Apple Family Sharing - Is It Worth It?

A few years back Apple announced something called “Family Sharing” and it’s one of those features that isn’t front and center so I’m sure not many folks know about it. Family Sharing is pretty simple and has been around since iOS 8 (2014). It was refreshed by Apple to allow you (as the organizer) to add up to 5 family members to share access to your Apple services and subscriptions. Your family can share things such as Apple Music, Apple TV+, News+, Apple Arcade, and now even the Apple Card (with some rules). Not to mention nearly any subscription to other apps you may have, for example Noggin in our household.

At its absolute basics you share the following things amongst the family / group:

App Store purchases and subscriptions. A good example of this is we subscribe to the Noggin app (future post on that). Everyone in the family can see and use this subscription if they wanted.
Apple service subscriptions. These include but aren’t necessarily limited to Apple TV+, Apple Music, Apple News+, Apple Arcade, and iCloud+ storage and features.
Individual Locations (if opted in)
Shared Calendars
Shared Photo Albums

As much as Family Sharing focuses on sharing the products, it also holds up that good old Apple promise of privacy. So even though we share iCloud+ storage, we do not have visibility into each others photos, files, or documents. Also to the subscription sharing, you don’t see each others settings or preferences, so keeping a truly individual experience as it would be if each person subscribed.

Features for kids in the family include the following:

Purchase and Download approvals (even with free apps!)
Apple Cash for kids (haven’t used this yet, can’t speak to it)
Screen Time controls (managed by Parents / Guardians)
Setup Apple Watch for kids to use rather than having an iPhone. Allows them to make calls, send texts, and have location tracked (along with a few other features) without them needing said phone.

Hope this one is obvious, but if not, this is for Apple devices only. So family members with Android can not join (yet).

First off, it’s easy, but of course it is… it’s Apple. Prior to the Family Sharing refresh it was an in-person IT task to help family members with things like “my phone keeps saying it’s full and doesn’t have storage…”. As soon as Family Sharing updated to its current self I added my mother and grandparents to my account, this INSTANTLY removed many of their issues. Their phones were backing up again, they had room to save photos sent by the family, truly a quick win for this family techpert.

Adding in Apple One, Apple’s bundle of their services, Family Sharing just made everything among the family a lot easier. If you don’t know about Apple One I strongly suggest taking a look! Again, my grandparents now had Apple Music at their fingertips and they love it. My mom can enjoy Apple Fitness, Music, and Apple TV… you get the idea.

What I like most about family share is the screen time feature for my daughter. Her iPad (one of my old ones) had screen time on it prior but now I can see how much time she’s spending on specific apps right from my phone or computer. She doesn’t like it because my wife and I have set limits to things 😁. But the best part is if she tops out on something in a given day she can request more time, we use this as a “you can have 30 more min if you go clean up the playroom…” tool.

List of family member's with screen time monitoring — List of family member’s with screen time monitoring

Controls for kid's screen time — List of family member’s with screen time monitoring

There aren’t a lot of things that I dislike, but there are a few of note so here they are.

You have a max of 6 people in a group. If you have a large family, this limitation stinks. A solve I could see Apple doing is charging $.99 a month to add an additional user. I’m sure they did the math and that 6 people number doesn’t hurt the bottom line on subscriptions and such.
Purchase sharing…it’s a true love and hate here. So when purchase sharing is on, the organizers payment method is used for any purchase among the family on the App Store, iTunes, in app purchases, etc. For the most part this isn’t a huge deal, but for example my mom doesn’t like that I pay for her app purchases. It’s not a big deal but there have been moments when I know my mom needs help getting through a level on a game or something when I see I purchased some gems or something like that haha. There is a work around on the individual users phone but not something I can control as the organizer (this would be a nice feature to add).
No way to set limits on iCloud storage usage by member.
No way to hide purchases from family members. If I purchase a movie, everyone can see it. Where this is going to become an issues is with kiddos being able to watch them.

Well… it’s Free.

Is it worthwhile without adding on some of Apple’s services? Yes and no. Yes because you’ll get the location features, the kids Watch setup, sharing of existing and future purchases, calendars and photo albums. On the other hand I say no because the family might be missing out on some money savings by utilizing sharing subscriptions that might be duplicated or looking at bundles.

This is where I push you to check out Apple One and especially at a minimum the Family Plan. This comes in at $20 a month and gives everyone on Family Share the following: 200GB of iCloud+, Apple Music, Apple TV+, and Apple Arcade. For an extra $10 a month you can get Apple One Premier, iCloud+ jumps to 2TB and adds Apple News+ and Apple Fitness+. Our family utilizes Family Share with Apple One Premier so it costs me $30 a month.

My Final Thoughts – Is It Worth It?

If you have a household of Apple devices and multiple users it feels like a no-brainer especially with kids. As the organizer, this dad has come to really enjoy the features that come with it. Yes it has it’s gaps and could be better, with the refresh in the recent years it’s become a solid feature within Apple’s ecosystem compared to what it was once way back in 2014.

So with that said, YES it’s worth it!