iOS 8’s new Family Sharing feature makes it easier than ever for your entire family to share purchases on iTunes, iBooks and the App Store.
Family Sharing is about more than just sneaking copies of apps off your siblings’ accounts, though: It can bring harmony to your entire digital life by sharing photos, creating a family calendar and even keeping track of each others’ locations.
With minimal effort, you can sync up to six accounts. Here’s how to maximize Family Sharing’s potential.
Setup
Before you can get started sharing apps and photos with your family, you’ll need to setup your account on your iPhone by going to Settings >> iCloud >> Family >> Add Family Member. From there you’ll be asked to enter the Apple ID of the person(s) you’d like to add. You can choose to either send the invite to their device or, if they’re with you, you can just ask them to enter their password in the setup screen and iCloud will automatically add them.
Up to six different accounts can be added to a Family Sharing plan, and if your kids under 13 years of age don’t have an Apple ID yet, you can create one for them right from the Family Sharing page, as long as you have a credit card number on your account. Once a family member joins your group, the Family Sharing features are set up on their device automatically.
Sharing purchases
Once you’ve been added to a Family Sharing plan, all of the songs, albums, movies, TV shows, books and apps that every family member has purchased are immediately available to everyone else in the group. All new purchases are also available.
To find apps or music that others in the family have purchased, just visit the Purchased tab in iTunes, iBooks or the App Store and you’ll be able to browse their collection of content. From there you can tap the iCloud icon to download it to your device.
Your family members can access your entire collection the same way. If there are a few unsavory items on your account you don’t want everyone else in the family to see, you can hide individual apps, books and movies by opening iTunes on your Mac, visiting the Purchased section, and then hovering your mouse over the item you want to delete until an X appears in the top-left corner.
Setting spending limits
Anyone who joins your Family Sharing account will now pay for all their new purchases on iTunes, iBooks and the App Store using your credit card info. If you’ve got youngsters on your Family Sharing account, you can make sure they don’t rack up a huge credit card bill by setting limits.
To set spending limits on a child’s account, just turn on the Ask to Buy feature for that family member under iCloud >> Family >> Member’s name. With Ask to Buy activated, all purchases initiated by your kid will send an alert to the organizer or the Family, or other parents, who can then view what they’re trying to purchase, and then approve or decline it. This works for free downloads as well.
Making a family photo album
Beyond saving your family some money, Family Sharing can be used to get the whole crew organized. Every member on the Family Sharing account can send photos to the shared album that is automatically added to each family members’ device.
To share a picture with everyone, tap the Share button, choose iCloud Photo Sharing from the share sheet, then under Shared Album, scroll down to Family, tap Post, and it will be automatically added to everyone’s device. Family members get a notification when a new photo or video has been added and can then comment on each picture.
Make a family calendar
Keeping track of your busy family’s activities is also much easier when you start using the family calendar that Family Sharing creates on everyone’s device.
Family Members can view, add or edit events and appointments. You can set up an alert for when something changes, and you can also use the Reminders app to send a time and location reminder to everyone in family. And with Family Sharing automatically integrating into Find My Friends, you can see who’s running behind.
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
8 responses to “How to save money and time with iOS 8’s Family Sharing feature”
Does anyone know if family sharing will allow multiple family members (now each with their own Apple ID) to sync and backup to the same iMac or Macbook? My understanding is that previously, only one Apple ID could be used to sync and backup to a Mac.
Backing up to the macs was not a problem – it is however not possible to share an iCloud account for backups – which really sucks as I just upgraded to 200GB for the whole family just before Familysharing came out – now I have 200GB for my self and the rest of the family have 5 free GB, seems odd we are not allowed to share the dataamount :(
That does seem odd. That has to be something they will add at a later date. It seems so obvious, as a family you should be able to share cloud storage as well.
Wondering if someone can answer a question that doesn’t seem to covered anywhere – When your kids or any in the the family gets an iTunes gift card are they able to put the money exclusively on their own account to be used only by them? The idea of pooling their iTunes gift cards does not appeal to the kids :)
Maybe I’m missing something? We already share movies, music, and books by having everything under one Apple ID. My wife and my devices are all kept synchronized by enabling the desired items – contacts, safari, reminders – in iCloud. My daughter doesn’t check those because she doesn’t want to commingle her stuff with ours, but she does have iCloud backup checked. She also doesn’t share in our photo stream – when she does want to share a photo (which isn’t often), she iMessages it or AirDrops it.
So, in light of the above, what advantages are left with “family sharing”? The only one I can think of is that everyone gets their own 5GB of storage.
I pay for Apple’s MusicMatch. Does anyone know if that would be shared too under “Family sharing”? If not, then this would be a big disadvantage as I keep about 15 GB of music there and we all enjoy the no-ad music in IRadio that comes with the MusicMatch subscription.
Why do you have to give credit card info? Seems silly. I prefer to use gift cards to control costs.
Dislike the fact that family sharing doesn’t share the same iCloud Drive storage space.
I don’t see any apps under the Purchased section of iTunes. Just music and TV shows.
Also, once I can see it, if I delete an app from the list, does that mean I have to pay for the app if I need to download it again?