How to Access Family Purchases in the Mac App Store – Guide

Apple has not yet made a direct statement about Family Sharing, but it is clear that the feature is not currently available to developers. Some developers have provided an option, offering it on their website and linking it to an app via an account login. It’s cumbersome and doesn’t offer developers the same security in limiting the scope of use. Developers can offer specific Family Sharing subscription levels or upgrade an existing or regular subscription level to include all members of a Family Sharing group.

This feature is useful for families who don’t want to pay multiple times for the same app for collective or individual purposes, and where developers feel it makes sense to reduce potential income in favor of increasing goodwill. There is no known count of apps that allow Family Sharing, but informally it seems most do.

Go to the App Store and select View My Account

To view my account, choose ‘View my account’ and click the View information reflected option in the upper right corner. One is asked to enter the Apple ID account information to validate access to the information in detail.

Select Manage and open Share new subscriptions

If you want to add a new subscription to Family Sharing, tap the Manage option at the bottom of the account information and then click on the Share New Subscriptions box.

edit subscriptions

If you do not want to share your subscription with the family, you can choose to not have it appear on your subscription list.

Final note

How to Access Family Purchases in the Mac App Store If you’re a Mac user, you know that it’s easy to access your family’s purchases in the App Store. Here’s how:

  1. Open the App Store and sign in with your Apple ID.
  2. Click on the three lines in the top left corner of the screen (the “menu bar”). This will show you a list of your family’s purchases.
  3. To access individual purchases, click on one of the items in this list. For example, if you have two children and want to access their purchase for school supplies, you would click on the school supplies item.