Apple Family Sharing

TidBITS Talk
#1

I have several Apple devices which I have always shared with my wife. This works well, but not so much with her iPhone. For example, the ‘owner’ is stated to be me, and the photo of the owner is a photo of me. I want her to have her own photo, be recognised as the owner, and have her own preferred email address from the collection offered via my Apple ID. She doesn’t need her own Apple ID etc.

The descriptions Apple provides don’t really say what’s possible in this regard. They seem to want one to start with independent devices and kind of merge them into Family Sharing. My requirement is the other way round - my wife wants a bit more independence without leaving the current ecosystem. Can anyone explain what’s possible?

#2

Create an Apple ID just for her and use family sharing, even if you think it isn’t necessary. It’s the easiest thing. Every person using an iPhone should have their own Apple ID.

#3

What’s wrong with her having a separate Apple ID? Your situation is exactly what Family Sharing is meant for - you have separate IDs, but you share each others purchases so you only need to buy one copy of each purchased app, song and movie.

#4

Ha! I was a bit unclear on this. In the long history of my involvement with Apple (over 30 years), I have only ever had one Apple ID - plus despite being highly competent in every way, my wife tends to take a rather minimalist path through technology, if you know what I mean (for instance I have been struggling to get her to embrace her own email address for decades now). But I see that the time has come!

Thanks.

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#5

Just to report that I did this, and it was pretty easy apart from an unexpected gotcha - if you create an Apple ID, you have to provide an email address, and it’s forbidden to use one of the aliases that Apple has already dished out for the main family person’s ID. e.g. if you have registered

my_email@mac.com, you get

my_email@icloud.com and my_email@me.com for free, but they won’t do to create the new ID. So I had to find a completely new email address for my wife. Being somewhat flustered I picked a gmail one I happen to own, which looks a bit stupid since it incorporates my own name. Too late, it’s done. The rest worked well, and I was relieved to see that she could still see all the emails coming in from our shared iCloud email address(es). Picture etc working as expected. So thanks to those who helped.

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