Move Devices To Family Member's Apple ID Instead Of Mine

MacHead2010 wrote:

My first five words were “Before iCloud Family Plans started”

Oh, now I get what you actually intended to say which was, "Before Apple established the Family Sharing policy." I thought you were saying you started a Family Sharing group (there is no "Plan") and then still signed into each person's device.

And you please read what I wrote. We still do not know where you signed in, the entire device or just Media & Purchases. That can make a big difference in what you need to do. Wherever you signed in, sign out and have the family member sign in with their account. If it was into the entire device then make sure at least that they select to erase your content on that device or else it will merge with theirs. Technically what you were doing was contravening Apple's iTunes and iCloud Terms and should do full reset of the devices as instructed in another reply. If it was just in Media & Purchases then that may not be as big an issue. Either way, they will ultimately have to delete the apps and redownload them while signed into their accounts. The apps may still work under their accounts but cannot be re-downloaded or updated. Redownloading may result in some data loss which is specific to the Apple Account used to download the apps. If you were sharing an Apple Music subscription they will lose their playlists.

Each person, regardless of age, needs her/his own, unique Apple Account.

Make sure that each family member has a unique Apple Account - Apple Support

You violated this earlier - “I set up several family devices under my Apple ID to share downloads.”

So now it’s time to clean up.

Start by making sure each person owns her/his appropriate device(s). Before this occurs, each device must be thoroughly and completely cleansed as follows:

What to do before you sell, give away, or trade in your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support

What to do before you sell, give away, trade in, or recycle your Mac - Apple Support

The downloads can be part of Family Sharing.

How to share apps and purchases with Family Sharing on your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support

There's a lot of holes in the information provided such as where you are signed into these devices. Is your Apple the account the main one, or is it only entered in Media & Purchases? What exactly you need to do will depend upon where you signed in. To save us a lot of unnecessary work describing all the things it would help if we knew that now.

Typically when you sign out on a device the apps will remain, but they will not update and you cannot re-download them under another account. In addition, some data that is tied to a specific account may be lost.

Why on earth did you sign into the devices if you were using Family Sharing??? Family Sharing is designed so that each member signs into their own device and can download purchases and use subscriptions belonging to other family members.

What is Family Sharing? - https://support.apple.com/HT201060 - "With Family Sharing, you and up to five other family members can share access to amazing Apple services..."

This document provides a good outline of the feature:

https://support.apple.com/guide/personal-safety/manage-family-sharing-settings-ips75b3b794f/web

How to share purchases with your family - https://support.apple.com/108774

- "When you turn on purchase sharing, everyone in your family gets access to apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books that family members buy. The family organizer is billed for family members' purchases" (but read the document for the link to "learn how purchases are billed if a family member has Apple ID balance").

This ⬆️

just echoing same thing as I have a similar issue, googled and this thread came up. We were early iPhone adopters and before any of the modern family sharing / iCloud was a thing, it was standard to just use the one Apple account to share purchase, but meaning the device data is now a bit stuck and relates to more than one person (and Apple Watches likewise - got 2 adults 2 kids and about 15 Apple devices on my account now trying to shard off without losing data).

Apple should be realistic and have a proper service option for this, to reflect this as a legacy issue that I think is probably fairly common for people who’ve been with Apple for 10/15 years or more