Family Sharing
How to share your subscriptions and shopping safely
Family Sharing makes it easy to share your Apple purchases and subscriptions with other family members, so you can share your iTunes purchases with your partner or your Apple Arcade subscription with the kids.
Family Sharing enables you to share your iCloud package with up to five other people, all of whom must also have Apple IDs. You can create new accounts on behalf of any under–13s in your family.
The ability to share your subscription is brilliant, not least because you don’t need to pay for each family member. You can also use SharePlay to set up shared viewing or listening sessions using Apple Music or Apple TV+ in FaceTime if everybody’s devices have iOS 15 or macOS Monterey.
You can’t share Apple Music unless you have a Family subscription or the equivalent Apple One subscription, but you can still share your iCloud Music library and iTunes purchases. You can also share your iCloud storage, Apple Arcade, Apple TV+, iTunes movie purchases, App Store purchases, and Apple Books.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
When you use Family Sharing it will use the same payment method for everybody in your family. For younger users it’s a good idea to enable Ask To Buy; this means they can’t run up huge bills buying apps or in–app purchases without first receiving your express permission. It’s simple and works well: when someone wants to buy something, your iPhone, iPad, or Mac will display a notification with the appropriate App Store. The setting is on by default with a child’s account, but you’ll need to switch it on manually (Settings > Your Name > Family Sharing in iOS, or System Preferences > Family Sharing on Mac) for older members of your family.
If there’s any content you don’t want family members to share, such as scary movies, age–inappropriate TV shows, Norwegian death metal, or social media apps you don’t want them using, you can apply parental controls in Screen Time on a per–account basis. You can also disable purchase sharing altogether for specific people in the Family Sharing settings.