Apple's Family Sharing: A Broken Promise? Ask to Buy's Failure to Protect Against Redownloads

Apple's Family Sharing, while convenient for sharing apps, subscriptions, and more, has a significant flaw: its "Ask to Buy" feature fails to prevent underage members from redownloading previously downloaded apps without parental authorization. This undermines the core purpose of the feature, leaving parents frustrated and seeking ineffective workarounds.

Since its 2014 launch, Family Sharing has allowed members to redownload apps. However, this redownload function bypasses the Ask to Buy prompt, a critical oversight. A simple workaround, as discovered by one user, involves accessing the family purchase history and redownloading apps directly, completely circumventing parental approval.

This highlights a major design flaw. Even with Ask to Buy enabled and Screen Time restrictions in place, children can easily download apps previously purchased by other family members without parental consent. This renders Ask to Buy largely ineffective for its intended purpose.

Apple's awareness of this issue is evident from numerous online complaints, yet the company has yet to address it. This inaction leaves users resorting to cumbersome workarounds, such as hiding apps or completely disabling app downloads via Screen Time, significantly impacting the Family Sharing user experience.

These workarounds are inconvenient and ultimately unsatisfactory. The core problem lies in the Ask to Buy feature's failure to function as intended for redownloads, rendering it ineffective for its primary purpose.

Beyond this central issue, Family Sharing suffers from other shortcomings, including difficulties managing subscriptions after leaving the group, security vulnerabilities related to device wiping, lack of cross-platform compatibility, and inadequate monitoring tools for adult members.

While Family Sharing offers many benefits, its significant flaws, particularly the Ask to Buy vulnerability, raise serious concerns about its overall effectiveness and usability, especially for families with children. Until Apple addresses these issues, the feature falls short of its promise and may not be worth the effort for many users.

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