Sharing iOS licence

stephen_lee

You say that you need the devices using one in app purchase licence to share an Apple ID so that the Pro features work - I understand this is a limit of in app purchases not working with family sharing. Is the specific Apple ID checked whenever the app is used or is it only validated at the time of initial "purchase" from the app on the device?

For good security reasons we have different Apple IDs for multiple iOS devices in our family (5 different Apple IDs). It is not economic to buy a licence for each ID on top of the windows and Mac licence.

I can login occasionally to each device using my Apple ID (eg to update the app) but I do not want my main Apple ID to be the primary App Store ID on all these devices.

Can you help explain at what points the Apple ID is checked.

Ben

Hi @Stephen_Lee,

In reading the logs it appears this is checked on each launch of the app. Does each user truly need the Pro features? If not, the base app is completely free. If only a couple of the accounts would actually take advantage of the Pro features it may be more economical to use the base app on the accounts that will not.

As a possible alternative you may want to look into our new offering (currently in beta) -- 1Password for Teams. Teams is a subscription service that gives you control over who within your team (or, family in this case) has access to what data and at what level. For example, perhaps only Mom & Dad are allowed to change the items inside the shared family vault. 1Password for Teams comes with access to all of the 1Password applications (including the Pro features for iOS) at no additional charge. While Teams is in beta there is no subscription fee. Exact pricing has not yet been announced.

Thanks!

Ben

stephen_lee

Thanks for the feedback - I now understand that my suggested approach will not work. I am not yet an expert on 1Password - it comes highly recommended and I am nearly ready to buy. All members of the family will have internet site passwords that are required for use both on PCs at home (Windows and/or Mac) and on iOS devices - iPad and iPhone.

I thought that the Pro version was required to somehow share a vault across different environments and this would seem to be the easiest way of setting up the system. Ideally if I have been through the steps of logging a site once in 1Password I don't want to have to do this on each device (especially as I am hoping 1Password will create a good strong and unique password for each site - but I don't want to have to type this complex password into each device if I can avoid it as like most people I have more ID/password combinations than I care to remember!).

I will also look at 1Password for Teams.

Ben

Thanks, @Stephen_Lee. If you just want each person to be able to sync their passwords between their computer and iOS then the Pro features are not required. If you want to have a secondary vault that everyone has access to in addition to their primary vault, then yes, each user would need the Pro features (or, 1Password for Teams).

Ben

stephen_lee

I have started experimenting with this - one Macbook and two different iOS devices (each with a different AppleID) so far. Next step will be to add a Windows PC plus an additional iPad then see if this all works. I am syncing using Dropbox - currently all to one Dropbox account - so each vault in a different folder on Dropbox. Next step will be to see if I can share these folders across multiple Dropbox accounts because as with the AppleIDs I don't really want to share one Dropbox account across the family. May not be the complete solution but it is nowhere near as constrained as I first feared. In the meantime I am still waiting to see if I am accepted as participant in the 1Password for Teams beta.

Ben

Next step will be to see if I can share these folders across multiple Dropbox accounts

Yes, this should be possible. Please note though that each keychain you want to share should be in its own folder. E.x. If I want to share my Family.opvault keychain I would put that in Dropbox as such:

/Users/Ben/Dropbox/Family Shared/Family.opvault

And then I would share the Family Shared folder, not the Family.opvault file (/folder).

I am still waiting to see if I am accepted as participant in the 1Password for Teams beta.

That should be coming soon.

Thanks!

Ben

stephen_lee

I am pleased to confirm that this all seems to work ok. Dropbox allows the folder with the relevant vault to be shared and when you install the free 1password on iOS after setting up Dropbox then you can sync with the right vault and the different vaults can be managed from the desktop version.

I will see as we become more sophisticated users as to how many iOS devices really need multiple vaults.

Ben

Excellent. Glad to hear that is working out for you folks so far! :) If there is anything else we can do, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Ben