How to configure iCloud for a family

HELP 😟

My case is very similar, but I still haven't found all solutions in the threads yet... 😕

I have a MobileMe family pack, where two sub-accounts for email exist (for family members).

One is no problem - can switch to an individual iCloud solution - but the other one.... ugh.

We have oodles of gadgets: 2 iMacs, a Macbook, an iPad, 2 iPods, 2 iPhones which we both use (OK - whose are one each, not shared) - we have a main account with an AppleID and a subaccount (partner@me.com) which is just used for Email (Mail programm has both set up and can send/receive from either/both, as well as our gmx and yahoo accounts) - everything else via the main account. Now I'm worried, if I move my sub to a separate main - what will we lose?

We use one AppleID for the household - one ID for calendars (multiple ones like "main - work", "partner - work", ""both of us - private" - but all shared with full read/write/sync capabilities) for address book (also here, multiple lists like "main - work", "partner - work", ""both of us - private" - but all shared with full read/write/sync capabilities), for pictures, for music (tons and tons of music - some purchased through iTunes for this one AppleID, some from Amazon, etc) and - also for our two iPhones. In other words, we share everything, including apps. If we set up both iPhones with different AppleIDs, I'd need to repurchase (50-60) apps for the second AppleID, wouldn't I? That's ugh#1 on my list right now, which has prevented me from even attempting to migrate the subaccount (partner@me.com) from MobileMe to iCloud....

How did you manage to set kids up for iCloud? I tried and got flagged that there was a minimum age requirement. We have an extra iPad that I would like to set up for messaging to them when my wife or I is not at home. It's my old iPad so right now - messages to me are showing up on it as well as my new one. I do not want my messages showing up there ... I want messages for my kids showing up there.

You either create their accounts under your name and age as you are the parent.

Or just lie about their age to Apple. You will be responsible for what they do withbit anyhow when tehy are still underaged.

Hi all, we are having problems too, this seems way more complicated than it should be! we have brought a new iPad an are struggling to get our iPhones to back up onto the iPad we set up a joint iCloud account an changed our phones to reflect this an we are using the same iTunes account on our phones an iPad. I attempted to back up an it comes up with an error messages failing to back up an I have also lost all my contacts during this process.... Any tips or ideas on the easiest an best way to get this working? Any help is appreciated!

In principle I do not see a way to delete all contacts or events in your iCloud on an iPAD. So I guess the data is not gone.

You had an iPhone before. On that device you used an Apple-id. If you used that iPhone to set contacts and events in iCloud then they should still be there. You can login via a PC/Mac on www.icloud.com to verify.

If you set a new Apple-id on the iPAD then it is logical that it is not seeing any of that data.

If you want to access data of more than 1 apple-id on the iPAD then this is possible too.

In the settings (analogue for iPhone and iPAD) there is an iCloud tab.

Here you set the master apple-id for that device. Photostream and find-my... can only be setup using this id.

You can choose to set also contacts or other stuff.

Below the iCloud setting there is the setting 'E-mail, contacts...'.

Here you can add secondary apple-ids. For instance set the apple-id of your partner here.

You can then choose whether contacts.... is to be visible on the iPAD from your partner as well.

Besides another iCloud account you can also set other types of accounts here.

But remember that the iPAD is seen by Apple as a personal device and not as one that is chared between family members. That is probably the reason why this is not so obvious.

I don't know what you mean with backup. As the backup function of the iPhone or iPAD will only backup what apps you have installed and possible some settings for these apps. If you use iCloud for contacts then these contacts are not part of the backup. They are already in the cloud.

So the settings on each device for backup are independent from each-other. Both your iPhone and iPad will use space in the backup for the master Apple-id (if they use the same id). But they will not overwrite nor share each others backup information via this backup.

Um. Just create an iCloud account for the family.

Add the iCloud account as a mail in Mail Contacts and Settings. Now you have two iCloud accounts on your iPhone. Set the information you want to share.

You can only have one account with Find my iPhone on

Wait until you have multiple children - how do you provide them with access to your family photos, manage what is on each device in the house and allow family members (not all families can afford an iPad for each family member) specific access.

Yes you have to individually manage every one of the accounts on every Mac you have. And you have to have a device for each family member.

You'll probably also notice that creating a famliy account still requires an individual's name and address to accept the terms and conditions. So if that family member leaves (or passes which is sad but unfortunately one of the problems here), the T&Cs are now invalidated and you don't own the content associated with that Id.

How are you going to deal with that situation?

The old MobileMe family account worked quite well. iCloud is a disaster.

Music sharing and the whole idea of owning content (you don't by the way - only one individual in your household is granted a license to store the content and share it with family members) is something that no-one in the media world has made easy or actually work.

Frankly buying CDs or DVDs is still the only way to own music and films - despite appearing archaic in some sense - and pass it onto your family.

I believe there are some lawsuits surrounding this gaping hole in media ownership.

Message was edited by: anguz

Hi. How I mark a card as the me-card?

I'm wondering if anyone can help me.

WE have

Dad's macbook

Dad's iPhone

Mom's iPad

Mom's iPhone

Kids iPhone

We all share the same apple ID for purchases. It works fine. It's my ID although I may change that after reading this and make it a completely seperate ID if I can figure out how to also keep my current ID as my icloud ID.

We DO NOT want to share contacts, or email.

Dad and Mom want to share calendars (currently using Mom's google account set up for calendars on 4 devices, but that's stupid)

Mom and Dad want to share photos among 3 devices (maybe 4)

Kid can stay relatively isolated but it would be nice to give kid read only access to calendars.

It seems as though we cannot seamlessly share photos in the cloud (photo stream) without also sharing contacts and such. I would love to be able to log in with an individual apple ID per applcation. Share mail, login, share photos, login, share contacts, login, but currently as far as I can tell, all iCloud services are attached to one login. I see no way to use more than one iCloud account at the same time on the devices.

Bigger issue is we have 200GB of photos and really would like to share all of them all the time. At least all the time at home. There are possible solutions to that, but they all fail when Dad goes to work with the Macbook. The only computer in the house (not really but for this scenario it is because otherwise I have to physically copy every photo to other machines and use time and drive space I don't have). Also dad has the master itunes account, which all the other devices sync to. It would be nice if the cloud could back up all the data and music as well and if you could sync to the cloud and a computer. Seems when we have a problem and dad is out of town, no music for anyone until dad gets home, even though they can get the devices going again. Big issue is sharing photos without sharing contacts, email, etc.

Seems like Appl needs to allow families IDs to all be attached to the same account so anyone can use their own ID to make purchases, then give HOH the tools to creat a matrix to connect (share photos and calendar) or disconnect (do not share contacts), and set permissions (who can read and write, who can just read), etc. Doesn't seem that complicated relative to all the stuff they are doing these days.

I use a couple of things nowadays because of this limitation of apple ids. we only use one id for shared purchases as you mention.

With calendars you can set up individual calendars on your local mac accounts and share them, and delegate permission for editing between people. This allows me to have my own calendar, my wife has hers, and we can see and even edit each others calendars on the phones. Or use google or linkedin cals.

Contacts, set up contact groups is a way to make this work. Although you can use other address books (like each having a linked-in, or google address book.

Finally the photo sharing and stuff for some bizarre reason as you say is always problematic. Have a look at http://www.dropbox.com | drop box, if you want a cloud solution, or maybe http://www.filetransporter.com/version2/ | transporter if you like the idea of a private cloud syncing files on your devices.

Just a thought.

Come on apple, you can do better!

We use dropbox to get the photos to the master folder. Problem is she wants to be able to see all 53,000 photos and drop box is either too expensive or just too small. I'd settle for the last 1000 ,but can't share photo streams. I just spent hours last night putting the photos into iphoto and it's laggy as **** and ***** to use. I am also shocked at how little editing there is to be done although that's not too important to me. I figured it would be pretty easy to weed out duplicates, no. I figured it would be simple to organize and move things around. Not so much. The laggyness is very frustrating. The idea was once I had it working I'd get an airport extreme (spend more money, yea, thats it) and she could get access to all the photos at least at home. I'm using a FW 800 drive (has USB 3.0 too) plugged into my MBPr.

I have a drobo also and the same problem. Dropbox works really well for those 10 - 20 files you need to access anywhere but when it gets big it gets unwieldy. I am ordering a Transporter this week because I really like the drobos I have and I think the transporter looks very useful. If it works like it says it does it might actually be useful.

Anyways good luck on your quest!

FYI I used both Gemini and DupeZap Plus which in tandem are quite good at finding dupes. Again they cost money from the app store and have different features. But after backing up photos, I've trimmed my library quite significantly with these tools. Aperture / iPhoto should definitely have this feature. I know why Aperture allows you to import multiple dupes as you may be using them for different reasons, but they really ought to let you choose to not have them, or provide a tool like the Referenced Files tool to spot and zap dupes. Maybe even leave the dupes in a vault, but zap them from your current library.

Ah, and on the family id thing. I was upset with Apple as I had a 'family id' with them which they discontinued. They gave us the same space and ids but not linked in any way. That sucked badly because I want Mum and Dad to be able to manage things in a central place and not have disparate ids that have different functions.

The main thing I dislike is the requirement to have a single id to share everything in the house. Having multiple ids and multiple computers means stuff gets distrubuted, not shared and at risk from data loss.

I think the reason (probably licensing, copyright, etc) for having to set things up this way is understandable, but I really thought Apple would figure out a decent way to make this work for a family. As it stands we end up endlessly configuring sharing settings, shared libraries, photo streams and it's a mess of data and content everywhere.

And each new innovation of the icloud brings yet more complexity.

The way we use the dropbox is brilliant. The app on the iOS device has the ability to upload the photos with no input from the picture taker. It just happens. I drag all the photos out of the drop box every day or two so it never gets bloated. The really cool thing is DB names the photos by the meta data and it rotates them. I was on a windows machine before this and the photos didn't rotate on import nor did they name by meta data. I love being able to see the exact date and time to the second on the photo name. Drop box also shows HDR and I can get an idea over time when HDR is reaelly going to help because at this point I find it only helps about 50% of the time. I'm still on iPhone 4. Wife just got the 5.

This is all I did:

We have an iMac and 5 iPhones all with seperate icloud accounts for purchases and such (at least the iPhones do).

I've been trying to figure out a way to sync calendars with my 3 kids without giving them my personal icloud info. The wife and I have been sharing calendars by adding both icloud accounts in each phone. (in the email settings, you can add icloud accounts without changing the master icloud account on the phone) I was poking around and noticed that when adding a new icloud email account on my phone, there is now an option to create a new icloud account. (this is in ios7) So I created a family account, soandsofamily@icloud.com. That way we all can add the icloud email account and turn off all syncing except calendars, this way it will still keep the main icloud account and sync the calendar with everyone!!! Unfortunately there is no option to share photos. This can all be done by going to Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars>Add Account>iCloud Account.

I hope this helps everyone!