Family Sharing is Apple's free way to link your iPhone with your child's. Once your child is in your family group, you can manage their Screen Time from your own phone, approve app downloads with Ask to Buy, share subscriptions and see each other's location in Find My. Setup takes a few minutes in Settings → [your name] → Family. This guide covers how to set it up, how to use it day to day, and the situations where you might prefer to manage things differently.
What Family Sharing does for kids
Family Sharing groups up to six people under one family organizer, usually a parent. For a child, the useful parts are:
- Screen Time from your phone. Open Settings → Screen Time on your iPhone, tap your child's name, and change Downtime, App Limits, content restrictions and Communication Limits without touching their phone.
- Ask to Buy. When your child tries to download an app or make a purchase, you get a request and approve or decline it.
- Requests for more time. When a limit runs out, your child can ask for more, and the request appears on your phone.
- Location sharing. Family members can share location with each other in the Find My app.
- Shared subscriptions and purchases, if you choose to share them.
It doesn't let you read messages or see what your child does inside apps. It's a management layer on top of Screen Time, not a monitoring tool.
How to set up Family Sharing for your child (free)
Step 1: Start a family group
- On your iPhone, open Settings and tap your name at the top.
- Tap Family (on some versions, Family Sharing) and follow the prompts to set up your family.
- You become the organizer. Decide whether to share purchases now; you can change it later.
Step 2: Add your child
- If your child doesn't have an Apple Account yet: in the Family screen, choose to add a member and pick the option to create a child account. You'll enter your child's name and date of birth and confirm you're their parent. The minimum age for a child to manage their own account varies by country, so for younger children Apple has you create it.
- If your child already has an account: invite them from the same screen and accept the invitation on their phone.
Then sign in to your child's iPhone with their new account, if it isn't already.
Step 3: Turn on Ask to Buy
- In Settings → [your name] → Family, tap your child's name.
- Tap Ask to Buy and switch it on. For younger children it is often already on.
Requests appear as notifications on your phone. You see the app and its age rating before deciding. Free apps go through Ask to Buy as well, which is the point: you see every new app before it lands.
Step 4: Set up Screen Time from your phone
- On your iPhone, open Settings → Screen Time.
- Tap your child's name under Family and follow the setup.
- Set a Screen Time passcode that only you know.
- Work through Downtime, App Limits, Content & Privacy Restrictions and Communication Limits.
If you want the full list in order, our parental controls setup checklist covers each setting. For time limits by age, see how to set Screen Time limits, and for nights, bedtime and Downtime on a child's iPhone.
Step 5: Share location
On your child's iPhone, open the Find My app and make sure location sharing with family is on. You'll then see them under People in Find My on your phone. Our guide on Find My vs location apps explains what Find My does well and where it's basic.
Managing your child's iPhone day to day
Once it's running, most of the work happens through notifications:
- Time requests. Approve for 15 minutes, an hour or all day, or decline. Decide your rule in advance, or approvals become automatic.
- App requests. Check the age rating and, if you don't know the app, look it up before approving.
- Weekly reports. You can see your child's usage on your phone; how to check your child's screen time explains how to read it.
- Adjusting rules. Change limits from Settings → Screen Time → your child's name whenever the routine changes, such as exam weeks or holidays.
When you might not want Family Sharing
Family Sharing works well for many families, but it isn't the right fit for everyone. Be honest with yourself about these:
- Separated or blended families. A child can only be in one family group. If both parents want to manage the phone from their own iPhones but aren't in the same group, only one can do it through Family Sharing.
- Teens who already have an account. Older children may resist joining, and once they reach a certain age they can leave the family group themselves.
- Shared purchases you'd rather keep private. If you share purchases, your child may see films, books or apps you've bought. You can switch purchase sharing off.
- Request fatigue. Some parents find the stream of time and app requests wears them down, and approvals turn into a reflex.
- It's still Screen Time underneath. Everything Family Sharing manages is ordinary Screen Time, so the same gaps apply. See how kids bypass Screen Time and Screen Time not working.
Without Family Sharing, you can still set up Screen Time directly on your child's iPhone and protect it with a passcode. You just make changes on their phone rather than yours.
Managing your child's iPhone without Family Sharing: Skydo
If Family Sharing doesn't suit you, Skydo is another way to manage your child's iPhone from your own phone. It's built on Apple's own Screen Time technology (Family Controls), so blocked apps genuinely don't open, and it doesn't need a child Apple Account or a family group.
- Pair once with an 8-character code. No accounts are needed on either side.
- Control from your phone: change bedtime, daily limits and school hours, or pause all apps for 30 minutes. Changes reach your child's phone in seconds.
- On the child's phone: block chosen apps or whole categories such as social media, block adult websites in Safari and search, and prevent installing or deleting apps. Which apps are blocked is chosen on the child's phone, protected by a parent PIN plus Face ID.
- School Mode and Homework Mode for school hours and homework time.
- Live location on your phone, with places such as home and school and arrival and departure notifications. Location is end-to-end encrypted and sharing is switched on visibly on the child's phone.
- A blocked-attempts count and weekly report.
Honest limits
Skydo has to be installed and set up on your child's iPhone (iOS 26.5 or later). It's a free download, but protection needs a Skydo Premium subscription, monthly or yearly; one subscription bought on your phone also unlocks your child's phone. It doesn't handle Ask to Buy approvals or shared subscriptions, so some families use it alongside Family Sharing rather than instead of it. More on this in how to control your child's iPhone from your phone.