An Insight Into The Family Sharing - Unveiled In Apple iOS 8 & OS X Yosemite

An Insight Into The Family Sharing - Unveiled In Apple iOS 8 & OS X Yosemite

Apple has made a great stride in the mobile industry with its recently released iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite. They offer a whopping number of amazing features that help the platforms stay ahead of their competitors.

The Family Sharing is among the numerous latest utile features offered by both the recently released platforms. This feature facilitates a list of niftiest functionalities that make it superior and highly notable than other features. In this article, you will get an overview about the Family Sharing feature.

Family Sharing feature: A Foreword

The Apple has introduced the Family Sharing feature in its latest platforms that allows multiple users to conveniently interact and share some content with each other. It allows sharing between utmost six users and facilitates purchase sharing, locations sharing, creating a unified calendar and image album, configuration of parental controls and a lot more. The family members can easily access the media files like music, books, apps, movies, etc., available on each other's device.

Moreover, to reap the benefits of this feature, users are required to own a valid iCloud account and share their Apple ID account information beforehand. While using this feature, the created Family Group will need a Family Organizer who will account all the purchases made by users in the group. Hence, he is required to have a valid payment method attached to their iTunes account. This is why it is advisable to only add reliable and known users to the group.

How to implement the Family Sharing

For the iOS 8 or OS X Yosemite users, who are interested in creating a Family Sharing group here is a step-by-step guide that can help them enable the Family Sharing and add the desired users to the family group.

  • Configure the Family Sharing as the Family Organizer, by simply accessing Settings and the iCloud. And navigate to Get Started option.
  • Make sure that the Share Purchase screen boasts the correct email addresses and information available on the Payment Method is absolutely correct. However, if the “Payment Method” info is not correct, you may tweak it by accessing the App Store, and selecting the “Payment Information” listed under “View Apple ID”, which is covered under the “Apple ID” available under the “Featured Tab”. With these steps, you have successfully enabled the Family Sharing.
  • In the main menu, just access the “Add Family Member” button.
  • There are two ways to add a member to the group:
    • Choose and invite desired users by sending an invitation to their iCloud account.
    • Ask the desired user to add the iCloud password of the Family Organizer.

Once a user joins the group, he will be prompted to share purchases and other stuff. It is important to note that every Family member will be recognized as an adult and thus will have freedom to purchase the desired content. And, if you (Family Organizer) want to add a child in the group, create an Apple ID for the child and make him a family member.

Thereafter, the child member will be able to share a purchase request for a book, app, etc., with the Family Organizer. Though, after completing the setup procedure the child user will appear on the menu screen of Family sharing, but, Family Organizer has the power to share or hide the device location of the child member.

Key attributes of the Family Sharing

The superior capabilities offered by the Family Sharing feature make it stand out of the box. Let's ponder into a few of its incredible attributes.

1. Purchase Sharing: The family members can share each other's content (like apps, movies, or other downloaded content etc.) from their own device by simply downloading the desired content. It can be easily downloaded by navigating to the “Purchased” tab featured in the App Store, the iBooks Store or the iTunes Store, and choosing the appropriate content from the tab purchased content.

2. Location Sharing: Each family member in the Family Sharing group can easily track the location of other family members via an application like Find My Friends. With this app, you will get the location details of every Family member over the map along will their distance and current city details.

3. Find My iPhone: If ever the device of a family member is lost, other group members can track the information via the Find My Phone feature. This feature offers the whereabouts of the devices of each group member. Whether you are interested in ringing a device, erasing the complete device or enabling the Lost Mode, you can easily choose an appropriate option by selecting a device.

If you are an iOS 8 or OS X Yosemite user, enable the Family Sharing and reap the benefits of this amazing feature-rich function.

Posted by Rick Mobiers

Rick Mobiers

Rick Brown is a iPhone app programmer for Mobiers – a leading iPhone application development services provider. In case, you are looking forward to hire iPhone app developer from India, just get in touch with him for his best advices

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