Apple Family Sharing not working? Try these fixes

Apple’s Family Sharing feature is a great way of sharing your purchased content with your family (and let’s be honest, friends as well). It’s a great way for saving a few bucks by splitting the bill for various subscriptions and purchases, which can add up quite a bit. But what if Apple Family Sharing stops working? In that case, you’ll have to figure out what’s going on, or else everyone will have to pay for their own subscriptions.

Hopefully, we’ll help you resolve the problem with this article.

How do I fix Family Sharing on my iPhone?

If  Apple Family Sharing is not working on your iPhone, try some of the following solutions:

1. Make sure everyone’s using the same account
2. Check shared content
3. Remove everyone from the family and re-add them
4. Log out of your Apple ID and log back in

Make sure everyone’s using the correct account

It goes without saying that members of your family need to use the same Apple ID on their devices that you listed in Family Sharing. That means everyone must use their own Apple ID, and not the Apple ID of the family head. This still causes confusion for some users, so make sure to check everyone’s logged in with the correct Apple ID.

Check shared content

You can share most of your subscription and purchased content and apps with your family members. But there are some features that need to be enabled for sharing first. For example, you need to enable Purchase Sharing for other family members, as it’s not enabled by default. The same goes for your subscription services, like Music or Apple Arcade.

To manage the content shared with your family members, go to Settings > [your name] > Family Sharing. From here you can manage everything you want to share with your family members, including Apple Subscriptions, App Store Subscriptions, iCloud+, Purchase Sharing, etc.

Remove everyone from the family and re-add them

One of the workarounds that seem to have solved the problem for some users is removing everyone from the family and then adding them back again. So, just head over to your family group, remove all your family members, and then come back and add them again. I’m not sure why this fixes the problem with Family Sharing, but apparently, it does.

First, here’s how to remove all your family members from your family group:

1. Go to Settings.
2. Head over to [your name] > Family Sharing.
3. Tap the member’s name, and then tap Remove [member’s name] from Family.
4. Repeat the process for all members.

Now, add all your family members to the group again. Here’s how to do that:

1. Go to Settings.
2. Head over to [your name] > Family Sharing.
3. Tap Invite People, then follow the on-screen instructions.

Log out of your Apple ID and log back in

And finally, if nothing else helps, try logging out of your Apple ID, and then logging back in. And if that doesn’t help, you can also try the same thing with your family members’ iPhones. Here’s how to log out of your Apple ID:

1. Go to Settings.
2. Tap your name, and go to Sign out.
3. Type your Apple ID password and tap Turn Off.
4. A window asks you which data you want to copy from your iCloud account to your phone. keep in mind that this might delete some data from your phone, so you’ll want to carefully read the instructions on this page.
5. Once you’ve decided what you want to keep, tap Sign Out.
6. Now that you’re signed out, head back to Settings, and go Sign in to your iPhone.
7. Enter your credentials, tap Next, enter your passcode, and you’re back in.

That’s about it. I hope at least one of these solutions helped you resolve Family Sharing problems on your iPhone. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, feel free to write them down in the comments below.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in March 2022. We made sure to revamp it for freshness and accuracy.