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Family Sharing Ten Device Limit

I have avoided Family Sharing so far because of the noted device limit. There are five of us in the family and depending upon what counts we have either 11 or 14 devices. However, according to the fine print on Apple's iOS8 Family Sharing page "Music, movies, TV shows, and books can be downloaded on up to 10 devices per account, five of which can be computers."


Over the years we have become an increasingly Apple centric family. We have four Apple computers (an iMac that acts as the family computer and iTunes server, my MacBook Pro, and my wife's job provides her with a MacBook Pro). We have three iPhones (my wife, myself, and my oldest daughter have iPhones). We have five iPads (I have an Air, my wife has one through her work as a teacher, both of my girls have one for the one-to-one iPad program at our school, which for financial reasons we opted to buy our own iPads for the kids to take to school, and my pre-school aged son has my old iPad). And finally, we have three AppleTVs that we use for streaming and AirPlay, although I am not sure if they count.


Currently, we have done what many others have done. My original iTunes account, which I started back in 2002, acts as the family iTunes account. It hosts the family calendar and is the account through which all media is purchased. Every single iDevice in the family has this account as it's iTunes account and whenever the kids want to purchase anything they have to bring their device to my wife or myself for us to enter the password. For email, facetime, personal calendars, and such we each have our own iTunes/iCloud accounts which everything else on the devices are linked to. It isn't perfect, but it works and has worked for years. As things stand right now there is no limit on how many iDevices I can link my old iTunes account to. As long as we don't exceed five computers we are fine.


When Apple first announced Family Sharing I was excited because I saw a way for us to remove some of the annoyance of the way that we had been doing things. However, once I really started looking at it the 10 device limit immediately jumped out at me. We are over 10 devices and as the kids get older I suspect we will continue to be over the ten device limit.


So, my question. I am sure that there are other families out there with more than 10 Apple devices. Heck, I figure that Apple wants families to have more than 10 of their devices. If I move my family from our current setup to the Family Sharing will this cause problems for us? And if so, what are the problems? And how have people handled it?


As some further information, I am only looking at Family Sharing now because it seems that the new Apple Music family plan is going to be tied to Family Sharing.


Thank you for any input.

iTunes/iCloud-OTHER

Posted on Jun 12, 2015 5:39 AM

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2 replies

Jun 12, 2015 3:58 PM in response to mknopp

If I move my family from our current setup to the Family Sharing will this cause problems for us?

Let's put it this way: what you are doing now will cause problems. You are buying 5 people's content on a single account? The more you keep doing that, the harder it will be to separate the content when somebody is ready to move out / go to college / have their own account.

Family Sharing Ten Device Limit

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