How do I create/manage my children's Apple ID accounts if I don't own a recent Mac or iOS device?

I think it's ridiculous that I can't manage family sharing without an apple device of my own. I have to use it to set up an apple id for my son to use on his iPhone but I have no intention of buying an ios device or mac for myself. I managed to work around it by signing into the phone with my own apple id, setting it up and then resetting the phone and signing him in but this is not ideal as I now can't manage any of the family sharing settings. Why can't I do this by logging in via the Web? Might as well just go for a Microsoft device next time, at least they let you manage family safety via the Web.

I'm looking for the same solution. If I would have know it was going to be like this I wouldn't have bought my two kids ipods for Christmas!

I created an Apple id for myself, which is what both kids' ipods are using right now. Every single time they want to download a FREE app I have to put my Apple Password in. This is a total pain!!! Android is so much simpler. For any free apps in Google Play a password is NOT required. I don't want to give my kids my password because then they could make purchases on my credit card. I want them to be able to have either own Apple logins.

HELLO, APPLE?!
PLEASE COME UP WITH A SOLUTION!!

Hi tifyfer,

I apologize, I'm a bit unclear on the exact nature of your question, and/or the setup you are attempting. If you are talking about setting up child Apple IDs as part of the new Family Sharing program, you may find the following article helpful:

Family Sharing and Apple IDs for kids - Apple Support

Note: While Apple IDs are used to access iCloud services, they are managed seperately. You may be looking for this page instead:

Apple - My Apple ID

Regards,

- Brenden

You can enable Family Sharing and create a family group with child IDs (for children under 13 yrs. old) and manage their purchases using Ask to Buy on an iOS device running iOS 8. You can do this on the web. You can create normal Apple IDs on the web here: https://appleid.apple.com/account.

Apple doesn’t routinely monitor the discussions. These are mostly user to user discussions.

Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem solved sooner.

Feedback

Or you can use your Apple ID to register with this site and go the Apple BugReporter. Supposedly you will get an answer if you submit feedback.

Feedback via Apple Developer

I don't think you're going to be able to use Family Sharing without your own iOS 8 device. While you could conceivably set up family sharing on your child's device, you would need to then sign out of the account and sign back in with your child's ID in order to use it. Otherwise the device would be associated with you and would not enforce As to Buy with purchases (since you are an adult and the family organizer). I suspect that when you sign out on the device, it removes family sharing altogether (although I'm not sure). I also don't think the Ask to Buy prompts would go to your iPhone 4, since it isn't running iOS 8 and wouldn't have the family sharing feature enabled.

If you want a more definitive answer, you'll have to call Apple support and ask them as your situation is unique and isn't covered in any of the support articles I've seen.

I too am having this issue! Seems completely ridiculous that I can not set up a minor child's apple ID or family sharing unless I too own an apple device! The Apple support FAQ keeps giving the run around info with the "go here" or "click here" info... some say on i cloud for Windows running 9.0 has capability for family sharing, but when I go there, there is nothing about family sharing or apple ID except minor tweaks to my own ID! It's getting very frustrating!

That link is for the basic Apple ID, of which I have no trouble accessing. I am trying to create an Apple ID for a MINOR child to be able to share my controlled itunes purchases on her own account through family sharing. All of which is available to do, but only through another ios device, of which I do not own. I have ipods for my kids that I would like to set up and give as a Christmas gift. Support says each child needs their own ID set up by their guardian through family sharing (and that guardian is the 'organizer' of the group), in order to have their own id for game center and other apps but if I go to set up through the regular "create Apple ID", it bumps me out and says they can not set up the ID due to age, and I have no access to family sharing from a PC... that is my issue... no way to set up family sharing and a minor child's Apple ID through the interface on a PC! They each have old versions that I set up all as 'me' and attached to my own itunes account. Advertising on a lot of the apps is completely inappropriate for young children and the 'minor account' limits this to some extent from what I understand. It also fixes the problem of game saving with apps that sometimes will lose levels of some games because there may be 3 different versions on 3 different ipods of the same game/app all in my name, so when it opens, it 'remembers' one of the other ipod's versions. Only a limited # of devices are allowed per itunes account and if I take their old ipods off that account, it will render them useless with no account to sync to. I want to keep old ipods on my account but LINK new ipods to my account through family sharing so they too have access to the already paid for apps and music.

Thanks anyway....

I also want to add that if you do not have an IOS device, I would recommend not selecting the Request Permission option, because there does not appear to be a way to allow the parent (without an IOS device) to approve the request. What I did was go to Permissions and require a password before my child downloads an app. That way I can still review it before downloading. It is a bit more cumbersome, but, as noted above, I could not figure out a way to approve app download requests through the family share (without an IOS device, which I do not have. I also could not find a way to approve apps from the Windows based iCloud system.).

Hi time goes by and looks like Apple has not solved the issue.

I bought my daughter an iphone , set up her Apple ID by logging as me on her phone, creating Apple Family , adding her logging myself out and loggin her in. Now if she wants to download any free app her iphone asks for my permission but I do not know how to allow it since I do not own any Apple device. Her phone is the only one in family and looking at how easy such a task is it probably will stay this way.

Is there any PC/ web app where I can control her app downloads?

I had the same problem but this workaround worked for me. (I have just bought an iPhone 5s for my 11-year old, but my wife and I both have Androids, so had no access to an alternative IOS device.)

I was able to initially sign into my daughter's new iPhone using my own AppleId from years ago, then was able to set up my account for family sharing, then signed out again and signed back in using my daughter's fresh account.

More details: once I'd signed in as me, I went to Settings -> My Name -> Family Sharing and went through the steps to create a new account for my daughter. (I had to do a software update for IOS first, as the option in Settings wasn't there until after the update had completed.) Then I signed out, then signed back in using my daughter's new account, and that seemed to work.

I expect the same thing would work if you don't already have an existing adult account, presumably you can just create one for you initially, then follow the same steps.

(I know this is an old post, but it came up in my search for an answer, so it's still worth me replying as others will likely come across this article in future.)

Try here.

Apple ID - Create

You can create a new Apple ID using that link.