Your tiny beasts at home will soon be cut out from their iTunes Allowances, and to avoid the abstinence that will ensue, you may enroll them in the new Family Sharing quotas, which might have been the whole point. Apple recently announced that it is ending the iTunes Allowances service on May 25th. Families with kids that are on the iOS bandwagon know how useful the allowances were to set aside a pool of money from the parent's credit card for kids to purchase apps and games without going overboard, so they might be quite miffed about the matter now.
Apple, however, will let them use whatever sums there are left in the iTunes Allowances pockets even after it turns off the spigot. If the goal is to move to the Family Sharing option that got introduced with iOS 8 and later, as well as Mac OS X Yosemite onward. It lets up to six people share content purchased from Apple, and might be a good replacement for the disappearing Allowances come the end of next month. Here's how to set up Family Sharing:
1. Find a designated driver. Yep, someone needs to pay for all of the stuff the kids (and not only) are going to buy off Apple's ecosystem, and you have to find such a person who is willing to forfeit the rights to their credit card for the sake of the family values;
2. The so-called Family Organizer will now have to go to Settings > iCloud > Setup Family sharing on their iPhone or iPad, and start the setup process by linking up a credit card, if they don't have one already linked there;
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3. The chief honcho of Family Organizer fame can now add up to five more people to their Family Sharing account, and adding them is pretty simple just by using their Apple IDs. Kids under 13 can have their own Apple IDs, too - the parent or legal guardian can create the child’s Apple ID, and add them to the group;
4.
The added members will then by sent invitations to join the cult, or they can set up their own passwords beforehand;
5. It is not only the organizer who can approve purchases. Any parent that joins the fun can be set to manage the Ask to Buy feature of the Family Sharing service, too. Ask to Buy allows them to issue a permission every time a kid wants to grab something off of Apple's ecosystem, including free apps and games, so parents can keep tabs on what exactly their kids are doing with their iOS obsession.
Ask to Buy is turned on by default for those little ones that the organizer adds with new IDs, plus they can also limit the content kids have access to on their devices through Restrictions;
6. That's all there is to Family Sharing - you get all the parental benefits of iTunes Allowances with the Ask to Buy feature, and more, plus the clan members can easily share media, set up joint calendar events, or follow where everyone is with location sharing, if allowed.
Daniel, a devoted tech writer at PhoneArena since 2010, has been engrossed in mobile technology since the Windows Mobile era. His expertise spans mobile hardware, software, and carrier networks, and he's keenly interested in the future of digital health, car connectivity, and 5G. Beyond his professional pursuits, Daniel finds balance in travel, reading, and exploring new tech innovations, while contemplating the ethical and privacy implications of our digital future.
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