Apple Family Sharing plan: How to enable purchase sharing

One very convenient feature for Apple device users is family sharing for purchases and iCloud storage. When enabled for you and members of your family, everyone in the family group will be able to access and use the same apps, subscriptions, movies, and more that the owner of the group has already paid for. You could, for example, just pay for 1TB of iCloud storage for backups and let everyone in the family use it.

Do note that there are some limitations to this method of sharing, and we’ll go over these below.

How to enable Family Sharing

The process of setting up family sharing is very simple. First, open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad, tap ‘Family’ or your account name depending on whether the feature was enabled at some point or not, and then tap ‘Family Sharing’. If you’ve used the feature before, you should see a list of family members already listed and a little note indicating whether they’re adults or children or the organiser.

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Here you can tap the blue ‘+’ icon in the top right to add more members to the family group.

While you’re here, we’d also recommend tapping ‘Family Checklist’ and then setting up the following features:

1. Share your location:

This allows family members to track each other’s location when needed. This is useful for tracking older people such as grandparents, as well as for keeping track of young children.

2. Recovery contact:

This is useful to add if you get locked out of your account and need access to it again. This can happen when, say, your password gets phished or your phone gets stolen.

3. Add a legacy contact:

Enable this so one member of your family gets access to your device and account in the event of your death.

4. Emergency contacts:

Setting this up will also set up your medical ID with relevant information such as blood type, allergies, etc. In case of any emergency, these contacts will be contacted first alongside relevant authorities.

How to enable purchase sharing

You’ll see a Purchase Sharing option near the bottom of the Family Sharing page. This is an optional part of Family Sharing that you can enable when you have children in the family group, or when you’d like to be in charge of all the payments that your family makes via their Apple devices. 

When enabled, all apps, movies, and subscriptions that you purchase will be made available to the entire family. Additionally, any new purchases that need to be made will happen via your account as the organiser. In other words, all payments and subscriptions get centralised and everyone will have access to everything that the family purchased. If someone from the family group wishes to make their own purchases, they will need to exit the group.

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Do note that services like Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and iCloud can still be shared with family separately even when purchase sharing is disabled. Third-party apps that allow family sharing can also be shared in a similar fashion. Apps like Netflix or Prime Video do not use this system and you must be subscribed to the relevant family sharing plan to allow sharing of these apps.

Family Sharing and Purchase Sharing are convenient and useful for centralising and managing family expenses on Apple devices. They keep payments in check while still allowing everyone to enjoy their services to the fullest.