HOW TO Set up Family Sharing

1 Invite everyone

You can set up family sharing for your iCloud services on your Mac or your iOS/iPadOS device. We’ll stick with the Mac here. Go into System Preferences > Family Sharing and click on the “+” icon to add people.

4 Enter your code

You’ll now be asked to enter the three–digit code from the back of your card. Sometimes this is buggy, so if you find that the Family Sharing setup crashes here you can create the account on your iPhone or iPad.

7 Hide from everyone

If you click on the items in the Family Sharing sidebar you can turn some services on and off for specific family members, so for example you can decide which family members you want to share your location with.

2 Send your request

If the person you’re adding already has an Apple ID, you can send them an invitation via Mail, Messages, AirDrop, or Invite In Person. That latter option then asks the person to sign in using their Apple ID on your Mac.

5 Get their Apple ID

Now we need to enter the child’s name, date of birth — this will be used for content restrictions and service sharing, which we’ll look at in detail over the page — and decide on their Apple ID and password.

8 Share your purchases

You can share your purchased apps and media with your family, so they can download them without paying.

You can use your stored payment method to pay for their downloads too.

3 Create an account

If you have children aged 13 or under and they don’t have Apple IDs, you can set up a child account here. You’ll need to have a valid credit or debit card to verify your identity: this is to stop other people adding your kids.

6 Share your stuff

The iCloud services you can share depend on what you have a family subscription to. Here, we’ve got the full Apple One Family subscription, so we can share not just Apple Music and TV but Fitness, Arcade, and News+.

9 Protect your wallet

Enabling the Ask To Buy feature is a very good idea; it means that any time a family member wants to buy an app, a subscription, or in–app items you have to approve the request. This is really important for younger kids.