How to manage an Apple ID without an Apple device?

September 8, 2021 7:01 AM

My sister and her husband, who own no Apple devices, have received a free year of AppleTV+ from their cell phone provider. She has successfully set it up on her Fire streaming stick, but she says she can't share the account with her husband without going through an Apple device. Can I help her by adding her Apple ID to my iPad, signing in as her, and inviting her husband to Family Sharing with her account, all without impacting my own AppleTV/Family Sharing Setup? Or is there a way to enable/manage Family Sharing through Apple's website?
posted by lhauser to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Best answer: You can manage AppleID's here - https://appleid.apple.com/#!&page=signin

I think in this case managing family sharing is making this over complicated - why not share the single apple account since there isn't an apple device at play here.
posted by iamabot at 7:04 AM on September 8, 2021

On further digging, my guess it looks like for family sharing - an apple device is the exclusive requirement, but there isn't anything that says it has to be a modern or very expensive device. Perhaps you can pick up an old ipod that could be used for this?
posted by iamabot at 7:24 AM on September 8, 2021

As iamabot mentioned, I would just share the Apple ID credentials (username & password) with her husband. It's something you generally don't want to do across multiple Apple devices (especially phones, because messaging gets weird) but if it's only being used for AppleTV, there's really no reason not to just share the credentials.
posted by xedrik at 7:50 AM on September 8, 2021 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks, all, it looks like they're going to do without profiles.
posted by lhauser at 9:40 AM on September 8, 2021