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User profile for user: Monsters, Inc.
Monsters, Inc. Author
User level: Level 1
6 points

Problems with iOS 8 Family Sharing

My wife and I both have iPhone 5s phones. Up until now, we have both always been logged into my Apple ID to make App Store and iTunes purchases. Her phone is an authorized device on my iTunes account. My wife obviously has her own Apple ID, but until now, she has only used that for iCloud and Game Center.


I successfully set up Family Sharing with my Apple ID being the master ID and my wife as a family member. It just doesn't work and I'm not sure what's causing the problem. It doesn't show my master Apple ID past account purchases in the App Store or in the iTunes app when trying to view purchases on my wife's phone.


Is the fact that her phone is listed as an authorized device on my Apple ID causing the problem? I'm hesitant to remove her phone from my Apple ID because if this doesn't fix the problem, I can't add her again back to my ID for 90 days. I've been further confused by comments about Family Sharing only supporting "certain Apps". Which previous app purchases are not included?


If anyone has suggestions on helping with this, I would greatly appreciate it. It would let her not have to use my Apple ID to make all of her purchases and start to break apart apps she downloads from the ones that I do. Am I alone with this issue?


Thanks in advance!

iPhone 5s, iOS 8

Posted on Sep 17, 2014 11:41 PM

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12 replies
User profile for user: Kimme1024
Kimme1024
User level: Level 1
0 points

Sep 18, 2014 3:42 AM in response to Monsters, Inc.

I'm having about the same issue.

My girlfriend and I have separate Apple ID's. But only the apps from Apple itself (pages, numbers, keynote,...) will sync automatically to her phone. A paid app like weatherpro won't sync and she still has to purchase it separately.

I hope it's just a bug. Otherwise the family sharing option wouldn't be that interesting anymore.

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User profile for user: martyconte
martyconte
User level: Level 1
0 points

Sep 18, 2014 7:22 AM in response to Monsters, Inc.

I'm having the same issue. I have my wife's phone & ipad as well as my daughter's phone and macbook air all under the same ID so we could share purchases in the past. How do we separate all of these device's onto different ID's without losing the saved app data and app purchases that they made? Also, will I have to manually move all of their photos over to their new individual accounts? At first this apple family sharing sounded like a solution to the cumbersome sharing abilities of old but unless I'm missing something it will only cause my wife and daughter to lose all the data associated with my ID on their devices.

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User profile for user: Rick Hansen
Rick Hansen
User level: Level 1
0 points

Sep 19, 2014 8:54 PM in response to Monsters, Inc.

Sorry, but I've done the free app purchase and it still doesn't work. I can see all the master purchases on my slave device, but many of them tell me "Redownload Unavailable with This Apple ID" (great capitalization consistency) and "This redownload is not available for this Apple ID either because it was bought by a different user or the item was refunded or cancelled." This is ludicrous as it applies to many free apps that were not "refunded". I confirmed in the App descriptions that they all have Family Sharing flagged as Yes. (example apps are Yahoo Fantasy Football, LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga) Anyone have any ideas? Minecraft didn't work for awhile, but suddenly did. It feels like it could be Apple servers are overwhelmed and not propagating all the purchased info, but seems very strange.

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User profile for user: adambplummer
adambplummer
User level: Level 1
18 points

Sep 19, 2014 9:23 PM in response to Monsters, Inc.

I can't tell if this solved it or not, but after I turned on the following, it looks like it started working:


Settings > iTuns & App Store > Automatic Downloads > Apps [Toggle On]


I was prompted to turn this on, after I had connected the phone via cable to iTuns and tried it that way. My iPhone then told me to turn on that setting if I wanted purchases from my computer's iTunes to make it on my phone. Now ... everything works via family sharing with this on.

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Problems with iOS 8 Family Sharing

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