How Family Sharing works
With Family Sharing, you and up to five other family members can share access to Apple services such as iCloud+, Apple Music, Apple TV and more. You can even help locate each other’s missing devices, share your location and manage a child's device with Screen Time and parental controls.
How to get started with Family Sharing
To set up Family Sharing, one adult — the family organiser — invites the other family members. When members join, they get access to the Family Sharing group’s subscriptions and content, as long as it's eligible for sharing. Each member uses their own Apple Account, so everyone’s experience is personalised and private.
Find out how to set up Family Sharing
How subscription and purchase sharing work
When you set up Family Sharing, eligible subscriptions can be shared with the entire family group, and some subscriptions are shared automatically. However, some subscriptions – such as iCloud+ – require additional steps in order to share with your family members.
Find out how to share iCloud+ with your Family Sharing group
When you share other subscriptions, such as Apple Music, Apple Fitness+ or Apple TV, each person will see their own preferences and recommendations. If you want to keep certain purchases private, you can hide individual items.
Find out how to add a family member to your subscriptions
When you turn on Purchase Sharing, everyone in the Family Sharing group gets access to the apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books family members buy. The content should automatically appear on the Purchased page in the App Store, iTunes Store, Apple Books or Apple TV app. Some items can't be shared.
Learn how to turn on Purchase Sharing
How to manage a child's device with Family Sharing and parental controls
The Family Sharing organiser or a parent/guardian, can create a Child Account for children in their Family Sharing group. With their own Child Account, a child can use their own device — and even make their own purchasing decisions. With Screen Time and parental controls, the organiser or parent/guardian can easily manage the child's device to help keep their experience safe, private, and age-appropriate. A Child Account is required for children under 13 and available for children up to 18.*
Learn how to create a Child Account for your child
Set up a device for your child
With Family Sharing, as the organiser, you can use Quick Start to set up a new iPhone or iPad for your child and customise Screen Time and parental controls. You can also set up a device for your child without using Quick Start.
Update your child's birthday and how they share their age with apps
As the Family Sharing organiser, you can update the birthday associated with your child's Apple Account. You can also allow them to share their age range with certain apps to help provide an age-appropriate experience within the app.
Use Screen Time and parental controls to approve requests and manage settings
With parental controls, you can manage the downloads and purchases your child makes, who they communicate with, the apps and content they access, and more. With Screen Time, there are additional settings and parental controls you can use to ensure your child's device is safe and age-appropriate.
Learn more about using parental controls to manage your child's devices
How to share locations and find devices
To help you stay coordinated, people in your Family Sharing group can share locations. And you can help other family members find their devices if they're missing.
Keep track of where everybody is
With Family Sharing, you can use the Find My app to automatically share your location with your family. If you need privacy, you can temporarily stop sharing your location.
Find a missing device
Your family members’ devices appear in the Find My app. This allows you to locate it, mark it as lost to protect the device and personal information or erase it if you believe it's permanently lost or stolen.
Find out how to locate a missing device or item with Find My
* Age varies by state, country or region. Find out how settings and features for kids vary by state, country or region.
