Apple Arcade: How to Set Up a Family Sharing Account and Share the Service With Friends and Family

Apple Arcade is an absolute bargain. Not only does it provide you with over 100 games for the small price of $5 per month, but you can actually share your account with up to five other family members.

Ahead of the full launch of the service tomorrow, we thought we’d put together a guide on how to set up a family sharing account. It’s a relatively straightforward process when you have some guidance.

If you’d like to read more about Apple Arcade, you can check out our full review of the service as well as our selection of the best Apple Arcade games available on it so far.

What is Family Sharing?

Family Sharing is a system created by Apple that allows you to share Apple Books, App Store, Apple News+, and Apple Music purchases and subscriptions across six different iCloud accounts.

It’s handy for sharing your purchases with your family across their devices, and it allows you to keep track of your child’s spending, offering the ability to approve their purchases.

You can also share handy information like photos, calendar, and more to help you all remain organised.

How to Set Up a Family Sharing Account For Apple Arcade:

To set up a Family Sharing account, you’ll need the following:

• An Apple ID signed into iCloud
• An iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch that supports iOS 8 or later, or a Mac device that supports Mac OS X Yosemite or later.

If you’ve got both of those things, follow these simple steps.

iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch:

• Enter Settings and tap on your name, just below the search bar.
• Tap ‘Set Up Family Sharing’ and hit ‘Get Started’
• You can then individualise the various different features that you want to share with your family. For the purposes of Apple Arcade, you’ll want to share your “iTunes & App Store Purchases”
• You’ll first have to confirm your account, then the credit or debit card that you’d like to have associated with your Family Sharing account.
• Finally, you can invite family members to join your Family Sharing account over iMessage.

Mac:

• Click on the Apple menu and enter “System Preferences”.
• Click on “Family Sharing” or “Set Up Family”, depending on your OS X version
• Follow the on-screen instructions and invite your family members

The family member you invited simply needs to accept the invitation to join your Family Group. If the text or email doesn’t arrive, they can accept from the “Invitations” section of the settings menu.

Glen Fox

Head of Editorial

Glen has over a decade's worth of experience in gaming journalism, writing for Pocket Gamer, Pocket Tactics, Nintendo Life, and Gfinity. When he's not badgering everyone about the dangers of passive text, you can probably find him playing Wild Rift.