Organise your family’s activities

Share appointments, to-do lists, and even files from Finder

Family Sharing isn’t just for sharing subscriptions, media and locations with loved ones. Many of the productivity apps provided by Apple make it easy to share too.

You can share your calendars, which is as useful for work as it is for home, and you can share reminders such as to-do lists. You can also share files that you’ve stored in iCloud Drive – great if your home doesn’t have any network storage drives, and it also makes files accessible even when you’re away from home. You create a link that everyone uses to access the same copy of the file. This helps with any task where you want family members to contribute – perhaps to track holiday ideas, say.

Share calendars

In Calendar on your Mac, first choose View > Show Calendar List, then ≈- click on a calendar’s name and choose Share Calendar. Enter the contact names or email addresses of the people you want to be able to view or edit the calendar.

Share a file in iCloud Drive

You can share files using familiar routes like email, of course, but these days you might store them on iCloud Drive. So, in Finder, locate a file you’ve placed there, ≈- click it and open the Share submenu. Choose the Add People command.

Share reminders

The steps for sharing a list of reminders is slightly different. In Reminders, choose View > Show Sidebar, put the pointer over a list’s name, click the icon that appears to the right, then add contact names or email addresses to the Share With field.

Send a link to the file

That enables you to share a link to the file by various methods. Since the file is already online, it needn’t be uploaded to each recipient – all get the same copy. In Share Options, choose how broadly the file can be accessed and if it’s editable.