Family sharing

everything in your iCloud is managed through your Apple ID, a one–to–one system that doesn’t always make sense for households. So Apple lets you link users — up to a total of six — to access your purchases and subscriptions and share photos and calendars, while still each having your own logins and private files.

One person has to be the “family organizer”: purchases go on their payment method, and they‘ll be in charge of settings for the whole family. You can choose which iCloud features to share, and the rest work as normal. All your iCloud Drives and backups can share one iCloud storage plan, so you only pay one monthly fee for extra capacity. If you use Apple Music, sharing requires a Family subscription which costs $14.99 per month to cover all of you.

iTunes Store music, videos and books that any of you have purchased before can be downloaded by any of you on a total of 10 devices (up to five of them Macs or pCs).

everyone’s App Store purchases can be installed on any number of devices. One shared photo album is created in iCloud, to which anyone can assign any of their photos; the rest stay private.

Via Find My…, any family member can find another’s lost device. Find My Friends is also available by default, although you can stop sharing your location for privacy.

When you set up a family member as a child, you, as family organizer, have control over some of their actions. With Ask to Buy, any attempt to purchase or install content will alert you first. You and another nominated family member can use Screen Time to monitor children’s usage and set detailed limits.