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Finally gave up on family sharing
- Thread starter qtrim
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I was planning to get this working over the festive break, at the moment my wife and youngest are login into my iTunes account.
I've not been hit by anything really big (70p every now and again for Candy Crush IAPs), and they alway ask.
Has it been hard for people to get this all sorted?
Do purchases cross iTunes accounts (youngest has minecraft bought on my account, would it appear on hers if she switched)?
I've not been hit by anything really big (70p every now and again for Candy Crush IAPs), and they alway ask.
Has it been hard for people to get this all sorted?
Do purchases cross iTunes accounts (youngest has minecraft bought on my account, would it appear on hers if she switched)?
Huh? I was asking for help or specific issues he encountered if the OP is willing to provide it.
I was giving attitude.
Not at you, in agreement, regarding how it's often like pulling teeth getting information regarding 'issues'.
It was very easy for my wife and I to merge into a family, we had separate accounts before, and now have easier access to each other apps and music.
It was tough to merge my father and step mother. Her devices already used his AppleID for store, so deauthenticating that, and re authenticating hers confused things. Required basically restarting her fresh.
I like it and use it, but I wish it was more. I wish my wife could use my iTunes Match with Family Sharing. I also wish I could switch family members on iTunes itself without being lock out (unable to log back in after the other) of the previous account for 90 days. If they are both part of the same Family Sharing account, it shouldn't matter.
- Enabled family sharing
- Added Wife
- All the songs/movies she's every purchased I now have access to and vice versa.
- Any purchases she makes is charged on my card.
Works as intended on iOS 8.1.1
- Added Wife
- All the songs/movies she's every purchased I now have access to and vice versa.
- Any purchases she makes is charged on my card.
Works as intended on iOS 8.1.1
I have family sharing on me and my fiancé. It was up and running within 20 minutes. It has worked flawlessly for both of us. music, movies, tv shows, books, apps, everything works.
And how do I get to approve it? Do I enter my password on their iPad? Do I get an email asking me to approve their purchase? Do I get a popup on my iPhone asking me to approve their purchase?
I'm working on setting up family sharing for my family and right now and there are really two issues that I'm having issues with.
First, I usually get itunes gift cards when they go on sale and charge all my itunes purchases to the gift cards, but with family sharing they have it set up so everyone uses their own gift cards exclusively. If I, as the family organizer have itunes credit on my account and someone else in the family makes a purchase it's still charged to my credit card, rather than the itunes credit I have available. If someone has their own itunes credit on their account, then it's charged to that credit before it's charged to my card.
I can understand why they might have done this, but it's still a pain. The workaround is to make sure that everyone in the family has their own itunes credit bought at a discount, but this means that I need to maintain gift cards on 5 separate accounts rather than just one.
The other issue is this. When my kids want to download a new app the ask to purchase feature works great. My wife and I get a notification and we can approve or deny it. However, if they want to download an app (free or otherwise) that someone in the family has already purchased then they are allowed to do so without having to get permission. There are some apps that my wife and I have purchased that we don't want the kids to be able to download, but the way it works now, they can download those without permission.
I'm still playing around with this one a bit, but right now the solution seems to be to hide the purchases that we don't want them to be able to download without asking. (In the app store on the phone, go to purchases, then my purchases, then find the items you don't want your kids to be able to download and swipe to the left and click on 'hide') This seems to work, but obviously requires us to be diligent in searching through all of our purchases to make sure we hide everything we don't want to be downloaded and we also need to remember to hide any new apps that we purchase and download.
First, I usually get itunes gift cards when they go on sale and charge all my itunes purchases to the gift cards, but with family sharing they have it set up so everyone uses their own gift cards exclusively. If I, as the family organizer have itunes credit on my account and someone else in the family makes a purchase it's still charged to my credit card, rather than the itunes credit I have available. If someone has their own itunes credit on their account, then it's charged to that credit before it's charged to my card.
I can understand why they might have done this, but it's still a pain. The workaround is to make sure that everyone in the family has their own itunes credit bought at a discount, but this means that I need to maintain gift cards on 5 separate accounts rather than just one.
The other issue is this. When my kids want to download a new app the ask to purchase feature works great. My wife and I get a notification and we can approve or deny it. However, if they want to download an app (free or otherwise) that someone in the family has already purchased then they are allowed to do so without having to get permission. There are some apps that my wife and I have purchased that we don't want the kids to be able to download, but the way it works now, they can download those without permission.
I'm still playing around with this one a bit, but right now the solution seems to be to hide the purchases that we don't want them to be able to download without asking. (In the app store on the phone, go to purchases, then my purchases, then find the items you don't want your kids to be able to download and swipe to the left and click on 'hide') This seems to work, but obviously requires us to be diligent in searching through all of our purchases to make sure we hide everything we don't want to be downloaded and we also need to remember to hide any new apps that we purchase and download.
Question for you guys: if my wife navigates to purchases -> my purchases, the apps all say get. Buy if she goes directly to one of these apps, they show the price. With family sharing, does one have to download apps via the purchased section? If she downloads the app after navigating directly to it, where the button shows a price, will her account her charged?
Movie Streaming
Is there any way for the person who didn't purchase the movie to stream it. I can stream it in Videos but the kids have to download every movie they want to watch. I wish it was like Vudu sharing, any help would be much appreciated.
Is there any way for the person who didn't purchase the movie to stream it. I can stream it in Videos but the kids have to download every movie they want to watch. I wish it was like Vudu sharing, any help would be much appreciated.
no, which is daft surely.
but the biggie for me is iTunes match
plus a more understandable but still annoying one is accounts from other countries. we have always used my account for portuguese iTunes, for all purchases, and my wife has a uk account without a card attached, for things like bbc iplayer, and other uk only apps.
i had to convert her account to a portuguese one to add it to family sharing, and having realised that theres no benefit (to me) of family sharing ill convert it back.
i think for kids, family sharing sounds great. it makes it easy for kids to buy stuff whilst protecting the adults, so its much better than using different logins.
for adults who both have lots of purchases before they got together, its much easier than swapping logins, but only if you now want to use the same payment card, which a lot of people won't.
for everyone else, if you haven't got iTunes match then its going to sound like a good idea, but not actually benefit you. you could just as easily login as them for 5 mins and download their apps, and this means you still get their in app purchases, and can still purchase separately. if you now want to purchase together then just use one login from now on for buying, and the other persons login only when you want any of their previous purchases.
and if you have iTunes match its a no go.
we are back to the old fashioned idea, my mac, iPad and phone are logged in as me for everything, and my wife as her for iCloud and me for iTunes. works great.