family sharing is not working

I don't know if this might help ya'll, but we're a mult-device household, too and I *finally* got my husband's App Store to be able to work by going into iCloud on every single device and re-verifying the accounts. Not logging out, just rapping on where it shows the name of the iCloud account holder and their email address. It should pop up asking for the password associated with it.

My iPad mini is on the same iCloud account as my phone so I didn't think about it until a few minutes ago, but once I did, I decided to go in and re-verify all of our devices and lo-and-behold, it works.

Not sure if this'll help but I hope it does.

No love here, but thanks for the idea!

I was having the same problem with a free app that had been downloaded under my account, but I couldn't load on my wife's iPad using Family Sharing.

In my case, what worked was to log into iTunes on a Mac using her Apple account information and download the app in iTunes. When I did that, it showed up immediately on my wife's iPad (as purchased by her). Obviously this is only a solution for free apps, but it was what I needed.

That seems to be the issue here. My daughter can download any app or song I have purchased under my new ID (which I've had for 2 years), but anything earlier than that she can't access as it was purchased using my old ID/email address. It's so frustrating as I have a LOT of things I purchased with my old ID. I can access these purchases from my new account without a problem, so it shouldn't be a big issue for my family to either. If there is no fix, then Family Sharing is useless to me. Completely useless.

Very unimpressed Apple.

I had this issue after setting up family sharing on my wifes iPad, there were 5 apps I simply couldn't update, kept getting the "redownload unavailable with this apple ID" message, tried logging in and out and everything else on this thread. I've only ever had one Apple ID and email which I've had since 2003. Going into the purchases section and switching to my account I found that none of these apps were listed.

Turned out all these missing apps either didn't allow family sharing or only allowed family sharing for purchases made after a certain date. e.g.. Afterlight's family sharing was "Yes for purchases after 25th June 2014", it was the same with the other apps. You can see which apps allow family sharing in the information part of each apps store page.

This is a developer decision, I can understand it for older apps that might no longer be being updated but not sure why the developers of active apps, especially kids apps, have chosen to do this, its just a rort. One thing I do know I'm not buying these apps twice, I don't care how long ago I bought them. This is a total fail for family sharing in my opinion, might as well go back to my previous method of using my account for the App store on all devices.

I'm experiencing the exact same situation. Luckily it's only one app so far. Have a feeling it will be more.

I believe the error is being caused by the app not opting "IN" for family sharing. Doesn't seem to be a problem until the app in question wants to update. My example is as follows. Prior to family sharing my wife, son and I all shared an Apple ID for store purchases. This account was in my name. We've since transitioned to family sharing with three different accounts. Open Table app was originally on my devices and my wife's devices while sharing one apple ID. When we transitioned to family sharing the app stayed on all our devices and worked without a problem. Now Open Table has an update. The update went without a hitch on my devices, which is still associated with the apple ID we were all previously sharing. However, it won't updated on my wife's devices. Repeated update attempts produce the error "redownload unavailable with this apple ID." I've tried all the suggestions listed in this topic post, but none have resolved the issue.

I investigated further and it seems the reason my wife is receiving this error message is that Open Table app has opted NOT to include family sharing. Open Table is a FREE app. This brings up several basic questions that Apple should have vetted prior to release. (1) How the heck does Apple allow a FREE application not to default to family sharing? (2) Whether free or paid for why can't my wife (or other people in my family share) download this under their "own purchases" associated with their specific apple ID. There might be a paid application that opts out of family sharing but my wife and I both want it and are willing to pay twice for it. However, based on the current experience that is not possible. Seems that if an application developer opts out of family sharing that only the organizer or maybe just one person in the family share can purchase and download the app. I'm assuming anyone in the family share who subsequently tries to download the app will get the "redownload unavailable with this apple ID" even if they are willing to pay for it again.

This is a huge problem that apple needs to fix!

I've been having this same issue. On the family member's phone, go to Settings / ITunes & App Store. Then click on the AppleID row at the top, sign out, and then sign back in. I had to do this twice on my wife's phone to allow her to download free apps that I've downloaded in the past.

As soon as I did that, the button within the App Store for the app I tried to download (on Dropbox, for instance) changed from the download-from-cloud button to "+Free" button. I had to do this again an hour or so later, but hopefully that can help in the meantime while Apple sorts out the issue.

signing out and back in seemed to work for me too. Thanks for posting.

signing out and back in on the device having this issue worked for me too..thanks

I have done everything - signed out, signed in, restart, full reset. What a complete waste of time this family sharing is.

I'm having the same issue, but the logout/login seems to work.

On another note, this whole Family Sharing wasn't thought out very well it seems. One frustrating thing is that you cannot delete a child account (<13 account). Does this make any sense at all? I was actually just messing around with the feature the first night I upgraded to iOS8 and created an account for my kid with the intention of just deleting it afterwards, but lo and behold it's impossible. How can a parent not delete a child account that they created? this makes absolutely no sense at all to me and I think Apple should really look at this whole Family Sharing feature once again and tweak.

I am going to simply go back to using my Apple ID on all of the devices in my family so that everyone has the apps they need with none of this frustration. Only frustration will be that I have to enter my password on their device everytime they want a new app, but it worked well enough for me the past 5 years...

I solved this problem by logging out of the App Store specifically...

At the bottom of the 'Featured' tab click your apple id name... sign out and then back in... It worked for me!

Like Chris 36, I have noticed that several of the problem apps do not have family sharing enabled. However:

1. They are free apps, and before the troubles started iOS 8 would ask you wanted to download it under your own ID.

2. We have several free apps without family sharing authorized that updated properly early last week

Now, that has changed, This leads me to believe the problem is on Apple's end, since updates were working fine for a few days before the troubles started.

I cannot blame this on iOS 8.0.2, since the problem started to affect me just before applying the update.

I had this same problem on not being able to download all the apps with family sharing. Most apps showed up in the list as being available on the cloud, some did not. When I searched these apps, it did give me the cloud icon, however would give the error when trying to download them. The commonality seems to be whether or not they are listed as available for family sharing in the detailed info of the app. The solution I was able to find was to sign in to iTunes on the computer, connect my phone, and transfer the apps that way.

It's taken hours to try to work through all the kinks, hopefully this helps all of you.

@jamesmatthewcook -- On the computer, were you connected to the iTunes store using a different store account from the phone?