Apple Family Sharing + PC

VPN
1

This post is directed at surfshark support but I appreciate anyone else’s suggestions.

After researching VPN options for my family for our iPhones, iPads, and Windows 11 pcs, I decided to subscribe to Surfshark. I did this in the App Store using my iPhone, with my Apple ID as account name and to complete the purchase. I chose the option to hide my email address. It’s currently in the 7 day trial period but as long as it works for our needs, I’m willing to subscribe for 1 year.

It appears to work well on my own iPhone, however it doesn’t appear as a shared subscription on my families iPhones or under the family sharing settings on my phone. Note that our Apple TV and Spotify subscriptions work fine with sharing.

Are there any tips to making this work? When my son created an account using his own Apple ID it asked him to choose a subscription option.

Additionally, is it possible to use this same subscription, linked to Apple, but with our pcs?

2

You can have surfshark on an unlimited amount of devices on one account.

3

Hi, you can use Surfshark on all of your devices. Since you signed up for a 7-day trial through App Store, then you would only need to log in on our app on every device with the ‘Log in with Apple’ option. The Apple ID that was used to sign up for the trial needs to be used as well.

4

Thanks for your reply. I don’t see why I would need to use my Apple ID to sign into my families devices. They have their own IDs that are linked with mine through Apple Family Sharing.

When my son used his ID, it didn’t recognize that I’ve already subscribed. Other subscriptions automatically share amongst the family but this one doesn’t appear to.

Do you think this is because I chose the option to hide the email account linked with my Apple ID?

I’m hoping this works otherwise I’ll need to cancel and try another VPN.

5

You would need to choose the ‘Login with Apple’ option on all devices you wish to add, and connect with your Apple account specifically. Unfortunately, they will most likely not be able to log in with their own Apple accounts using the Apple Family Sharing feature.

6

I contacted support and they were very helpful. In case it helps others, all I had to do was:

  1. make sure the app was running on my iPhone

  2. download the app on the pc

  3. when signing in, either scan the QR code, or enter the code shown on the pc into the account settings on the phone.

Looks like I’ll be subscribing!