Skip to main content

iOS 8 How-to: Set up and use Family Sharing

Screenshot 2014-09-17 09.17.00

Before Family Sharing, there was Home Sharing, which allowed you to share apps and media with your family by having an Apple ID that contained the purchases to be used on up to five computers and an unlimited number of iOS devices. For your family to make purchases with that Apple ID, they either know the password to that Apple ID (which also means they can access your passwords, credit card information, documents), or they have to go to the account holder every time they want to purchase an app or music.

Now with iOS 8 there is Family Sharing and it does not require sharing an Apple ID. Instead your family of five (six including yourself) each have their own Apple ID with the same credit card and can download apps and iTunes. Your family does have to have their Apple ID based in the same country. Also, parents can approve their kids’ purchases right from their device. Besides managing the App Store and iTunes purchases, Family Sharing can help you track where your children are using Find My Friends and can help find their lost devices using Find my iPhone.

Family Sharing also allows you to easily create a shared family calendar and shared family reminder list that anyone in the family can view and edit. It also creates a shared family photo album. In this how to, I will discuss how to set up Family Sharing and how to use it.

There are two different places to set up Family Sharing. The first time you open up the App Store or iTunes on your device there is a pop up that asks if you want to set up Family Sharing. If you did choose not now, do not worry because you can set it up later under your iCloud settings. Once you are there tap on Set Up Family Sharing, and then tap on Get Started.

Family Sharing starts with having one person be in control of the family, the Family Organizer, who sends out the invitations and sets it up by inviting the rest of their family members. By designating yourself as the Family Organizer you agree to pay for the iTunes, iBooks and App Store purchases your family makes. If you want to add a photo to yourself, you can press add photo. It is optional, if not press continue.

IMG_0068

 

Then you have the option to share purchases. This is when you choose which Apple ID you want to share iTunes, iBooks and App Store purchases. The five other members in your family are able to view and download any of your purchases.

image

For Family Sharing, it does require you to have a valid method of payment on file.

IMG_0070Once you enter in your credit card information you are able to continue. Here it shows you which credit card is on file with Apple, and what will be used for purchases. However, if there is store credit or an iTunes gift card in the account, that will be used for the purchases instead of the credit card only if it can cover the whole amount. Earlier I mentioned that parents can approve their kids’ purchases right from their device, which is exactly what using Ask to Buy means. The Family Organizer and any parent/guardian will be able to see the purchase request and allow them to buy it or not. Ask to Buy is turned on automatically for children under the age of 13, and it can be set up so that way children between the ages of 13 to 17 have to Ask to Buy as well.

 

After pressing Continue it informs you about sharing your location with your family members. Your location would be shared when using Messages, Find My Friends and Find My iPhone. You can always set this up later under your iCloud Settings.

 

Now you have Family Sharing set up. This is where you are able to add other family members, see the credit card information on file, and create an Apple ID for a child, especially for the children who are under the age of 13.

IMG_0088 copy

To add a family member, press on the words Add Family Member in blue right below where you are listed. Then you type in the family member’s name or email address. It will then want you to enter in your password for your iCloud account.

When you invite a family member, they will receive an email from Apple stating that you have invited them to Family Sharing. Your family member does have to be using iOS 8 in order to accept the invitation. When you press View Invitation, it opens up their iCloud Settings and asks if they want to accept the invitation for Family Sharing.  By pressing accept they become part of the family and can now share apps. The Family Organizer will receive a notification on their device when their invited family member accepts the invitation.

To create an Apple ID for a child you are going to press the link that says Create an Apple ID for a child. By doing this, the child is automatically added to the Family account until they are at least 13 years old. Once you go through this it asks for the security code on the back of the credit card, to verify that you are the Family Organizer that actually set it up. It will then be the standard procedures you do for creating an Apple ID normally but with some variation. It asks for their name, having you create an email address for them @icloud.com, emphasizes creating a password that is memorable to the Family Organizer and child that contains at least 8 characters with a number and a capital letter, creating three security questions and answers that will be memorable for the Family Organizer, deciding whether or not to use Ask To Buy, and deciding to share your child’s location with your family members.

In-App purchases are not supported by Family Sharing. So if your children are playing games with the pseudo-currency, or if they are playing games that require in-app purchases to get to the full version these you would be paying for twice. Most apps are now compatible for Family Sharing. However, developers do have the option to opt out of enabling their apps to be used with Family Sharing. When you are viewing the description of the app in the App Store, there is now a label that will say Family Sharing. If it says yes, that means the app is compatible with Family Sharing and can be redownloaded by other family members, before the existence of Family Sharing.

IMG_0131

To see what your family members have purchased or to download their purchases go to the Purchased section in the App Store, iBooks or iTunes. Then you are able to select which family member’s purchases you would like to view or download. This also includes the ability to redownload content that was purchased with a different Apple ID and different credit card.

You do have the option to limit what your family sees purchased by hiding the purchase. That way once it is hidden, that item will not be shared with other family members so they cannot view them or download them. To hide the item go to the Purchased section and swipe from right to left. Then a Hide button will appear in red.

IMG_0133

Now that Family Sharing is all set up, let’s talk about the other benefits it has besides sharing purchases.

With Family Sharing, you can easily automatically share the location with the rest of your family using Find My Friends or in the Messages app. This is a nice benefit in case you happen to be running late to an event, or if you want to check up on your child and make sure they made it to their destination. If you do not want to share your location, you are able to disable your sharing your location under Share My Location in the iCloud settings. With the Find My iPhone app, it is now easier for parents to help children find their lost devices, as their devices will appear listed.

Family Sharing automatically creates a Family calendar and a Family reminders list in everyones iCloud. It is set up so that way everyone can view the calendar. They would receive notifications when something changes or when something is added. The Family Organizer can decide whether or not everyone in the family can add things, or make changes to the calendar. The same is true for the Reminders app.

With Family Sharing, a shared album is set up automatically in the Photos app on everyone in the family’s devices. This enables everyone the capability to contribute to the album by adding pictures and videos. When this happens the family will be notified when something new is added to the album.

Screenshot 2014-09-17 09.37.38

Family Sharing is designed to make sharing content with the family easier. Let us know if you are using Family Sharing or are going to be using Family Sharing, and what your impressions are in the comments.

 

 

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

You’re reading 9to5Mac — experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Don’t know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

Comments

  1. Thanks for the nice article. Is there no way to use family sharing without a credit card linked to my account? I always use “pay-as-you-go” iTunes cards to keep credit on my iTunes account and would prefer to not provide credit card information? Thanks

    • hmurchison - 10 years ago

      I ran into the same issue. It claimed it couldn’t verify that I was 18 without a credit card for a card i’ve used for years. Very annoying. I have no desire to change my payment method now so Family Sharing is not being utilized by this family at this moment. Also why is the #1 Tech company in the world unable to verify my age in some other fashion beyond a credit card? Makes me feel like they want this because they can brag about how many credit cards are attached to iTunes accounts.

      • BlueLightAlarm - 10 years ago

        Just an idea, could you maybe use a pre-pay card number?

    • Caryn (@BAMCopyWriting) - 9 years ago

      I just ran into the same problem and it’s so infuriating! You can’t set create an Apple ID for a child under 13 without having a credit card. Debit cards, Paypal, etc. won’t work. Ridiculous! Glad I checked this out BEFORE buying 2 iPod touches for my 6 & 7 year old… Kindle has better child safety & restriction features so I guess that’s where I’m going instead.

  2. jpaguila - 10 years ago

    PayPal is not a valid method of Payment for “Family Sharing”. :(

    • Tom Coburn - 10 years ago

      I agree!! I don’t like that paypal isn’t a valid method of payment for family sharing. I’m not trusting my credit card information with Apple, NO WAY!! They charge me multiple times for single app purchases as it is. Least with paypal I can dispute the charges and I feel my info is secure with paypal.

      Anyway, what I don’t like about this family sharing crap, what about my spouse and I? My spouse and I want to share app purchases, ringtones, music, etc, but we also have our own credit cards, like sometimes she purchases apps sometimes I do depending upon who has the money to do so at the time. Apple should recognize this & add the ability to have more then one organizer

      • Who Is Code? (@whoiscode) - 10 years ago

        I have never had Apple charge me twice for a purchase since owning an iphone. And even if they did, go to your account, view purchases, click “dispute”…voila. You’re money is back in your account. “Least with PayPal I can dispute” is misleading as you can VERY easily dispute with Apple. And Paypal is not immune from data breaches as they’ve had some themselves.

  3. chrisl84 - 10 years ago

    Nice information….is there an option to “remove” a family member. Eventually those kids need to start getting credit cards of their own :)

  4. allowmetopost - 10 years ago

    Doesn’t work for me yet and my kids. All accepted invite. Don’t see ANY purchases. They finally gave up and entered my AppleID and PW and download all the apps onto their new iPhones.

    Family Sharing works as well as Siri it seems

  5. fredzlux (@fredzlux) - 10 years ago

    I thought Family Sharing NEVER used store credit, and alway used the selected credit card. Are you sure, author?

  6. toshoklabs - 10 years ago

    The main thing that I miss is shared playlists that you get with Home Sharing. My family members can see my song purchases, but no longer can access my playlists, which we used to share via Home Sharing.

  7. hmurchison - 10 years ago

    Would have been nice to have the ability to all share a pooled Family Share iCloud storage. Maybe in version 2.

  8. Lior Azulai - 10 years ago

    Note that iTunes MACTH is NOT available to the entire family. It is available only to the primary apple ID that is associated with the itunes account. This is a real bummer.

    • Max Mars (@devianter) - 10 years ago

      It’s already 25 bucks a year (hint: dirt cheap). what do you expect.

    • This is not true. iTunes Match as well as your iCloud storage are available with family share. It says so right here: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht201079

      • bfdill - 10 years ago

        From what I’m reading, that link says “one adult in the family … agrees to PAY FOR … This also includes ongoing subscription purchases”.

        Reading further:
        “Music, movies, TV shows, and books can be downloaded on up to 10 devices per account … Not all content is eligible for Family Sharing”

        In summary, my understanding of that article with respect to family sharing is as follows. One person can pay for everything, something things are then sharable across devices and some things aren’t.

        It seems as though iCloud add-on storage and iTunes Match can be paid for by the organizer, but aren’t shared.

        :( :( :(

  9. Roy Stephenson - 10 years ago

    Mostly a very good facility but a great shame we can’t share contacts. Surely it should be possible for the organiser to create a ‘family group’ and share with the family. Even better to be able to share more than one group with different family members in the same way that different calendars can now be shared. This is a serious downer.

    • Agree. I wish we could share contacts and safari bookmarks. Maybe even notes. Then I’d be game. The wife and want to share more than just apps (its very helpful when we can share contacts)

      • ledsteplin - 9 years ago

        My Wife and I share some contacts. But i wouldn’t want to share all contacts.

    • Tim Dickey - 10 years ago

      Not being able to share contacts is silly. I agree.

      Try this workaround. Not sure if it suits your needs or not. Assumes you have all contacts on YOUR main icloud account.

      On family member iPhone, Go to Settings, Accounts, Add Account. Add iCloud Account. (you can add a second one!) Enter your iCloud login/password to add your iCloud account as a *secondary* icloud account on family member phone. ONLY activate contacts, turn off all other sync items.

      Now your family members are sharing contacts with you.

      I’ve been doing it this way for years…..since there is no ‘official’ way of doing this. In fact, the new setup is kinda silly for me. I’ve had everyone on the same account since day 1. I was lucky that way. No password from me, no purchase. Easier for me as my offspring are not too old and always close by.

      I had to setup all family members with my icloud as default, and turn everything off but purchasing. Then I added their icloud as the secondary to share family calendars, contacts, notes, reminders or whatever.

      Confusing? Yes indeed, but it has worked for me. Hopefully it helps you. If not, no charge! :D

      • I completely agree with you. The new way is much more complicated then the way most family’s have configured their ios devices for years. Plus we have completely lost the way to automatically share photos via photo stream.

  10. Jeremy Caron - 10 years ago

    What i hate is – the credit card cannot be a debt card.. just fyi

    • mechanic50 - 10 years ago

      Mine is a debit card and always has been.

  11. Matt Kristek? (@ScubaHey) - 10 years ago

    Unreal that I can’t simply share a calendar and a photo album with my wife without first being forced to pay for all of her apps from here on out. She’s an adult with her own credit card!

    • telecastle - 10 years ago

      Is this a joke?

      • Rob Record - 10 years ago

        What is wrong with the question, telecastle?

      • telecastle - 10 years ago

        Everything is wrong with this question.

    • Rob Record - 10 years ago

      Yes I have the same question! I don’t want to pay for my girlfriend’s purchases, she can do that. But I do want to share my purchases with her.

      Matt: you can share a photo album by setting up & sharing to a new iCloud Photo Stream, without using Family Sharing.

      • Steven Barnes - 9 years ago

        Umm… your post kinda highlights why Apple does it this way… Your girlfriend isn’t part of your family. They don’t want you sharing apps with people other than your family… Otherwise what would stop you from adding 50 friends to your “family” and sharing all of your apps with them.

      • Rob Record - 9 years ago

        Hi Steven, I appreciate your reasoning, but I’m not 15 – I live with my girlfriend and look after her kids so I think we are actually a family.

      • stevenbarnes78 - 9 years ago

        So why not just ask her to reimburse you for her purchases? If she lives with you that should be pretty easy

    • marina - 9 years ago

      Exactly, that’s ridiculous. Or is that the famous american support of traditional family values?

    • ledsteplin - 9 years ago

      My Wife and I don’t use Family Sharing. We share the same iTunes ID. So our purchased lists are the same. We can share a calendar. Our iCloud ID’s are different. So we each get the 5 free gb of storage, which we use to back up what’s currently on our phones. For photo storage, we use cloud based apps like Box, Dropbox and OneDrive. No one here seems to understand iCloud Drive, iCloud Photo Library, iCloud Photo Sharing, and My Photo Stream. And they obviously don’t understand Family Sharing.

  12. N Haden (@aujohnson1) - 10 years ago

    Not a fan so far!

    We setup Family sharing and didn’t realize that the 200gb plan we had added to back up all our devices would no longer be available to anyone other than the Organizer.

    Now we will have to pay for extra storage for everyone’s devices individually which will cost about twice as much.

    Hopefully we can remove sharing and return to what we had, but right now it has got our location sharing all screwed up due to it automatically logging you into Find my Friends when you log into your icloud. It thinks that all our devices are one persons device and there is no way to manually log into Find my Friends to fix the problem.

  13. Family Sharing is a failure in so many ways…! Including the fact that the EU/EEA is a single trade area, yet you cannot have cross border accounts in the same group. Free Trade is LAW over here. If i have a g/f (i do) from a different country we cannot have family sharing despite being in the EU for the propose of purchases and that is illegal, what i buy in one country i have the legal right to free use in any country in the EU/EEA you are stopping me from doing that Apple.

  14. 1. authorization of purchases is only valid for kids up to 18 years. What abut older kids? I am not giving them option to buy over my credit card whatever they want .next thing, theyll order hookers.
    2. apple still hasnt created option to share ony cpntacts from one family icloud account. why?
    3. Same goes to find my iphone. I want ONE account to be linked for all my devices for find my iphone nd such. This prsently isn’t the case. If you lock one iphone with icloud account, you cant use others for securing it.

  15. Family Sharing is a failure in so many ways…! Including the fact that the EU/EEA is a single trade area, yet you cannot have cross border accounts in the same group. Free Trade is LAW over here. If i have a g/f (i do) from a different country we cannot have family sharing despite being in the EU for the purpose of purchases and that is illegal, what i buy in one country i have the legal right to free use in any country in the EU/EEA you are stopping me from doing that Apple.

  16. telecastle - 10 years ago

    How do I assign photos to the Shared Album? Does every photo taken on any device belonging to any member iCloud account of Family Sharing automatically get added to the Shared Album?

    Whose storage quota does Shared Album count against? Or is this album just the sorting of all existing photos by the labels, which are Family Sharing member iCloud IDs? So the actual picture is stored In the iCloud account of the person who took the picture and counts only against the storage quota of that account?

    Does the shared album sync to all devices belonging to the Family Sharing member iCloud ID? If so, it seems that if each member gets 20 GB of storage, with 5 members, the total storage size of the Shared Album can be as much as 100 GB – if every member puts all of his/her pictures into the Shared Album. Therefore, each device on the Family Sharing account can have its Photos library size be 100 GB, even though individual Family Sharing member accounts are only 20 GB of storage each.

  17. Edward Clark - 10 years ago

    iTunes Match is per account…it does not cross over to the rest of the ‘family’. I will be sticking to using one ‘main account’ on all my family’s devices so that we have access to iTunes Match.

    • I guess this ‘issue’ will send more users running to Pandora or Spotify.

      • Yes, this bites. I went through the pain of converting my husbands iPhone to the family plan with me as the organizer. But that meant that all the apps that we’d purchased that were on his phone under my account had to be deleted so he could re-download them under his own id so that he wouldn’t have to keep using my ID. Then we get to Match and splat. The issue is that when match first came out, I uploaded all of our music. So I’m the only one who has all of it. His Mac doesn’t have it. So even if we turn on iTunes Match on his computer and pay another $24 a year, he still wouldn’t have the music unless we copy all the music from my computer account to his and then he uploads it all to his match account. What a hassle. If they needed to charge a little more to just extend your Match to another account without all the hassle, fine. But this is far worse than just sharing accounts. Now I wish I hadn’t moved to the Family Sharing service.

  18. telecastle - 10 years ago

    I’d like to be able to get 200 GB of storage and have every member of Family Sharing share this common pool of storage, yet maintaining their iCloud drive and other iCloud based storage separately from one another. If this is not possible, I will have to continue to use a “Master” iCloud account for all of the features described in this article, which I have been doing for several years now.

  19. uniszuurmond - 10 years ago

    Maybe we’re not the typical family, maybe it’s a US thing, be we don’t share finances as a family. We each have our own card and accounts, our own budgets and our own purchases based on it. It helps teaching financial independance, how to budget, etc. so the basis on which this is built is flawed for our family.

    • telecastle - 10 years ago

      Really, husband and wife have separate finances? How do you pay your mortgage, how do you buy groceries, do you charge your wife if she eats an extra apple? Do you get two bills when you eat out? Who pays for condoms?

      The apple’s model is not flawed; something else is flawed. You call this family in Europe?

      • Rob Record - 10 years ago

        I find your attitude very judgemental. Some families have two incomes and have not yet merged to the extent that you suggest “should” be the case. None of your assumptions are true.

      • telecastle - 10 years ago

        @ Rob Record: I’m glad you have found my comment judgmental because I do make judgments throughout my life and I do comment on other people’s judgments.

        Apple is all about the simplification of computing. If one wants a complex system, there are plenty of those around. Pick Linux, pick Android, and get a boatload of features that confuses even sysadmins.

        Families with non-merged finances always astonished me. I don’t understand why even have a spouse if one cannot agree on finances. The questions I asked are all valid, and none of them were answered in your post. The condoms are especially an interesting case.

        Apple cannot be expected to accommodate every variation of how people choose to manage their family finances, and neither should Apple be expected to make such accommodations. Apple gears its solutions and products toward hundreds of millions (soon to be billions) of people, and I would not want Apple to sacrifice simplicity of use on the alter of accommodating a few percent of families who bicker over their finances and do not trust each other with spendings. If such cases cannot use the Apple ecosystem, they can always find an alternative.

        I, for one, have many gripes of Apple having removed engineering tools from OS X and instead having integrated social media. I’m also quite upset about the artificial limitations that Apple has imposed on iPads with iOS, which I believe is a major crippling factor to the Apple devices’ penetration into enterprise. However, I realize that there is a compelling reason why Apple has done this because it suits 95% of their customer base, and in this case, I’m one of the few that have to either live with it or choose an alternative.

        The absolute majority of people who buy into Apple’s ecosystem are doing so to eliminate (or dramatically reduce) the amount of time they spend on supporting their devices, and to dramatically increase the time that they actually get to use their devices. Clearly, to maintain such an ecosystem, simplicity must prevail over a plethora of mostly obscure features.

      • Rob Record - 10 years ago

        You were insinuating that the idea of family in Europe — or my family even — is flawed. Thanks for that uplifting comment.

        I understand about simplification. I’m an advocate myself. Good for you, supporting apple’s decisions.

        I believe that this is simply the first version Family Sharing, and what I ask for here will be provided in time, because it’s a *totally* reasonable thing to require.

        Here’s two scenarios:

        My scenario: My girlfriend and I both have jobs. She had kids from another marriage. We wish to share things just as any family would. We share bills, sometimes she pays and sometimes I pay, sometimes we club together – we just haven’t yet merged finances, and our levels of income are different; but that may change further down the line.

        A future scenario: Our kids grow up. They have their own incomes, their own credit/debit cards, but they still live in the family home. We all want to share things.

        I think it’s totally feasible for Apple to support these two common (I imagine, especially in the second case) scenarios without creating a burdensome amount of development and support.

      • Grace Bradford - 9 years ago

        uniszuurmond never said “husband and wife,” they said family. As a 22-year old, I am an adult who lives away from home and pays my own bills, yet I want to share purchases with my parents and two siblings. We have separate financial lives and it would not make sense for any one of us to be paying for everyone else’s purchases. I believe that is what this comment was aiming at, not a husband and wife splitting a bill.

  20. So you have to set up a family sharing with a credit card. After setting is up and you switch to none (no card) what happens to the family sharing or are you stuck with having to have a credit card?

  21. Is family sharing only for devices (iPods, iPhones)? What about my desktop and laptop? They don’t seem to be in sync with the devices.

  22. Patrick Kaine - 10 years ago

    Wondering if you or anyone has a suggestion for this problem: my kids set up their own iCloud accounts and said that they were 21 years old when they were really under age. (tisk tisk) Now, I have set up family sharing and want them to have to get permission to buy apps so I attempted to change their birthdate on their accounts and it won’t let me. Hoping I don’t have to create brand new accounts for them as they have spent $100’s in song and app purchases. Any thoughts?

    • Kevin Morris (@gkmlaw) - 10 years ago

      I want an answer to this one also. I tried to change their ages in my kid’s Apple ID accounts and it would not let me, even though I can get to the birthday. I hope this gets answered.

    • telecastle - 10 years ago

      Call Apple and see what they have to say. Millions of people will have the same problem. Apple should be able to let you change the age on those accounts.

    • Steve Marriott - 10 years ago

      I had this exact issue and Apple fixed it for me. Once upgraded to iOS 8 you can simply change the date of birth within Settings > iCloud. You will heyave to remove the individual account holder from the family account first and you will only be able to modify an existing ‘adult’ account to show that person to be 13 years old or more.
      If you are not on iOS then you can do the same from the Manage Apple ID page in iCloud on the web. The same provisos exist for this change.

      My kids are 8 and 10 – their Apple IDs now show them both with a year of birth of 2000 (easy to remember) until they actually get to 13 and then I will change it again to make it correct.

      All this was done at the instruction of Apple support staff.

      You will have to set up security questions before you can accesss the Privacy settings on iCloud.

      Hope that helps…

  23. michabailey - 10 years ago

    How does this interact with existing accounts and purchases? If a user joins a family sharing group with an account that already has purchases, do those purchases become available to everyone else? And what if the account has store credit? Does that account get the ability to buy things with that credit? Or does it get transferred into the group account? There are a lot of questions that need answering, IMO.

  24. Is it just me, or is the family organizer expected to approve each and every app update as well? My 11 year old daughter had 7 app updates today. For each update, she had to enter her password, request approval from me (then I have enter my password), then she gets authorization to download. We had to do this 7 times in a row. What? If that’s the case, I’m going back to sharing 1 Apple ID for the entire family.

  25. Dogz (@dogzdangliz) - 10 years ago

    Also worth mentioning, If your kids have access to find my iPhone, they can play a sound, lost mode & wipe YOUR iPhone remotely!!!!!.

  26. Jean Gionet (@JeanGionet) - 10 years ago

    how do I stop the App/iTunes store from prompting my 5 year to enter her password every time she wants to download/purchase anything? Her AppleID has no payment info! All purchases/downloads have to be approved by me since I’m the organizer of the Family Share!

  27. jnewman29 - 10 years ago

    Okay, so I get that some of my apps are not sharable to my husband. However. He can’t buy them himself now either?! It gives him a cloud icon and then kicks him because the app is designated not sharable. How can we fix this, or are we stuck? He wants Zedge, but it will not give him the option to purchase because I own it and it’s not sharable….

  28. John C Jasper III - 10 years ago

    i’m new to family sharing and would like to know how to change the photo of a family member that is the wrong photo for that member. i accidentally put my photo on their family share account. i am the family organizer… Thanks!

  29. Sarah Goodman - 10 years ago

    Isn’t it funny that apples own apps such as pages, numbers and Keynote aren’t aviable for the new ios8 family share feature….. Did someone at Apple forget to tick the box or are they just being mean

  30. Luay AL-Nuaimi - 10 years ago

    Is there any positive comment ? For all the people who complains about family sharing, did you read about it before setting up? And for some who thinks it’s silly feature, please don’t upgrade as long as it’s optional! I think it’s really good for families to share music, books and apps without paying for them multiple times.

  31. Graham Barr (@gbarr) - 9 years ago

    Prior to family sharing my daughter’s phone was setup to buy apps from a the same account as mine. It asked for the password every time so it was just a hassle.

    Now we switch the app store to use here iCloud account, which was added to family sharing with my account, but she can no longer upgrade apps on her phone. It fails with a popup “that they were purchased with another account”

    Does she really have to uninstall every app, loosing any associated data, then re-install from via her own account on the shared plan ?

    I do not think Apple really thought through this sharing very well at all

  32. Thanks for this, there were one or two things we were confused about and now we’ve got it sorted. Really, just follow each step in this article then tap on the name of the family member on your phone ^ you’ll see purchases they have made w/your card, each is downloadable.
    It’s easy if you follow each step correctly.
    Good stuff, thanks.

  33. Has anybody have issues with family sharing bcs I couldn’t download CNN DUE TO FAMILY SHARING?

  34. Nathan Reeves - 9 years ago

    I added my wife to family sharing, then took her off. Now she cannot download any new apps.

  35. hingedthinker - 9 years ago

    I have to admit, I am extremely disappointed in Apple with the family share implementation and app. I have 3 kids and it will not let me past the “Credit Card Required” page even though it states I have a debit card already setup. Pathetic… Don’t they build and study use cases? Frustrating. Unacceptable. I had to lie about the kids ages and set them up on appleid.apple.com instead. Sigh…. Try again Apple.

  36. David Messner (@trogdgm) - 9 years ago

    Without the ability to use more than 1 Credit Card…this will be limited to only “Traditional” 1950’s families. Modern families have multiple money earning members, potentially even the kids. Each with their own Credit Card/Debit Cards to pay for what they want to. It is too bad Apple is stuck in the 50’s on this one.

  37. Pedro Diaz-Schodts - 9 years ago

    I’m unable to see Family Members iTunes content. I get the message “To start sharing purchases, finish setting up Family Sharing on iCloud”. I’ve signed out, signed back in. Logged out of the iTunes Store, back in. Even logged out of iCloud on iOS and Yosemite and to no avail. Keep in mind this WAS working properly. After the last step of logging off of iCloud all together and then signing back in, I saw resolution to the issue, but not even five minutes later, the connection was broken again. Any ideas? Anyone else seeing this?
    -PD

  38. Anita Errington - 9 years ago

    I stupidly put in the wrong date of birth for my son in the family sharing but yet as the event organizer I cant change this!!!!! I also dont like the fact that he cant be removed if hes under the age of 13 – makes no sense!
    I want him to be able to learn about money so have set up his own account but now dont know how to link them as his ipod account is in my name – family invite sent but cant accept it!!

    So far not impressed!!!

  39. Scottie Hedstrom - 9 years ago

    can people still choose to use there own card? like if you are sharing with other adults? this is a problem I ran into I want to share music with my family what I buy and what they buy but using our own payment methods? any one else have this thought? or ideas of how to set it up so you don’t get surprise emails about purchases?

  40. vavici - 9 years ago

    Don’t see the family photo album & what if the organizer doesn’t want to pay, but it’s okay if the other family member pays?

  41. Chrissy Plowman - 9 years ago

    Can you share ringtones that you have purchased in family sharing

  42. Jema McCardell - 9 years ago

    My payment method shows as a VISA. It’s actually a debit/credit card, and functions everywhere in the world as both…EXCEPT when I’m creating a child’s Apple ID. Somehow Apple knows that is a debit card and will not allow the child’s account to get past that point. I do not and will not ever have a full-on credit card. This is a problem. Now my only choice is to lie about my child’s age to set up his account.

  43. Lisa Ann Carrillo - 9 years ago

    So how do I let my 7 yr old son purchase something in an app. Now that we do this family sharing he cannot purchase anything in a game!

  44. lcmsdrew - 9 years ago

    My daughter has no apple device of any kind, only ITunes on her pc. Is there any way to set up family share with her? It seems impossible from what I am seeing.

  45. Claude Quesnelle - 9 years ago

    Do the ask to buy notifications get listed somewhere? It looks like once acted upon in the Notification Center they go away. It would be nice to see what was asked for in the past. Thanks

  46. Junaid Kureshi - 8 years ago

    can anyone tell me what if i insert my credit card number to enable family sharing and later i delete card detail and use store credit instead? is it possible

  47. i’m using family sharing and very happy with it but one thing, i wish i can customize and use my own card to pay for stuff.