Family Sharing in iOS 16

Sharing stuff with the ones you love is easier than ever

- Carrie Marshall

IT WILL TAKE

10 minutes

YOU WILL LEARN

How to use iOS 16’s new sharing features for your family

YOU’LL NEED

iOS 16 or iPadOS 16

Apple’s parental control and Family Sharing features are superb, but as they’ve become more comprehensive they’ve also become pretty unwieldy.

iOS 16, iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura have changed that, with a brand new Family page in Settings that makes everything simpler. Although most of the changes are in Settings, there are some other useful new ones too. Family members’ Screen Time requests are now sent to their parent or guardian via Messages for faster responding, and there’s also a great new feature called Quick Start. If you’ve already added other people in the Family section, the next time you switch on a brand new iPhone or iPad for the first time it’ll ask you who the device is for. Simply choose the appropriate person or create a new child account if it’s somebody new. We put this one to the test with a new iPhone and it set the device up perfectly.

The same Settings panel is in macOS Ventura, and it works in exactly the same way as it does on iOS/iPadOS.

Family of features