Manage Family Sharing settings

Types of Family Sharing members

Members of a Family Sharing group can have different roles depending on their age.

• Organiser: An adult who sets up a Family Sharing group. The organiser can invite family members, remove family members and disband the group.

• Adult: A member of the Family Sharing group who’s 18 years or older.

• Parent/Guardian: An adult member of the Family Sharing group who can help manage parental controls for children in the group. When the organiser adds an adult to the Family Sharing group, they can designate them as a parent or guardian.

• Child or teen: A member of the Family Sharing group under the age of 18 years. The organiser, parent or guardian can create an Apple ID for a child who’s too young to create their own.

In your household one adult, the family organiser, chooses the features the family shares and invites up to five additional members to join. After the invitations are accepted, Family Sharing is set up on everyone’s devices automatically — including a shared calendar and shared photo album. The organiser can add anyone who has an Apple ID to their family and remove anyone over the age of 13 years from the family group.

You can check to see if you’re already part of a family in Settings > [your name]. If you see Set Up Family Sharing, you aren’t using Family Sharing with this Apple ID. If you see an icon with Family Sharing, you can tap the icon to see your family members and roles.

Removing family members

The organiser of a Family Sharing group can remove other members.

Also, any family member over the age of 13 years can remove themselves from a family group anytime. Just select your name and then select Leave Family. You can also sign in to the Apple ID website and choose Remove Account in the Family Sharing section.

For security reasons, a child (under 13 years) can’t remove their account from a family and can’t stop sharing details such as Screen Time without the Screen Time passcode. The organiser has access to shared family content on your device, such as shared photo albums and shared calendars, and can view Screen Time activity.

If a member is removed or leaves the Family Sharing group, they keep purchases paid for using the shared credit card but they immediately lose access to other things the family members share:

• Other family members’ items no longer appear in the Purchased section of the iTunes Store, the App Store or Apple Books.

• Protected (by copyright) music, movies, TV shows, books and apps you previously downloaded are no longer usable if someone else originally purchased them. Other family members can no longer use this content downloaded from your collection.

• In-app purchases become unavailable if you bought them using an app someone else originally purchased. You can regain access to the in-app purchases by purchasing the app.

• Family members’ device locations don’t appear when you use the Find My app on iCloud.com or on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

If Family Sharing is turned off

If the family organiser turns off Family Sharing, all family members are removed from the family group at once. If there are children aged under 13 years in the family group, you must transfer them to another family before you can disband yours.