Hopefully the topic starter found their answers by now but I'd like to highlight some of my findings from today just in case anyone like me stumbles upon this thread looking for some guidance.
My scenario, in short: iCloud Family with 5 members, family organizer had to leave, needed to create a new family with 4 members and a new family organizer. iCloud+ 2TB shared by original family organizer, Apple Music shared by another member.
Friendly advice: backup your files first.
Family organizers cannot be changed as of iOS 17/18 or earlier
The only option is to disband the old family and start a new one. Either the family organizer can stop family sharing, or the member who wants to become the new family organizer can leave, then start a new family, then invite others one by one (I did this to test if it worked). You must first leave the old family before you join the new one.
Files were not lost in the period between subscriptions, a grace period seemingly does exist
It is always important to backup your files. That being said, I found today that no files or photos were lost in my process. For instance, one family member with 20+GBs of photos/files was removed from the old family, was therefore temporarily stuck with the 5GB plan, then joined the new family, no files lost. You apparently do get some grace period to upgrade storage. It is unclear to me how much time there is, as of writing the previously indicated 28 day grace period is no longer mentioned in the Apple.com support article. This ambiguity frustrated me to no end but thankfully it all went okay. I can only recommend getting this transition done on the same day.
Current wording in
Apple support article:
If you leave a family that shares an iCloud+ plan and you're using more than 5GB of storage, you can buy your own plan to continue using iCloud storage.
Old wording taken from
2019 StackExchange post:
If you leave a family that shares an iCloud storage plan and you're using more than 5GB of storage, you have 28 days to buy your own plan.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Some other findings
- I first tried to setup the new family and move members one by one. However one family member was not able to fully leave the family despite getting an email confirmation that they were removed successfully. When trying to join the new family it simply stated
"You are already part of a family. Go back to iCloud settings and tap on Family to review your family settings.". My solution in this case was to disband the old family completely from the original organizer account.
- Apple Music was shared by a family member who was not the organizer. After transferring this member to the new family the Apple Music subscription was not shared to others despite having enabled the sharing of that subscription in settings (made no sense to me). My solution was to simply start a new subscription from the new organizer account and cancel the existing plan. All music libraries of the individual members were restored (Music app offers you to 'sync libraries' which brought back the music).
- Turns out iCloud Shared Photo Library is not part of Family Sharing so this library was not affected by the changes, thankfully.
By the way, backup your files.
