Mike Peterson
The ability to share app subscriptions via Family Sharing on iOS 14 and Apple's other operating systems appears to be rolling out.
First announced in June as part of iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and macOS Big Sur, the new feature lets users share subscriptions on compatible apps with family members under a single purchase. Previously, subscriptions purchased on the App Store could only apply to one account.
On Thursday, the feature appears to have gone live in iOS 14.2. According to Flighty app founder Ryan Jones, who first spotted the rollout, a setting to Share New Subscriptions is now available in the App Store Subscriptions pane. Users can also elect to share existing subscriptions to apps that offer the service.
Family Sharing for Subscriptions just went live. pic.twitter.com/QxPDiztNWw
— Ryan Jones (@rjonesy) December 3, 2020
Although enabled by default, Jones notes that members of his Family Sharing group weren't notified of the new available subscriptions, and those subscriptions weren't made available to them. However, it may take some time for the feature to roll out to everyone.
My family members were not notified. And it's not showing up in their subscriptions either.
— Ryan Jones (@rjonesy) December 3, 2020
Maybe it authenticates via Restore Purchase?
So you have to manually tell everyone in the family when you share.
Users won't be able to share all of their subscriptions with family members — the ability to do so must be enabled by the developer of an app.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
11 Comments
it should have happened at least 5 years ago.
Nice to see "Greedy Apple" help customers more and more with every announcement.
This will definitely set apart the good developers from the greedy, evil developers.
Yep not all my App subscriptions allow them to be shared, I'm not getting the share button on those apps.
I'm assuming you do this through the app store under the subscriptions section.