a must!!!!!! We have many of the same friends and all the same family, obviously, so should sync and share together!!!

  22. auntietroal - 8 years ago

    Sorry, Jordan, but your billing suggestion is both unworkable and unfair. Apple already supports “non-traditional” families, as long as the family conforms to one rule: they share billing. This is exactly the restriction that convinced content and app developers (like me) to allow our products to be shared across families. Remove the shared billing requirement, and the feature becomes the free-for-all that you are actually suggesting.

    Family sharing is for immediate family, not your ex-wife, your grandkids living in another state, or your second cousin twice-removed. The billing restriction is in place for precisely the reason to prevent everyone from freeloading content. It is not intended to give you and your adult siblings free movies and apps.

    • barthrh (@barthrh) - 8 years ago

      You are absolutely correct. This article is nonsense.

      I will make one request for a change (in addition for the sensible one of family-shared iCloud Drive): In-app purchases are not subject to family sharing. I understand this for the purchase of a consumable, like crystals or coins, or whatever you buy in a rip-off IAP game. But if you buy a “pro” version of an app through IAP, that should be subject to family sharing. There should be two types of IAP that can either be subject to FS or not.

  23. I don’t agree with the author’s comments at all. I think a family in the sense Apple sees is a couple and whoever they’re financially responsible for. I don’t think it was ever intended to allow two financially independent (except for couples) to share those things. Family Sharing, in my view (and it seems it is Apple’s too) originated from concept of minors being allowed to have AppleIDs and needing someone responsible for that. I even see grown up brothers who don’t live under the same roof sharing AppleMusic as a somewhat dishonest thing. Well, maybe dishonest is a strong word, but if people in that situation want to take advantage of a feature not planned to be used that way, they might as well live with the burdens.

  24. I think Apple Music at least should be separate. I’d love to sign up with my fiancee for family sharing, but we were put off by the idea off having one credit card on file between us for everything including iTunes and in-app purchases.

    • barthrh (@barthrh) - 8 years ago

      Apple Music is the one most likely to have issues with watered-down family sharing. Why don’t you think that Spotify has no family sharing? Because they can’t create the concept of a “family”, a group so close that one person agrees to pay all of the bills. Honestly, if your *engaged*, surely you can take this first giant step of financial togetherness by sharing a credit card on iTunes.

  25. Or you and your adult sibling can just purchase iTunes gift cards for your respective iTunes accounts and your credit card will not be billed.

  26. stevelawrence - 8 years ago

    I’d like there to be the choice with photos for either:
    * Use as it is now where everyone has a separate library but ability to add photos to a “shared” album
    OR
    * All contribute to the same family

    The latter would suit me and my wife, but it’s not possible. Dumb.

  27. Yariv Nissim (@yar1vn) - 8 years ago

    Also use iTunes gift credit instead of charging the credit card when a family member makes a purchase / upgrades storage.

  28. Smigit - 8 years ago

    You could always make the others buy gift cards.

    Anyway, while it’d be nice to be able to assign multiple payment sources, this sounds pretty open for abuse and the scenario in this article is borderline that anyway. I’m really not sure family sharing is intended as a way for grown adults to all have access to each others apps and downloads but to also manage their payments individually. It’s meant for those families living together that also most likely have all their groceries going against a single credit card. If your brothers and sisters are all adults the idea would be for them to have their own individual accounts or possibly even set up family sharing themselves for their own families.

    I can’t see Apple changing this as it’s not a feature designed for mates rates to Apple Music subscriptions not do they probably want to allow schemes where a bunch of friends all join accounts to get discounts and free apps off one another.

    Ultimately if you don’t want to be paying for their content, you shouldn’t have added their accounts to your family.

  29. Oscar Silva (@OSilva88) - 8 years ago

    The only work around right now is to have the other users load up a gift card under their iTunes account. Any purchases or subscriptions will then bill their store credit. I know from experience with 5 members under me on Family Share.

  30. Oscar Silva (@OSilva88) - 8 years ago

    The only work around is to have the other users load up store credit with a gift card on their iTunes account. Any purchases or subscriptions will then be billed to their store credit.

  31. How about merging old accounts into iCloud accounts. Why is this so hard for Apple?

  32. softwarebear - 8 years ago

    A ‘family’ could include the whole world sharing one account … The only thing they could do is limit numbers or force all purchase through one account so that no-one is stupid enough to do it.

    Clearly set up for parents with young kids only.

    As an adult with a partner and no kids it is useless … It didn’t even seem to work at all anyway.

  33. Doug Kreitz - 8 years ago

    The biggest issue for me is you can only use the Admins credit card, but not their store credit. Seems like Apple is double dipping if you have store credit accumulated.

  34. David Krug - 8 years ago

    The way storage works has always annoyed me. If I had my way, I’d set it up like the partition map in Disk Utility: Let me pay for 1 TB in storage, then drag sliders around to allocate that 1 TB between my family members. Then I could allocate more storage for me, my wife, and my older daughter for our devices, take away unneeded storage for my two younger boys and their iPods, and just pay for a single storage upgrade and not three separate ones like I have to do now.

    • iSRS - 8 years ago

      Yes! In fact, they used to do this with .Mac where you could limit the amount aligned to email, etc.

  35. James H - 8 years ago

    I’m not sure if someone else pointed this out in the sea of comments below, but home sharing already supports multiple unique payment cards if the users are “old enough”. I don’t know exactly what it is based on, but if adult users (that aren’t the family organizer) can go into iCloud settings, tap on their name, then payment. (You’ll have to enter your Apple ID password since you are modifying your account settings) If they are old enough, there is an option to “Add a card”. I don’t know how long this has been here, and it should be expanded, but it helps at least a little.

  36. I couldn’t agree more. My family group are all adults, though multi-generational. We’d like to be able to share music, movies and tv programmes bought from iTunes, but I certainly don’t want to be paying for everything.

  37. Kevin Changpyo Woo - 8 years ago

    Missing feature in family sharing for me ability to stream movies purchased by family members. One must download to a device and watch it, instead of being able to stream it. I don’t understand why Apple doesn’t let us stream our family members’ purchased movies and TV shows.

  38. Monty™© MCMLXXII - 8 years ago

    Works great for me as it is, but my 4 kids are all under 8 and use hand me down iPhones (mostly 4/4s) with the SIM cards taken out. I’m probably exactly who Apple envisioned it for, although they probably expected me to buy them iPods.

  39. xp84 - 8 years ago

    You can already do this. Just create each of them a new Apple ID just for signing into Apple music. If they use Gmail, they can use username+music@gmail.com. Otherwise just create a new Yahoo account, etc. for each. Add only those IDs (NOT their main ID) to your Family.

    Then, sign into Music (nothing else) using that clean ID. To do that, each family member should go into Music on their device, go to the “For You” tab, and then tap the “person” icon at the top left of the screen. Sign out and sign into their music-only Apple ID. Confirm that in the “iTunes & App Store” section in the settings app still points to their own personal account. Now everything should be working as you want it to.

  40. Individual payments would be awesome. Both my kids are on the Family share for the Apple music, yet I get the bill for the Apps. A shared iCloud Drive would also be great, but this could be even better with a more refined Photo sharing experience. I’d like to see albums and keywords shared after all the effort I put in, organizing my library. I originally signed up for the Photo sharing to prevet from having to manage 2 libraries.

  41. Please let me share paid for iCloud storage with my son!! Family Sharing should include the ability to share storage!! Are you kidding me?? Apple is SO NOT GENEROUS with their FREE 5GB of storage!! I have to pay for 50GB twice (for both my iPad and my son’s iPhone)?? We should be able to share 50 GB between our two devices…..IF I EVEN DECIDE TO BUY IT!! Love my iPad! But love SAMSUNG PHONES way more than iPhones which break so very easily!! APPLE, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS!!

  42. Emilio Ramirez - 7 years ago

    Has Apple updated any of these features? I signed up for Family Sharing as soon as it rolled out but deactivated after all purchases were made to a single credit card. That sucks. =(

Author

Avatar for Jordan Kahn Jordan Kahn

Jordan writes about all things Apple as Senior Editor of 9to5Mac, & contributes to 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, & Electrek.co. He also co-authors 9to5Mac’s Logic Pros series.