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'Family Sharing' on iOS 8 is a steaming pile of yuck

S

saintforlife

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 25, 2011
1,046
329
Do yourself a favor and don't turn it on or enable it. You'll regret it. The implementation is atrocious. I wonder who Apple outsourced the QA to.

I added my wife as a family member. But now she can't download any of the apps that I have already downloaded. It first says "A family member has already purchased this item. To download it again for free, select OK". When you press OK, it gives some "Redownload Unavailable with This Apple ID - This redownload is not available for this Apple ID either because it was bought by a different user or the ten was refunded or cancelled". Well no s***? Of course I have already bought it and now my wife wants to download it on to her new phone. Mind you these not not paid apps that are giving the error, but apps such as Facebook, Youtube, Hangouts and such.

Resarting the iPhone or removing her from family sharing didn't help. There is nothing I can do to download simple and basic apps like Whatsapp and Hangouts on her phone. Without these she won't use her phone. Needlessly to say, her experience with her first ever iPhone is leaving a lot to be desired. What a bunch of BS. I look so stupid now trying to get her to switch from Android to iOS because you know "everything just works so well on the iPhone and there are hardly any noticeable bugs".

#ItJustWorksNOT
 
Last edited:
saintforlife said:
Do yourself a favor and don't turn it on or enable it. You'll regret it. The implementation is atrocious. I wonder who Apple outsourced the QA to.

I added my wife as a family member. But now she can't download any of the apps that I have already downloaded. It first says "A family member has already purchased this item. Press OK to download it for free again". When you press OK, it gives some "Redownload Unavailable with This Apple ID error because it was bought by a different user or the item was refunded or cancelled". Well no ****? Of course I have already bought it.

Resarting the iPhone or removing her from family sharing didn't help. There is nothing I can do to download simple and basic apps like Whatsapp and Hangouts on her phone. Without these she won't use her phone. Needlessly to say, her experience with her first ever iPhone is leaving a lot to be desired. What a bunch of BS. I look so stupid now trying to get her to switch from Android to iOS because you know "everything just works so well on the iPhone and there are hardly any noticeable bugs".

#ItJustWorksNOT
Click to expand...

I enthusiastically second this. It's not ready at all.
 
Try getting her to download a random free app that you haven't downloaded before. It should start working after that (at least it did for me).
 
her is a new account, so try to download one free app from her account first?
 
I am also having this issue with our kids' iPods. I got around the lack any 'family sharing' in previous iOS releases by having my Apple ID entered for the App Store account on the kids' iPods. I would have to approve any purchases by entering my password (or not).

Then we updated to iOS 8. We signed up for family share and they now have their own IDs in the App Store. The problem is that Any previously downloaded content (from my ID) cannot be updated. Get the same error as OP. Frustrating, for sure. Every app is being updated right now for the new iOS. The kids have downloaded new apps successfully, while trying out the approve and decline features. But still can't update.
 
AustinIllini said:
Congratulations. My mac answers calls and so does my phone (obviously). My iPad doesn't do anything.
Click to expand...

The reply was to insinuate that that handoff was not set up properly. Check the forum or iOS handbook in iBooks and you'll be able to set it up in less than a couple minutes.
 
Carlanga said:
her is a new account, so try to download one free app from her account first?
Click to expand...
The problem is it won't. Even after I removed her from 'Family Sharing' and restarting her phone, it still gives the same error. It is pretty pathetic that Apple pushed this out with such a major bug. I am beyond annoyed.

----------
MonstaMash said:
Try getting her to download a random free app that you haven't downloaded before. It should start working after that (at least it did for me).
Click to expand...
Tried that, tried restarting her phone. Nothing works. It is pretty awful situation to be going through this on a new phone. My wife refuses to use the new iPhone 6 because Whataspp, Facebook and Hangouts are her 3 most frequently used apps.
 
Ok. Go into iTunes settings and log out of her account there. then log back in.

BTW Handoff has nothing to do with phone call sharing. That setting is under FaceTime as iPhone Cellular Calls and uses the FaceTime account to share phone calls.
 
I just found out family sharing doesn't work if you try to add someone that belongs to another country in their app store settings. Maybe if I change it back to Australia then setup it up? Anyone else had any luck with this type of setup?
 
I ran into several issues with this system.

1) Not everyone uses credit cards. I got my 6 Plus with my debit card issued by my bank and I buy everything either with a debit or cash.

You can't create an Apple account for your child under 13 without having a credit card linked to your account. I don't have nor ever plan to get a credit card. The whole point is there is no confirmation on purchases for adults, I didn't want potential issues. Long story short, I had to create accounts for my under 13 aged children as 13, which allowed me to proceed and set it so they require approved.

2) After all is said and done it't intuitive. If I search for say Angry Birds. It's not smart enough see that someone else in my family already purchased it.

I literally have to go to the purchases tab, select the family members name and search in the search box under their name on that page. Not the search in the top right as only one search is limited to their purchases. Granted for an adult this is not an issue, but I wanted to try to simplify the process for my children.

3) Redownload Unavailable with This Apple ID error because it was bought by a different user or the item was refunded or cancelled. At this point I just said LMAO :D

I'm just tweaking my original process and will be done with it.

I'm giving the kids their own iCloud accounts so we can facetime and imessage them. purchases will remain shared in a single account.

Just needed to vent :D
 
I had some issues figuring it out, mainly where I could see old purchases. But after a little time, the system seemed to work and I could see purchases between three accounts on iPads, iPhones and Apple TVs.

The flaw I see is I can't figure out how to just stream a movie or song on an iPad or iPhone like I can on an Apple TV. I can download it, but that will waste a lot of time and isn't how I want to share stuff. I'm sure it can be changed in the future,but I hope that's coming soon. The Apple TV implementation is much better.
 
Family Sharing has been a nightmare for me. No idea how someone thought it was ready to go live. They probably should have held it back a month and fixed it like they did most of iOS 8's other features.
 
There's another problem is that iCloud storage that was previously shared with my child for iPhone backups is not available to her now that she has her own Apple id. Which means that now I have to spend extra money because apparently the storage space you have can't be shared between apple ids.
 
SOLUTION:
1) Delete the Apps that you are having problems with (I assume you already did that)
2) SIGN OUT of your (wife's) iTunes & App Store account on the phone where see the error
3) SIGN BACK IN with the same account under Settings > iTunes & App Store

This worked for me after I started to see the same issue upon activation of Family Sharing. Odly all those (free) apps had disappeared from both of our purchase histories and could not be downloaded again. However, a sign-out & immediate sign-in on the iTunes & App-Store settings section of the troubles iPhone resolved everything :)
 
Having the same issue after joining my GF's account to mine. Had her try downloading another free app and signing out and back in. No luck.

We have not tried deleting the apps and doing that. May try that next.
 
saintforlife said:
Do yourself a favor and don't turn it on or enable it. You'll regret it. The implementation is atrocious. I wonder who Apple outsourced the QA to.

I added my wife as a family member. But now she can't download any of the apps that I have already downloaded. It first says "A family member has already purchased this item. To download it again for free, select OK". When you press OK, it gives some "Redownload Unavailable with This Apple ID - This redownload is not available for this Apple ID either because it was bought by a different user or the ten was refunded or cancelled". Well no s***? Of course I have already bought it and now my wife wants to download it on to her new phone. Mind you these not not paid apps that are giving the error, but apps such as Facebook, Youtube, Hangouts and such.

Resarting the iPhone or removing her from family sharing didn't help. There is nothing I can do to download simple and basic apps like Whatsapp and Hangouts on her phone. Without these she won't use her phone. Needlessly to say, her experience with her first ever iPhone is leaving a lot to be desired. What a bunch of BS. I look so stupid now trying to get her to switch from Android to iOS because you know "everything just works so well on the iPhone and there are hardly any noticeable bugs".

#ItJustWorksNOT
Click to expand...

It's opt-in for the developers. They need to enable it or else it won't work. Sounds frustrating at the moment.
 
Does anyone know what happens if you use a shared computer and the same OSX iTunes to sync/backup. OSX Itunes store has to be logged in. How does it reconcile being attached to a device logged in with a different itunes id while performing a sync or backup?

In the past, I have had issues if, on the computer, I logged out of my US account to check out foreign stores, and forgot to log back into my US account before syncing again. This would often mess up my iphone itunes and require a relogin.
 
179202 said:
It's opt-in for the developers. They need to enable it or else it won't work. Sounds frustrating at the moment.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing these developers have just overlooked the feature so far. I can't imagine what advantage they have to leave it disabled on a free app such as CNN and HopStop.
 
Geckotek said:
I'm guessing these developers have just overlooked the feature so far. I can't imagine what advantage they have to leave it disabled on a free app such as CNN and HopStop.
Click to expand...

It's not for the free apps family sharing is useful, it is for the paid apps, and the possibility not to have to paid for them twice. And since in app purchases are not shared... user get screwed.

While at first it seemed like this family sharing function was useful/practical for the end user, it seems Apple is only trying to put an end to the savings we were enjoying by sharing app purchases within a family.

pile of yuck indeed....
 
jon2690 said:
It's not for the free apps family sharing is useful, it is for the paid apps, and the possibility not to have to paid for them twice.
Click to expand...

I realize this...which is why it's absurd that several free apps still have Family Sharing disabled. They are the source of the problem for a lot of us.
 
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