Staying connected and managing digital life for your family can be streamlined and efficient with Apple Family Share. This powerful feature allows you and up to five family members to seamlessly share access to a wide range of Apple services and features, from entertainment to essential cloud storage. Discover how Family Share can simplify your family’s digital world, enhance connectivity, and provide robust parental controls, all while ensuring everyone enjoys a personalized and private experience.
Unlock a World of Shared Benefits: Subscriptions, Purchases, and iCloud+
Apple Family Share revolves around the concept of a family organizer, typically an adult in the household, who sets up and manages the group. Once family members are invited and join, they gain immediate access to shared subscriptions and content that are eligible for sharing. Importantly, each member uses their individual Apple ID, ensuring personal preferences and privacy are maintained across all services.
Setting up Family Sharing is straightforward and can be initiated from your Apple device’s settings.
Set up Family Sharing
Share the Fun: Apple Subscriptions for Everyone
Apple offers a rich ecosystem of subscription services catering to diverse interests. With Family Sharing, the whole family can enjoy these services without the need for individual subscriptions, offering significant cost savings and convenience. These shareable subscriptions include:
- Apple Music: Immerse yourselves in a vast library of music, personalized playlists, and live radio.
- Apple TV+: Dive into critically acclaimed original series and films, family-friendly entertainment, and more.
- Apple Arcade: Access a growing library of premium games with no ads or in-app purchases, perfect for all ages.
- Apple Fitness+: Stay active and healthy with a variety of workout routines led by expert trainers, suitable for all fitness levels.
- Apple News+: Stay informed with access to leading newspapers and magazines.
- iCloud+: Expand your digital storage and enjoy enhanced privacy features like iCloud Private Relay, Hide My Email, and HomeKit Secure Video support, all shared amongst the family.
Consider Apple One to bundle many of these subscriptions together for even greater value and simplified billing. Furthermore, certain subscriptions acquired within apps from the App Store can also be shared with your family group.
Learn how to add a family member to your subscription
Purchase Sharing: Apps, Music, and More at Your Fingertips
Purchase sharing extends beyond subscriptions, allowing family members to access apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books purchased by anyone in the group. Once enabled, purchased content automatically becomes accessible on the “Purchased” page within the App Store, iTunes Store, Apple Books, or Apple TV app. This shared library eliminates the need to repurchase apps or media if another family member already owns it. Note that some specific items may not be eligible for sharing due to licensing restrictions.
Turn on purchase sharing
Privacy First: Maintaining Personal Space within Family Sharing
While sharing is central to Family Share, Apple prioritizes individual privacy. When sharing iCloud+, family members cannot access each other’s personal files, photos, or documents. Similarly, with shared subscriptions like Apple Music, Apple Fitness+, or Apple TV+, each user maintains their own personalized preferences, recommendations, and viewing history, ensuring a tailored experience for everyone. For purchase sharing, if you prefer to keep certain purchases private, you have the option to hide individual items from family access.
Want to keep purchases private? You can hide individual items.
Family Share for Families with Children: Safety and Management Tools
Apple Family Share provides robust tools designed specifically for families with children, enabling parents and guardians to create a safe and age-appropriate digital environment.
Apple Accounts for Children: Empowering Kids with Independence and Safety
Parents or guardians can easily create Apple IDs for children under 13* within their Family Share group. This grants children their own dedicated Apple accounts, allowing them to use their own devices, personalize their experience, and even make purchasing decisions within parental guidelines. Parental controls are integral, enabling setup of age-appropriate content restrictions, Screen Time limits, and more.
Create an Apple Account for your child
* Age varies by country or region.
Ask to Buy: Managing Children’s Purchases with Parental Approval
For enhanced control over children’s spending, the “Ask to Buy” feature provides a crucial layer of oversight. When enabled, any attempt by a child to download or purchase apps, movies, or other content triggers a notification sent to the family organizer. The organizer can then review the request and approve or decline it directly from their device, ensuring informed purchasing decisions.
Set up Ask to Buy
Apple Cash Family: Introducing Financial Literacy in a Safe Environment
Apple Cash Family extends the convenience of Apple Pay to younger family members. Children and teens can send and receive money within Messages and Wallet, and make purchases using Apple Pay. Parents can set up recurring allowances, send funds directly, and monitor and limit spending, fostering financial literacy and responsible money management within a controlled environment. Family members under 18 can also participate in Apple Card Family, expanding financial opportunities within the family group.
Set up Apple Cash Family
Screen Time: Promoting Healthy Digital Habits
Screen Time offers powerful tools to monitor and manage children’s device usage. Parents can track app usage, website visits, and overall device time. Activity reports provide insights into digital habits, and time limits can be set for specific apps or categories, encouraging balanced screen time. Furthermore, designating another family member as a parent/guardian allows for shared responsibility in guiding children’s device use.
Set up Screen Time for your child
Apple Watch for Kids: Staying Connected and Safe
For school-aged children without iPhones, setting up an Apple Watch offers a valuable way to stay connected. Children can make calls, send messages, and share their location directly from their Apple Watch. The Schooltime feature helps minimize distractions during school hours, promoting focus and learning.
Set up a child’s Apple Watch
Quick Start for Kids’ Devices: Simplified Setup with Parental Controls
Setting up a new Apple device for a child is made easier than ever with Quick Start. If both your device and your child’s new device are running iOS 16 or later or iPadOS 16 or later, Quick Start automates the setup process, automatically applying your preferred parental control settings to the child’s new device, ensuring a consistent and safe experience from the outset.
Set up a child’s device with Quick Start
Location Sharing and Find My: Enhancing Family Coordination and Security
Family Share extends beyond digital content, offering practical features to enhance family coordination and device security.
Location Sharing: Staying in Sync and Connected
Location sharing within Family Share, powered by the Find My app, allows family members to automatically share their locations with each other. This feature promotes coordination for family activities, provides peace of mind knowing where loved ones are, and can be temporarily disabled for privacy when needed.
Get started sharing your location
Find My Devices: Never Lose Track of Essential Devices
The Find My app becomes even more powerful with Family Share. All family members’ devices are visible within the app, simplifying the process of locating a misplaced or stolen iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, or Mac. This shared visibility provides an added layer of security and peace of mind for the entire family.
Find a missing device or item
Apple Family Share offers a comprehensive suite of features designed to simplify digital life for families, enhance connectivity, and provide robust parental controls. From sharing entertainment and services to managing finances and ensuring device security, Family Share empowers families to navigate the digital world together, safely and efficiently.
