Can you enable purchase sharing for some of your family members but not others?

Hello,

Purchase Sharing cannot be disabled for individual members if the organizer enables it for the family group. Without enabling Purchase Sharing an organizer can set up a Family to share other features including subscriptions.

What is Family Sharing? - Apple Support

Add a family member to your subscriptions from Apple - Apple Support

If your son is under 18, you could set up Apple Cash and/or Ask to Buy in Family Sharing to fund only their Apple ID. That alone would not share any content however.

Set up and use Apple Cash Family - Apple Support

I hope this helps.

she wants to pay for her own movies/music etc

Another perspective on this is for her to just make sure she always has enough Apple account balance to pay for items herself.

The payment method for Family Sharing is automatic:

1. If anybody in the family buys or subscribes to something, Apple first attempts to charge the item to that individual's Apple Account (Apple ID) balance, if any.

2. If a family member does not have enough personal Apple Account balance, any excess will be charged to the Family Organizer's primary payment method (usually a card of some kind). The Organizer's personal balance will not be used for purchases made by other family members. If it cannot bill the primary payment method, the Organizer will need to make another payment method the primary method.

- "Some purchases, including gifts, can't be billed to Apple ID balance and will be charged to the family organizer's payment method." "Some subscriptions might not be charged to Apple ID balance."

Ref:

- Family purchases and payments - https://support.apple.com/HT201079

- How App Store and iTunes Store purchases are billed - https://support.apple.com/HT201359

- Check your Apple ID balance - https://support.apple.com/HT202359

- Change, add, or remove Apple ID payment methods - https://support.apple.com/HT201266

- Create and add money to an iTunes Pass - "At Apple Stores and select retailers, you can add store credit directly to the Apple ID that you use for App Store, iTunes Store, and iBooks Store purchases." - https://support.apple.com/HT203021

- Redeem your App Store & iTunes Gift Card --> https://support.apple.com/HT201209

Hektiklyfe,

The first response answers your on the face of it question, no you can't use selective purchase sharing. The second response provides you with an actual solution to how you can achieve what your grandmother wants to be able to do, pay for her own things while letting you set up purchase sharing for your son. Despite the response providing a solution not being recommended, I personally recommend you may wish to read it too for a possible solution to your issue. ;-)

It is a solution but not an optimal solution. It is all or nothing. I want to purchase all for one family member but never, without any exceptions purchase for another member. It seems like a simple option for Apple to add under Purchase Sharing.