Digital Touch and Family Sharing - Issues

[dandrewk]

My wife and I have watches, but our three sons do not. All of us share an Apple ID for family sharing.

When sending a digital touch, the watch identifies all of us as having watches. If I send a touch message to any of my sons it simply goes to my wife. It gets a bit confusing when I send a touch message to my wife, as on her watch it shows it coming from my middle son. Occasionally I get a sent digital touch echoed back to my own watch.

I had something similar with AirDrop, but I fixed the contact lists and deleted duplicated email addresses. Now it works great. But this does nothing for Digital Touch.

Anybody else?

 

[fischersd]

My wife and I have watches, but our three sons do not. All of us share an Apple ID for family sharing.

When sending a digital touch, the watch identifies all of us as having watches. If I send a touch message to any of my sons it simply goes to my wife. It gets a bit confusing when I send a touch message to my wife, as on her watch it shows it coming from my middle son. Occasionally I get a sent digital touch echoed back to my own watch.

I had something similar with AirDrop, but I fixed the contact lists and deleted duplicated email addresses. Now it works great. But this does nothing for Digital Touch.

Anybody else?

Umm...family sharing means that you can add everyone to a group to be able to share iTunes and App store purchases. You can EACH have your own Apple ID (as it should be).

 

[dandrewk]

Umm...family sharing means that you can add everyone to a group to be able to share iTunes and App store purchases. You can EACH have your own Apple ID (as it should be).

Umm... yeah, which is exactly the way we have it. I am clear on the difference between iTunes passwords and Apple IDs.

BTW, a friend of mine has the same setup with the same Digital Touch issue. Non family friends in my Watch list that do not have watches are correctly identified as such.

Minor problem, but it seems it is a bug.

 

[fischersd]

He has the same setup and has the same issue. Shouldn't that tell you something?

"All of us share an Apple ID for family sharing"

If this apple ID is listed as the apple id on more than one of these devices, then, yep, things are going to get confused.

You should also ensure that only one of you has that apple id associated with them in your contacts list.

 

[dandrewk]

It really doesn't tell me anything except this "bug" is not an isolated instance.

There are no duplicate email Apple ID addresses in my contact list. This is used ONLY for iTunes/App Store. A search of my Apple ID in the contact list yields zero results.

As mentioned, I had this mis-identification when AirDrop went live, and it was because the Apple ID was listed as an alternate email in some contacts. Removing those fixed the problem.

If I had to guess, the WatchOS is using Apple ID to identify family members, when it should be using the iCloud ID. As it stands now, all of my contacts are correct.

 

[mynameisjosh]

We went through the same issue. Every single family member needs their own Apple ID in order to use the Digital Touch feature of the Apple Watch. We had to create new Apple IDs and add them to the family sharing.

 

[J.gerbes]

My wife and I have watches, but our three sons do not. All of us share an Apple ID for family sharing.

When sending a digital touch, the watch identifies all of us as having watches. If I send a touch message to any of my sons it simply goes to my wife. It gets a bit confusing when I send a touch message to my wife, as on her watch it shows it coming from my middle son. Occasionally I get a sent digital touch echoed back to my own watch.

I had something similar with AirDrop, but I fixed the contact lists and deleted duplicated email addresses. Now it works great. But this does nothing for Digital Touch.

Anybody else?

That's a really odd issue. I'm not getting the same fault, and I have a similar family sharing setup

 

[dandrewk]

We went through the same issue. Every single family member needs their own Apple ID in order to use the Digital Touch feature of the Apple Watch. We had to create new Apple IDs and add them to the family sharing.

Yes, and it was something we did several months ago when iCloud/Family Sharing became available. The issue may be that not everyone in our Family Plan has a watch.

If it works for AirDrop, it should work for Digital Touch.

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That's a really odd issue. I'm not getting the same fault, and I have a similar family sharing setup

Just to be clear - do all members of your Family Sharing have Apple Watches? And if not, do those -without- watches have the Digital Touch option in your Watch's friends list?

 

[jfischetti]

My son and I are having the same issue. Whenever I send a DT message to him I receive it as well. I also see them over again if I ever try to send a new one.

Additionally my wife and daughter who don't have watches show that I can send them DT messages.

We all have different Apple IDs but are all linked with iCloud Family Sharing.

This is definitely a bug and I will be letting a Apple know thru Feedback page.