Family Sharing makes it easy for up to six people in your family to share each other’s iTunes, iBooks, and App Store purchases without sharing accounts. Pay for family purchases with the same credit card and approve kids’ spending right from a parent’s device. Share photos, a family calendar, and more to help keep everyone connected.

Getting set up is simple.

You can use Family Sharing on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iOS 8 or later, your Mac with OS X Yosemite or later and iTunes 12, or your PC with iCloud for Windows. 

· On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, go to Settings > iCloud, tap Set Up Family Sharing, then follow the onscreen steps.

· On your Mac, go to Apple menu > System Preferences > iCloud, click Set Up Family, then follow the onscreen steps.  

Get organized.

To get started, one adult in your household—the family organizer—invites up to five additional family members and agrees to pay for any iTunes, iBooks, and App Store purchases they initiate while part of the family group. Once family members join, the features of Family Sharing are set up on everyone’s devices automatically.

Send an invite                                                Family members join 

All your family’s purchases, on all your family’s devices.

Everything’s better when shared, and sharing has never been easier. After you set up Family Sharing, all the eligible songs, albums, movies, TV shows, books, and apps ever purchased by family members are immediately available to everyone else in the family. And, of course, so are new purchases. The content appears automatically in the Purchased tab in iTunes, iBooks, or the App Store for each family member. Just select the family member whose collection you’d like to browse, then download and play the content you choose. Other family members can access your collection in the same way. If you want to keep some purchases private, you can choose to hide individual items.

An Apple Music membership for everyone in your family.

With an Apple Music family membership, up to six people in your family can enjoy unlimited access to Apple Music on their devices. Everyone gets full, individual access to the Apple Music library,expert recommendations, 24/7 worldwide radio with Beats 1, and unlimited skips on all other curated radio stations. It’s the whole world of music for the whole family.

Making purchases is easy. So is setting limits.

All new iTunes, iBooks, and App Store purchases initiated by family members will be billed to the family organizer’s account. But the organizer can still call the shots. Just turn on Ask to Buy for children in the family. When a child initiates a purchase, an alert is sent to the organizer, who can review the item and approve or decline it right from the organizer’s device. This applies to both purchases and free downloads.

They ask to buy.

Before your children can make a purchase, they must ask your permission.

You reply from anywhere.

A notification appears on your device. You can review the request, then approve or decline it.

The whole family can contribute to the family photo album.

Now collecting and sharing family memories is easier and more fun. When Family Sharing is turned on, a shared album is set up automatically in the Photos app on all family members’ devices. Then everyone can add photos, videos, and comments to the album and be notified when something new is added. You can add or view photos and videos from iPhoto on your Mac, and from Photos on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iOS 7 or later.

Now it’s easy to be one of those organized families.

Family Sharing creates a family calendar where everyone can view, add, or change events and appointments, and they can also get an alert when something changes. And anyone can use the Reminders app to send time or location reminders to the family. So when it’s picture day, pizza night, or just a trip to the beach, everyone’s in the know.

Keep track of where everybody is.

When you join a Family Sharing group, you can start sharing your location with the rest of the family automatically. If you’re running late to a restaurant or need to know if your kid made it to band practice, just use Find My Friends or the Messages app on iOS 8 or later to keep tabs on each other. If you need privacy, you can temporarily stop sharing your location by disabling the Share My Location switch in iCloud settings.

Find everybody’s devices.

Finding your family’s lost devices is even easier now that everyone can help. With Family Sharing and Find My iPhone, any family member can help locate another member’s missing device. Their devices appear in a single list in the Find My iPhone app on iCloud.com on any Mac or Windows computer, or on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. So it’s easier than ever to track down a misplaced or stolen iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

Kids under 13 can have an account, too.

Now kids under 13 can have their own Apple IDs. As a parent or legal guardian, the family organizer can create an Apple ID for a child and add the child to the family group automatically. Ask to Buy is turned on by default, and the organizer can also limit the content kids have access to on their devices through Restrictions on an iOS device or parental controls in OS X and iTunes.

Learn more.

Family Sharing requires a personal Apple ID signed in to iCloud and iTunes 12. Music, movies, TV shows, and books can be downloaded on up to 10 devices per account, five of which can be computers. iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite or later are required to set up or join a Family Sharing group and are recommended for full functionality. Not all content is eligible for Family Sharing. Content can be hidden by family members; hidden content is not available for download. Content downloaded from family members or acquired via redemption codes is not subject to Ask to Buy.