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Question about Family Sharing/Shared IDs

spiderman0616

spiderman0616

Suspended
Original poster
Aug 1, 2010
5,670
7,502
Hi all--

I'm hoping some of you can give me some advice on a change I want to make with my family's Apple ID setup. Here's the situation:

My wife and I got iPhones long before there was such thing as family sharing. To avoid double purchases of music, books, apps, and other things, we just used the same Apple ID and of course were always careful to make sure we set up iMessage and FaceTime and things like that so that she only gets the calls and messages she's supposed to get and I only get the calls and messages I'm supposed to get.

The problem is that this is no longer an optimal way to use iOS. There are so many other devices and services in our house now, it just doesn't work well anymore. We have my son's iPad and iPod Touch on our shared family plan, and that setup works beautifully. He can use our Apple Music family plan and any apps or other items we've purchased (Other than in-app purchases), but has his own Apple ID.

So here's my question--how would it work if I had my wife log out of her devices, log in with her own ID, and then I added her to our family plan instead? My theory is that as soon as I added her back into the family share, her apps would all continue to work as-is, and I know from experience that her access to Apple Music will be fine. We share an iCloud calendar, so I would have to add her in to that share so that we can continue doing that. We are heavy users of the Home app for our Hue lights and some other smart devices too, but I know I can just share the Home out to her just like I do with my son's iPad.

Have any of you attempted this before? Are there any major drawbacks that I'm not thinking of? Would much appreciate any advice.
 
One of the gotcha's is your address book. Unfortunately, Apple hasn't included that in family sharing (hopefully they'll get that sorted one day soon).

This site actually offers a good workaround to get it setup using a shared iCloud account just for Contacts:
https://lenashore.com/2017/12/create-a-shared-family-address-book-with-contacts-and-icloud/

Hopefully Apple's worked around the purchased/shared toggle for app updates so they don't need to be reinstalled. You'll be able to verify this the first time you get app updates - see if she gets them or not. If you're prompted that this app was installed with a different Apple ID, then she'll need to reinstall it.

Oh...that is one more thing. Not all apps are family share-able I believe. Any apps that aren't, she won't get updates for. To update those apps, you'll likely need to sign out of the app store and sign back in with the prior apple ID. (or purchase them again on her own Apple ID, as the software vendor intends).
 
fischersd said:
One of the gotcha's is your address book. Unfortunately, Apple hasn't included that in family sharing (hopefully they'll get that sorted one day soon).

This site actually offers a good workaround to get it setup using a shared iCloud account just for Contacts:
https://lenashore.com/2017/12/create-a-shared-family-address-book-with-contacts-and-icloud/

Hopefully Apple's worked around the purchased/shared toggle for app updates so they don't need to be reinstalled. You'll be able to verify this the first time you get app updates - see if she gets them or not. If you're prompted that this app was installed with a different Apple ID, then she'll need to reinstall it.

Oh...that is one more thing. Not all apps are family share-able I believe. Any apps that aren't, she won't get updates for. To update those apps, you'll likely need to sign out of the app store and sign back in with the prior apple ID. (or purchase them again on her own Apple ID, as the software vendor intends).
Click to expand...
Ahhh--yes, thanks. That's the kind of stuff I'm looking for. We have a large family, and therefore a large address book. That might be another deal breaker.
 
spiderman0616 said:
Ahhh--yes, thanks. That's the kind of stuff I'm looking for. We have a large family, and therefore a large address book. That might be another deal breaker.
Click to expand...
I'd do that workaround on that link that I mentioned....it really is worthwhile to have everyone with their own Apple ID - it's only going to become more cumbersome (and possibly dysfunctional) to try to keep using a shared one as your primary.
 
Banglazed said:
I think this vid may provide some insight into your issue for app sharing.

Click to expand...
Thanks--yeah, this is more of a tutorial on how to set up family sharing. I do have experience with that as my son is on my family sharing setup now. I'm more looking for the snags that can happen (as in the Contacts issue mentioned above) that need workarounds or just simply don't work at all yet. Again, this is a bit of a unique situation, because it's taking devices off of my Apple ID and setting them up with their own and adding them back in via family sharing. They already have all the apps and services set up that they want to use, but I don't want it to be too much of a hassle for my wife.

I also realized today when looking around that I can't set the "All Photos" album as a shared album in family sharing. That's another thing that will bum my wife out, however the Contacts workaround might work the same way for photos.

Lots to think about here.
 
spiderman0616 said:
Ahhh--yes, thanks. That's the kind of stuff I'm looking for. We have a large family, and therefore a large address book. That might be another deal breaker.
Click to expand...
I'm in the same exact boat, except that my wife's account is Japanese and our pre-Family Sharing shared iTunes account is in the US iTMS. So we can basically never change our setup.

That said, I don't really see the need. We all just sign into our individual iCloud accounts for the "iCloud" side of things, and sign into the shared iTMS account for the Store side of things. It works fine.
 
My wife and I used the same Apple ID for years. I ended up setting her up with her own Apple ID so we would stop seeing each others phone calls, but she uses my ID for the App Store purchases and Music so she doesn't have to purchase them all over again.
 
I’ve had this same question/issue for a while as well. My concern would be progress lost in apps/games that we have in our existing one ID that would be lost if one of us switched to a new ID and had to redownload. Some games we’ve been playing for years!!
 
Beelzbub said:
My wife and I used the same Apple ID for years. I ended up setting her up with her own Apple ID so we would stop seeing each others phone calls, but she uses my ID for the App Store purchases and Music so she doesn't have to purchase them all over again.
Click to expand...
So when you set her up with her own ID and signed into her phone on that ID, did it make her re-download all the apps she had, or did it automatically recognize that those apps were shared and just let her proceed without any issues?
 
spiderman0616 said:
So when you set her up with her own ID and signed into her phone on that ID, did it make her re-download all the apps she had, or did it automatically recognize that those apps were shared and just let her proceed without any issues?
Click to expand...

No it did not make her download all those apps. At the time I just logged her out of iCloud with my ID, created a new one for her and logged in. Then in settings under the App Store settings, I verified my account was still being used, which it was.

I just got my wife an new iPad and did the exact same thing. Logged into iCloud with her account and the App Store with my account.
 
But, doesn't she have to manually log into the App Store then? (meaning that updates won't be automatic) You'd have to log in to check for updates.

Besides which - I think most apps are family-sharable.....
 
fischersd said:
But, doesn't she have to manually log into the App Store then? (meaning that updates won't be automatic) You'd have to log in to check for updates.

Besides which - I think most apps are family-sharable.....
Click to expand...

No. Everything works as normal. App Store uses one account, iCloud uses another. Her apps get updated just fine, I buy a song or an app and she has access to it without having to purchase it and vice versa. We have been doing this for about 3 or 4 years now. It started when she was traveling several years ago and I looked on my phone and had seen I had missed some phone calls, well turns out I wasn't missing them, but I was seeing all my wife's phone calls and vice versa. After about a month of dealing with this I just decided to setup her own iCloud account for her phone while still being able to use my account for the App Store. Its been working fine with zero issues.
 
Beelzbub said:
No. Everything works as normal. App Store uses one account, iCloud uses another. Her apps get updated just fine, I buy a song or an app and she has access to it without having to purchase it and vice versa. We have been doing this for about 3 or 4 years now. It started when she was traveling several years ago and I looked on my phone and had seen I had missed some phone calls, well turns out I wasn't missing them, but I was seeing all my wife's phone calls and vice versa. After about a month of dealing with this I just decided to setup her own iCloud account for her phone while still being able to use my account for the App Store. Its been working fine with zero issues.
Click to expand...
Wow. Surprised that works - figured iOS would kick the ID out every so often, as it isn't the primary. Makes you wonder why groups of friends don't just share an ID for the App Store so they can share purchases.
 
We set it up like you are asking and it works just fine for us. We used our old shared iTunes account as another member of the family, easy enough to view purchases on the old shared account and re-download any apps you want from it. Contacts are also easy enough to share amongst members, just highlight multiple ones right click and hit share. If you are on the phone you can share them easily enough too. Life was way better once we went to completely different accounts, then added our shared account as a member of the family. I would make sure the contact/profile info is accurate in the shared account login on https://appleid.apple.com. If it isn't specifically on a device you don't want 2 factor identification or one of the other settings preventing you from logging in to it in the future.
 
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