Manage your family’s purchases

Use Ask to Buy to ensure your kids don’t spend your money on virtual bling

REQUIRES

Apple IDs that are set up for Family Sharing

you will learn

How to set up Ask to Buy and manage all of your family’s purchases

IT WILL TAKE

15 minutes

For parents who grew up in a simpler time, the prospect of kids armed with iOS devices and Macs is a little terrifying. These items are typically always online, and the App Store is just a click or tap away — which means in-app purchases often aren’t far behind.

For young kids, you’ll want to fully manage their devices, installing apps and games yourself. But when children get older, there’ll be a time when they want a little bit of extra independence — downloading the things they themselves like the look of.

Unless you hate money (or have an awful lot of it), you still don’t want this to be a free-for-all. Ask to Buy provides a middle ground. A part of Family Sharing ( bit.ly/fmshr), it enables a child to ask permission when they want to download/ buy a new app or in-app purchase.

The process for managing and using Ask to Buy is outlined in the walkthrough, and assumes you’ve already set up Family Sharing. If you haven’t, you can do so in Settings (iOS) or System Preferences (macOS). One person must act as the organizer, managing the family and providing a payment card. That person can then invite family members (and create new Apple IDs for children). Note that children remain with the family account until aged 13, and cannot be deleted earlier without assistance from Apple Support. Craig Grannell