Apple Family Sharing

I’m saddened by the fact that I’ve found myself here hoping to find solutions to something that has been such a great thing for so long. My family and I have all been loyal customers with Apple for years with only minor flukes that’s seemingly worked themselves out on their own. Definitely never had major complaints that resorted in us coming to the community forum in hopes of finding some kind of resolution like I’m doing today. We love apple so much that we have iphones, iPods, ear buds, iPads, Apple Watches, computers, literally every product they’ve come out with, we’ve bought.

First, I’m going to list the biggest frustration of ours that’s turned into total chaos.

• Family Sharing (purchases shared are only 2 subscriptions which we’ve had since we bought our phones that we have right now. Since June 2020 to be exact.

This complete feature has completely crapped the bed.. My husband and I share Apple Music and iCloud storage and to do this we had to add him as a family member which isn’t an issue at all. The issue is the fact that we’ve had it set up in the settings/iCloud/purchase shenanigans since it’s become a thing from the beginning.. So you can imagine our frustration when it suddenly decided to go crazy and treat him as if he were a young child by requiring my permission to even download a free app. Don’t get me started on what it’s doing to buy an app. I don’t know what Apple has done but this need to be fixed because absolute insanity doesnt even come close to explaining how much of a headache it truly has been tonight.

Apple is great when everything is functioning properly, but the times that it isn’t, it never fails to be something that lasts for weeks at a time messing up settings, the actual functionality, heck Apple music will glitch like what you’d imaging hearing if you were listening to a scratched cd. Skips like nobodys business. (The Apple Music is the app that hasnt ever decided to work out its kinks. It’s been doing this for coming on a YEAR yall. Ugh)

& the fact that he’s on his own separate Apple ID with payment set up and has been since 2020 as well as our phones recognizing that he’s an adult, he still can’t do snything without needing MY permission and approval like you have to do with children that are younger because of parental controls which is set up completely different. So different. You have to choose all the options under screen time and be listed as the child’s guardian.

I don’t have screen time for him nor am I a guardian of my husband who is in his **** 30s for crying outloud!!! I would love to know why they have caused so much chaos when things were fine, literally, PERFECT before they had to go screwing with it.

• My next issue is the screen time and content restrictions for our daughter. She has her own Apple ID but my ID is her guardian until she becomes old enough to be trusted. It’s always seemingly worked decent. Never outright the way it’s supposed to but it’s been mild enough that I’ve managed to just brush it off and do the tedious steps needed to fix it yet again. However, this last week-ish has become EXTREME. It’s not saving any of the controls I’ve had put into place for a long time now and that’s a legitimate ISSUE given she’s only 9 and has no business having free open access to the internet and everything else that you can imagine. Unlike the subscription nightmare that I mentioned before this and being able to say screw it and take my business elsewhere and forcing our phones to not mess with our what should be free access on our separate IDs in the App Store, I can’t fix this. It’s not like there’s another choice to opt into for parental controls.

so that leaves me with this: I’m going to say this as nice as possible because I’m truly not trying to be THAT person… But Apple has extremely screwed up and by the looks of it, we aren’t the only family having these issues. It’s a lot of people and that’s terrible business/customer service and no one can afford to lose business from people that were satisfied cutsomers because of buggy messed up features and chaos. So you should truly fix this. No joke.

-you’re causing us who are parents a living nightmare. Thanks 😊